Experience with fitness trackers? (Fitbit, Jawbone, etc.)

[It's Not Lupus]

Do any of you own a fitness tracker that you recommend? I might want one.

 

[zerocool1]

How Accurate Is Your Activity Monitor? Fitbit, Jawbone And Others Put To The Test

They're not 100% accurate but they work pretty well.

 

[smackababy]

I have been eyeing quite a few, and unfortunately, none do what I require of a fitness band. The MS Band is the closest, but I have to use one of their workouts and not my own.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Just use pen and paper. It's cheap and easy.

Do it for a year or more like in my case and I can estimate how many cals I have taken in and burned without any help from technology.

And the bottom line is that it is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong because there is no way to precisely track cals in/out.

 

[Kaido]

I have a Jawbone UP24 & really like it. It's wireless, has a long 2-week battery life, and tracks my steps & sleep. I like it because it's fun to see the data being tracked & it's comfortable to wear (I hate wearing watches, so that's a compliment!).

If I were to buy today, I would either buy the Jawbone UP3 (adds a heart rate monitor & waterproofing; 7-day battery life & available around Christmas) or the Microsoft Band, which has a color notification touchscreen (but only has a 24 to 48-hour battery life, and it appears the screen can get scuffed somewhat easily). I'm planning on upgrading to the UP3 when it comes out specifically for the heart rate monitor. My brother has the MS Band & loves it - he keeps the screen on the bottom of his wrist & gets all of his alerts that way. Just depends on what you want it to do.

I've been keeping an eye on all of the stuff available on the market. I almost bit on a wireless scale, but the Jawbone app lets you simply punch in the numbers in the app on a regular manual scale, so no biggie there. For food, I still prefer using Cronometer, which does have apps available for iPhone & Android: (as well as a web interface)

https://cronometer.com/

Depends on how nutty you want to get with it. I'm a hardware geek, so I love anything with added tech in it. Having hard metrics is just so beneficial to seeing what you're really, actually doing. Also, I like the new Jawbone UP3 because it automatically tracks your activity - sleep, bicycling, whatever (I have to push the button for sleep/wake mode right now - not a biggie, but you have to remember to do it & get in the habit of doing it instead of having it do it automatically).

The big thing my fitness tracker has done for me is give me an honest track record. Everybody lies to themselves, not necessarily on purpose, but if you haven't personally kept daily track of yourself, then you can't really say what you "think" you've done is accurate because you simply don't have the tracked data to back it up like you do with a fitness tracker. Like zerocool1 said, they're not 100% accurate, but they do give you a good picture of what you're doing for movement during the day & how you're sleeping at night.

I discovered that I do not sleep well at all at night, and also that I consistently think that I get 1-2 more hours of sleep than I actually do, which has helped get me motivated to do better about that because I have the numbers & data right in front of me (shows me individual nighty histories of wake, light sleep, and deep sleep, as well as trends over the past week & so on). I mean, it's kind of like an exercise machine - simply buying one or having one doesn't mean you're going to magically be motivated to change, but it's another tool in your arsenal & a constant reminder of where you stand health-wise in regards to your fitness levels from movement & sleep.

 

[Kaido]

Just use pen and paper. It's cheap and easy.

Do it for a year or more like in my case and I can estimate how many cals I have taken in and burned without any help from technology.

And the bottom line is that it is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong because there is no way to precisely track cals in/out.

If you don't want to go the fitness tracker route, I definitely second pen & paper. I printed out Excel spreadsheets & taped them to my bedroom wall to track stuff like meal consumption, workout progression, and sleeping patterns in the past - it made it visible & in plain sight every time I woke up, forcing me to pay attention to it (I put it across from my bed by the lightswitch, haha). I consider tracking absolutely essential to making a lifestyle change - it's basically training wheels for you, until you adopt the habits as second-nature activities in your life (eating clean, exercising on a regular basis, and getting enough sleep).

Like you said, sticking with it for a year or so gets you dialed into the patterns for success. For example, I don't have to think about food anymore because I know my body now, I know what to eat, when to eat, how to eat, and how to make sure that I have food prepared so that I don't have any excuses. Honestly, I had a really big struggle doing it & had a new thread every year trying to get myself to stick with things. Tracking REALLY helped. It's laughable looking through my threads now (I had no clue about anything health or fitness related lol), but honestly they were one of the most motivating tools I had because not only was I tracking my progress, but also getting social feedback, which is really important to me. It's funny to read through some of my old threads because I was pretty clueless, but it was also essential that I went through all of that to learn & grow and get my feet wet in making progress towards my goals:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=162388

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2121867

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2216518

I've actually learned a TON about my body, such as:

1. I feel super ridiculously awesome waking up early, like 3:30 or 4:00am. I would never have considered doing that in the past, but going to bed early & waking up early just makes me feel great all day.

2. I have a period of time at night where I start feeling sleepy (my "sleep window"), usually around 8:30pm for me, and if I go to bed right then, I can fall asleep within minutes. Having struggled with severe insomnia for most of my life, this was huge for me & crucial for my health.

3. I learned more about my food sensitivities. I am completely allergic to dairy & gluten, and I do not tolerate any grains very well (oatmeal, sugarcane, corn, rice, etc.). Beyond that, I feel great.

4. I do best on a high-carb diet. I feel crummy & low-energy otherwise.

5. Daily exercise is super important to how I feel every day. It regulates my digestion (in a nutshell, exercises compresses the poop in your stomach so that you're having a daily bowel movement that, when combined with a good diet, produces a solid stool that sinks, which is in the healthy range), which I have found to be incredibly important to how much energy I have during the day. I didn't realize the extent that the passage of food through my intestines had on my energy, because it's not really an obvious thing until you start paying attention to it.

6. Eating 6 small meals a day makes me feel great because it keeps my blood sugar up & stable all day (I'm very hypoglycemic). I used to suffer from night terrors (basically a combination of nightmares with rapid heartbeat, cold sweat, etc.) because my blood sugar would tank at night. Completely gone when I manage my diet properly.

7. I've learned that all of the health & fitness marketing is BS. Eat whole foods, have a treat when you feel like it to keep yourself sane, move during the day, and get enough sleep. It's not rocket science, but it's also not at all obvious when you're new to the H&F game and everything is overwhelming.

Plus a bunch of other stuff! Now I have an exact rulebook for how my body operates & what works best for me. When I go to bed early, get enough sleep, eat small meals, and exercise daily, I feel amazing all the time. The weight falls right off & I have plenty of energy, even into the evening when I'd usually just crash. It's made an enormous difference in my life to track the metrics of sleep, diet, and exercise & learn how my body works.

And here it is nearly 1am and I just finished eating some chocolates, so screw my good intentions haha :awe: