Fitbit or FitFad?

[Paul Gray]

Hi guys

I wanted to get peoples' opinions of the Fitbit device - does anyone have one that they actively use?  These have been recommended to me for various reasons - overall activity throughout the day etc, heart rate monitor and also due to silent vibrate alarm function.  Are they genuinely useful or just a money making fad that will be used once and then forgotten about?  I'm curious to hear people's opinions.

[Christian Nogueira]

In my opinion, it could be useful to have some feedback on your sleep patterns. 

For people who are already active, it don't think it's fitness uses are that useful (might be handy if you are training running). For people who are inactive, if it encourages them to be more active, more power to them.

[Paul Gray]

Thanks Christian, yes I forgot that part. Would be good to see the sleep aspect without having to have a phone next to you while you sleep.  I wasn't sure if the Fitbit would interfere with sleep.

[Kevin Easton]

I have a BodyMedia Fit

you wear it on your left arm and it tracks a whole bunch of crap.  You can sync it with My Fitness Pal, but there is a small fee for the program. 

I found it really handy in terms of calculating calorie expenditure.  After a few weeks you get a fairly accurate baseline.  It helped me a lot with some fat loss determining how much to eat (or not eat). 

In terms of sleep, I'm not too sure how accurate any of them really are.  If I wake up feeling good I probably got enough sleep. If I wake up feeling like crap I probably didn't get enough sleep.  

I recommend this one, but after a couple weeks of use you have a good idea of your "numbers" and don't need to wear it anymore 

[Giovanni Garcea]

I had a Fitbit Surge for a year and last November I upgraded to a Garmine Forerunner 235.

Depends on your habits, a good activity tracker can give you huge value. It definitely did for me and right now I cannot even consider not to have one.

These are the things I use it for:

Calories counting: I now eat more the days I move/exercise more and less when I'm more sedentary. This really helped me feel better and maintain a more constant energy level, versus what I was doing before (eat the same amount of calories every day). I count calories on myfitnesspal, and both Fitbit and Garmin sync to that. As other said, you need to figure out the average offset of accuracy, then it is very useful.

Number of steps: there is no question that I increased my number of steps by a lot. Seeing how much sedentary I was and have in front of me all the time how many steps I took at any moment, really pushed me to move and walk more. Super effective.

Notifications: great to have phone calls, text, social media notifications (I usually keep my phone on vibration and in the past I used to miss some phone calls)

Sleep tracking: yes, that's very useful. This is the only aspect in which the Fitbit was better than the garmin.

Silent alarm: nice! I can wake up with the vibrating alarm and do my morning workout without waking up my wife.

Plus all the other good things about a medium/high end fitness watch (heart rate monitor and zones, GPS, VO2max estimate, online tracking of all your workouts).

Great stuff!

[Jared Birbeck]

I had one...well two. the first the battery died and I replaced it and the second fell off while riding. what I liked about it was like was said above, tracking steps and seeing how active I was/wasn't during the day. the sleep tracking was also interesting but I couldn't do much about it. it made me walk more. whether that was a good thing or not I can't say. 

I haven't replaced mine since I lost it and I don't miss it. tracking steps is fine but it was rubbish at recognising what I actually did, like foundation workouts, yoga, cycling, tumbling which meant manually inputting stuff into the app. mine didn't have a HR monitors I had the flex, but I had a separate HR monitor...useles information for me. I know how hard I am working and a HR monitor doesn't change that.

with 20/20 hindsight it was collecting data I wasn't using and didn't collect data that would have been of some use but that data is about perception of how hard I worked...no gadget does that now...

the silent alarm was good. having one of those would be good.

[Roy Chesters]

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