My wife and I are avid fitbit'ers. We used to walk about an hour every day before we got them so it wasn't like we became fanatics when we got them but things have changed in some very subtle ways:
We can get the same amount of walking in even when we travel to a new city, we used to slack off sometimes when we travelled because we didn’t have a “route” to follow. Now we just go and often walk until we get to 1/2 our goal and turn around. Meanwhile we get to see so much more of the city we’re visiting. Our last trip to London we had so much fun we walked 8 miles out before we realized we needed to head back to the hotel.
We bought them for my Mom and Dad. My dad who is “Seventy something” walks me into the ground every day. He is on the west coast and we’re generally on the east coast. Every day he would beat me by 2,000 or more steps. I thought maybe my dad was taking advantage of the time zone advantage he had over me. To test this I stopped syncing for a couple days and then sync’d “all at once” and I managed to beat him. When I confronted him with this data he laughed and said “What else is an old man to do then to walk his son into the ground!”
My best friend has one also and he often loves to taunt me when I’m a bit behind. When we travel we usually smash his weekly records into the ground and the taunting goes the other way!
I’m an avid MMORPG player and since getting a fitbit it has slowly taken place of leveling toons or getting that next cool piece of gear. I have managed to make my life more of a game and enjoy the benefits of being more active while feeding that competitive part of my brain that want’s to win.
The only thing we love more is we have a Withings WiFi scale, tracking our weight along with activity and intake (Lose It! App for iPhone) makes for a pretty nice trifecta of tools to help meet personal goals. It also makes it easy when I slip up, I can look back “Ohh yea I really slacked off that week because of x, y or z”.
I have lost several of these and always replace them immediately. For a time my wife and I actually kept one in her travel case because we lost one when we were traveling and were crushed that we couldn’t replace it the very same day. We gave that one to one of our daughters and needless to say she’s in love with it.
Funny story: I lost one in New York city on a rainy night in December of last year. When I figured out it was gone my wife and I retraced our last walk and we found a fitbit in the rain but it wouldn’t turn on. I assumed the rain got to it so I took it home in hopes of reviving it. When I got it dried off I plugged it into the charger and it pops up “Hello Frank”. I laughed so hard I couldn’t stop laughing for ten minutes. My name isn’t Frank. We never found mine, I hope Frank found mine and reloaded it on his account. I’m still using Frank’s FitBit (Thanks again Frank) and happy to say it’s been a good companion in my day to day life.
I lost 35 lbs my wife lost more but she would not want me to say the number!
After Hurricane Sandy we had to walk up and down 36 flights of stairs because our building lost power. We made 36 flights very quickly and my heart rate (Heart Rate iPhone app) returned to normal very quickly. (Sorry not going to share too much here lol). If we had tried this before we would have been DOA half the way. We made several trips up and down over the course of a couple days and we had to walk from downtown to mid-town for many things because so much of the area was without power.
I've exercised regularly since the age of 22 when my ballerina girlfriend dumped me for someone effectively identical to me in every major way except that he was ripped and he could dance (and oh yeah, Atari ST versus Amiga). He and I have even indirectly intersected over the years. That event was both heartbreaking and catalytic for me. I have been a fitness freak ever since.
"Big things have small beginnings" to quote David from _Prometheus_.
Anyway, the Fitbit uncovered that I wasn't walking enough even though I had a pulse of 50 or so and all my vital signs were more or less awesome. My response was to address that immediately. But that does not seem to be the norm. The norm (at least in America) is to return to denial. A solution for that IMO is thekiller wearable business model.
In my case, 13 pounds, and yes 100% directly attributable to the mindful state induced by wearing the fitbit. But as I've said in my other two posts in this thread, my response to the information it provided does not seem to be the norm.
Or as the old joke goes: How many psychoanalysts does it take to change a light bulb? One, but the light bulb has to want to change. Devices like the fitbit offer you either the blue pill or the red pill. Which one you take is up to you.
In late 2011, when I won a fitbit in a white elephant party, I came to the awful realization I only walked 4,000 steps per day. Over the next 2 months, I gradually upped my steps to 20,000 steps a day and lost 13 pounds.
I am now known as the fitbit fascist by my friends because whenever someone kvetches about their weight, I offer to buy them a fitbit. I have followed through on this twice. In both cases, the victims wore their fitbits for several months and then gave up on increasing their daily step count, removing their fitbit so they'd stop being reminded that they were only walking 2,000-3,000 steps per day rather than do something about that.
Figure out why that happens and I think you'd drastically increase how to increase the mass market appeal of quantified self wearables like this.
> What actual benefits have you seen? For example, weight loss, increased muscle strength, blood pressure, heart rate?
This is the bit I'd be interested in. Some data to correlate the improved "fitness"[1] (or at least increased activity) with improvements in other metrics.
I'll be gathering such data sometime soon as, altohugh I'm reasonably active, I'm aiming for an Ironman triathlon in 2016 and I'm a long way off being in the right shape for that right now. Whilst I aim to lose the 20kg or so I need to lose I'll be gathering data including: HR (whilst exercising), weight, cycling power output (PowerTap hub).
Although my exercise regieme will vary there will be certain exercises I do every week:
* An hour of 5-a-side football (compare distance covered and average HR)
* A couple of specific training routes on the bike (time, power output, HR avg, segment times)
* Running (time, HR avg, etc)
Having the data to play with is a good motivator in itself!
1. Very hard to actually measure or even quantify.
The biggest benefit of the technology/data is the motivation it provides to continue being active. If that doesn't motivate you, then there is no value... unless you share the data with a physician who finds value in it, which seems increasingly likely, but not yet common.
My anecdote: it allows much better estimate of calorie expenditure for use in weight management.
I've lost almost 60 pounds over the last two years, a bit over half with the use of Fitbit. I find the data from Fitbit let me know how active I really was which enables me to more consistently hit my weight loss goals. This generally meant either eating less or going out and exercising more to hit my daily budget.
My wife uses Fitbit in the same manner.
Fitbit isn't a panacea, but it is a piece of the puzzle. On its own the benefits are small, but it is very helpful as a component in a larger health strategy.
I lost about 10 pounds with FitBit then gained it back after taking a startup job. (I blame free lunches and not the device.)
I echo others' comments that better calorie tracking would be great. The biggest problem with their dashboard is duplication: it's overwhelming to have 30 different brands of croutons to choose from when logging your lunch. I think a curated list would be better than an expansive user-generated list.
My wife and I are also slightly obsessive fitbit'ers.
We use fitbit's aria smart scale and like to use trendweight.com to track our weight trends. I've lost over 15 lbs over 6% body fat, and my wife has lost more as well.
A number of consumer scales use some form of electrical pulse timing to determine the composition of tissue in the feet, which is extrapolated for the body. For these results to be meaningful, you have to be very consistent with your hydration before you use the scale.
After measuring daily for about two months with such a scale (in the mornings after going to the toilet and before drinking anything, so I assume my hydration should be somewhat consistent) I see a clear downward trend (in line with my weight loss), but the actual values that are measured don’t seem to be very exact, probably about ±3% around the imaginary trend line.
Those measurements seem to be good for finding a trend, but not for finding the absolute value.
We can get the same amount of walking in even when we travel to a new city, we used to slack off sometimes when we travelled because we didn’t have a “route” to follow. Now we just go and often walk until we get to 1/2 our goal and turn around. Meanwhile we get to see so much more of the city we’re visiting. Our last trip to London we had so much fun we walked 8 miles out before we realized we needed to head back to the hotel.
We bought them for my Mom and Dad. My dad who is “Seventy something” walks me into the ground every day. He is on the west coast and we’re generally on the east coast. Every day he would beat me by 2,000 or more steps. I thought maybe my dad was taking advantage of the time zone advantage he had over me. To test this I stopped syncing for a couple days and then sync’d “all at once” and I managed to beat him. When I confronted him with this data he laughed and said “What else is an old man to do then to walk his son into the ground!”
My best friend has one also and he often loves to taunt me when I’m a bit behind. When we travel we usually smash his weekly records into the ground and the taunting goes the other way!
I’m an avid MMORPG player and since getting a fitbit it has slowly taken place of leveling toons or getting that next cool piece of gear. I have managed to make my life more of a game and enjoy the benefits of being more active while feeding that competitive part of my brain that want’s to win.
The only thing we love more is we have a Withings WiFi scale, tracking our weight along with activity and intake (Lose It! App for iPhone) makes for a pretty nice trifecta of tools to help meet personal goals. It also makes it easy when I slip up, I can look back “Ohh yea I really slacked off that week because of x, y or z”.
I have lost several of these and always replace them immediately. For a time my wife and I actually kept one in her travel case because we lost one when we were traveling and were crushed that we couldn’t replace it the very same day. We gave that one to one of our daughters and needless to say she’s in love with it.
Funny story: I lost one in New York city on a rainy night in December of last year. When I figured out it was gone my wife and I retraced our last walk and we found a fitbit in the rain but it wouldn’t turn on. I assumed the rain got to it so I took it home in hopes of reviving it. When I got it dried off I plugged it into the charger and it pops up “Hello Frank”. I laughed so hard I couldn’t stop laughing for ten minutes. My name isn’t Frank. We never found mine, I hope Frank found mine and reloaded it on his account. I’m still using Frank’s FitBit (Thanks again Frank) and happy to say it’s been a good companion in my day to day life.