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Living the Fitbit life

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Re: Living the Fitbit life

#21

Post by bluedino »

evanlivingston wrote: post #15
bluedino wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't wait for a device that can measure how many calories you've eaten. The possibilities for that would be endless. Beeping after you've hit your goal/limit for the day?

I tend to just pay attention roughly to what I eat, and not eat foods that are generally bad for me/empty calories. However on some days I'll consume twice the amount of "recommended daily calories" for an adult my size. Yet I remain an 140lb adult male. There are no hard/fast rules for calorie consumption, and I don't believe a calorie counter will help. In-fact, it is the precise quantification of food that leads t…

>> However on some days I'll consume twice the amount of "recommended daily calories" for an adult my size. Yet I remain an 140lb adult male.

That's the thing - some days. People who are overweight generally do it every day.

And I'll also assume you're ~ 25 years old and your metabolism hasn't started slowing down yet.

Re: Living the Fitbit life

#22

Post by sumeno »

evanlivingston wrote: post #15
bluedino wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't wait for a device that can measure how many calories you've eaten. The possibilities for that would be endless. Beeping after you've hit your goal/limit for the day?

I tend to just pay attention roughly to what I eat, and not eat foods that are generally bad for me/empty calories. However on some days I'll consume twice the amount of "recommended daily calories" for an adult my size. Yet I remain an 140lb adult male. There are no hard/fast rules for calorie consumption, and I don't believe a calorie counter will help. In-fact, it is the precise quantification of food that leads t…

Just because you don't need to count calories to maintain your weight doesn't mean it isn't a useful tool for many people.

The idea that the precise quantification of food that leads to poor diets/eating habits is rather obsurd given that most diets unfortuantely don't actually do that. Most diets are composed of ridiculous rules like "Don't eat any carbs!" or "Eat only cabbage!" Tracking what you are eating and not going over a calorie limit is one of the most reliable ways to lose weight if you actually do it. Most people, "dieters" included, have absolutely no clue how many calories they eat every day.

I guarantee that anyone who wants to lose weight can do so if they eat fewer calories than they use in a day. Losing weight is that simple. It's not necessarily easy, but it is extremely simple.

Re: Living the Fitbit life

#23

Post by eastbayjake »

jgrahamc wrote: post #3
kator wrote: post #2

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…

Great story about the tech. Now... What actual benefits have you seen? For example, weight loss, increased muscle strength, blood pressure, heart rate?

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.

Re: Living the Fitbit life

#24

Post by anonova »

I had a Fitbit Force for a couple of weeks before falling victim to the the rash/skin irritation problem [1]. It got quite bad, and my doctor had to prescribe a topical steroid for it to go away.

Fitbit handled the situation rather poorly. There were hundreds of users complaining about the problem in their community forum, and it took months for the company to initiate a recall. What annoyed me the most was that during this process, they claimed that there was nothing wrong with the product, and that if there were one, it was due to a nickel allergy. I know, with confidence, that I am not allergic to nickel. This was still their conclusion when they posted the final voluntary recall [2].

I now have a minor scar on my wrist, and I can't recommend any of their products. This isn't because they're bad but how badly the customer service was during that period. I hope they can recover from that slip up, but I don't see myself buying anything Fitbit anytime soon, especially with so many other nicer fitness bands being released.

[1]: https://www.cpsc.gov/en/Recalls/2014/Fitbit-Recalls-Force-Ac...

[2]: http://www.fitbit.com/forcesupport

Re: Living the Fitbit life

#25

Post by jamesRaybould »

I love my fitbit and wear it pretty much religiously, it tracks how much I move in a day and how much I sleep, but 2 things irk me about it. It is constantly broadcasting my location via bluetooth LE. You have to have an internet connection to retrieve any data from it.

As a software dev I'd love to get my raw data out just to see what fun an interesting things I could do/see with it. When I have asked in the past they have turned me down flat saying that they don't provide access to the raw data because people could "figure out how we calculate our raw data and algorithms, so this data is all proprietary"

Re: Living the Fitbit life

#26

Post by evanlivingston »

sumeno wrote: post #22
evanlivingston wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to just pay attention roughly to what I eat, and not eat foods that are generally bad for me/empty calories. However on some days I'll consume twice the amount of "recommended daily calories" for an adult my size. Yet I remain an 140lb adult male. There are no hard/fast rules for calorie consumption, and I don't believe a calorie counter will help. In-fact, it is the precise quantification of food that leads t…

Just because you don't need to count calories to maintain your weight doesn't mean it isn't a useful tool for many people. The idea that the precise quantification of food that leads to poor diets/eating habits is rather obsurd given that most diets unfortuantely don't actually do that. Most diets are composed of ridiculous rules like "Don't eat any carbs!" or "Eat only cabbage!" Tracking what you are eating and not…

I didn't mean diets in the restrictive sense, but rather as a description of any type of food a person generally eats.

I agree completely that weight loss/control is about caloric spendature in relation to caloric intake. However in the US we have more labeling and discussion about calories than any other country that I'm aware of yet we remain an overweight nation with nearly 2/3 of our population being over weight, and 1/3 being obese. I don't feel as though further quantification on the consumer side is going to remedy the situation.

Re: Living the Fitbit life

#27

Post by evanlivingston »

bluedino wrote: post #21
evanlivingston wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to just pay attention roughly to what I eat, and not eat foods that are generally bad for me/empty calories. However on some days I'll consume twice the amount of "recommended daily calories" for an adult my size. Yet I remain an 140lb adult male. There are no hard/fast rules for calorie consumption, and I don't believe a calorie counter will help. In-fact, it is the precise quantification of food that leads t…

>> However on some days I'll consume twice the amount of "recommended daily calories" for an adult my size. Yet I remain an 140lb adult male. That's the thing - some days. People who are overweight generally do it every day . And I'll also assume you're ~ 25 years old and your metabolism hasn't started slowing down yet.

I think obese and many overweight people are aware that they consume more food than the average person. What is the obese person going to do at 6pm when they've received the notification that they've consumed too many calories?

There are much larger issues than calorie counting that cause 2/3 of the U.S to be overweight. Agricultural corn subsidies for starters, a defunct FDA, poor education, lack of strong culinary traditions and a lack of preventative healthcare all play into a massive amount of people being overweight.

Re: Living the Fitbit life

#28

Post by collyw »

morgante wrote: post #12
bluedino wrote: post #8

>> “It’s a Fitbit. You synch it with your computer, and it tracks your physical activity.” Is it sync, or synch? The 'h' really bothers me for some reason.

Both are correct, though I believe "synch" is slightly British.

That explains why I automatically type "sychdb" instead of "syncdb" every time I want to update my Django app.

Re: Living the Fitbit life

#29

Post by jcromartie »

evanlivingston wrote: post #15
bluedino wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't wait for a device that can measure how many calories you've eaten. The possibilities for that would be endless. Beeping after you've hit your goal/limit for the day?

I tend to just pay attention roughly to what I eat, and not eat foods that are generally bad for me/empty calories. However on some days I'll consume twice the amount of "recommended daily calories" for an adult my size. Yet I remain an 140lb adult male. There are no hard/fast rules for calorie consumption, and I don't believe a calorie counter will help. In-fact, it is the precise quantification of food that leads t…

I started counting calories because I find that it makes sense to fight fire with fire, in a way. The caloric density, abundance, and low price of food in western countries is only possible because of technology, and so a little bit of technology (a smartphone app with a big library of foods, barcode scanner, etc.) goes a long way to counter that.

Re: Living the Fitbit life

#30

Post by JshWright »

eroo wrote: post #5

Once we start seeing reliable metrics for other common vitals, I'm optimistic we'll see massive benefits from data insights. With a large enough sample size and the right vitals, I'm hopeful we can find highly correlated early predictors of some massive events: e.g., does 20 minutes before a heart attack have a reliable signature? Is there any boilerplate legalese for open sourcing that kind of data?

e.g., does 20 minutes before a heart attack have a reliable signature?

No.

It depends on what causes the heart attack, but it's generally either a clot that dislodges from somewhere else and lodges in a coronary artery, or a new clot that forms suddenly. Neither of those events could be predicted (other than the general prediction of risk factors). For that matter, it also depends on what event you consider the 'heart attack'. Is it the occlusion of blood flow, or the resulting ischemia? There will be a time lag between those as well.

Detecting a heart attack shortly _after_ it occurred would also be useful, and likely much easier to do (detect cardiac enzymes, etc).

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