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Living the Fitbit life

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Re: Living the Fitbit life

#31

Post by mahyarm »

evanlivingston wrote: post #26
sumeno wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Many social situations and small restaurants/cafes exclude calories. And many calorie labels have awkward 'amount of servings' that make it hard to calculate for the average American to calculate actual calories. Someone who may have a daily muffin from some no-name cafe may think it's only 250 calories from their previous label experience and then are surprised to find out it's actually 700 calories for example.

Another example is a bottle of ice tea might say '4 servings per bottle' and say 30 calories/serving. Missing those small numbers is easy to do and I know of people thinking they're only consuming 30 calories vs. 120 calories.

The cheapest food is also very unhealthy, while in other countries it is opposite. That along with a car and sit in an office culture leads to part of the obesity epidemic today.

A magic automatic calorie counter would decrease the effort to diet significantly and would still be a great educational tool for many people.

Re: Living the Fitbit life

#32

Post by jcromartie »

tannerc wrote: post #11

I'm fairly active — running on a treadmill for 20 minutes then lifting weights for 30 every day of the week, walking nearly everywhere, only using stairs, etc. — but I can't bring myself to use these types of trackers. I eagerly ordered the SE Nike+ band when it was announced, I used it for maybe a week before giving it away to a friend. Perhaps it wasn't as interesting to me because there was no way to compare my nu…

You're not the target market for these things. They are motivational items for people who don't exercise every day, but want to.

Re: Living the Fitbit life

#33

Post by Yen »

jamesRaybould wrote: post #25

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 th…

There is one open-source project that manages synchronizing a fitbit to their service. Apparently, one used to be able to get data from listening to this communication, but they now encrypt all data coming off of the device.

I got a Jawbone Up24 for my birthday, which seems to be a similar device. I'll see how easy or difficult it is to get data off of that. (I think it's designed to sync via bluetooth directly to a smartphone, which then syncs to their service, so there might be some more wiggle room on communicating to the device).

Re: Living the Fitbit life

#34

Post by ejain »

jamesRaybould wrote: post #25

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 th…

You can minute-resolution step counts through their Web API.

If you're interested in raw accelerometer data, why not just write an app that uses the accelerometer in your phone?

Re: Living the Fitbit life

#35

Post by ejain »

I've been wearing a Fitbit One for almost two years now. I'm not too interested in the motivational aspect, but use the data to back up health-related decisions.

For example, I was able to use the data to confirm that getting exercise late in the evening doesn't affect my sleep (so no need to change my gym routine).

I ended up building an entire service to support these kinds of analyses (zenobase.com), hoping to find enough people who care more about data than badges :-)

Re: Living the Fitbit life

#36

Post by varelse »

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?

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.

Re: Living the Fitbit life

#37

Post by rasz_pl »

varelse wrote: post #36
jgrahamc wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 victim…

>Figure out why that happens

fat people are lazy. You need a pill, or a cap full of electrodes that would make them shiver in their sleep .

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/05/shivering-as-a-form...

Re: Living the Fitbit life

#38

Post by Dewie »

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.

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

Would his age tell you much, really? I know people who are frustrated that they can't gain weight. Me, on the other hand, feel that I can't eat snacks, desserts etc. or other 'empty calories' without gaining weight. And that's been the case since I was 20, or my teens.

Re: Living the Fitbit life

#39

Post by varelse »

foobarqux wrote: post #7
kator wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Since you got the fitbit or since you decided to start exercising?

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 the killer wearable business model.

Re: Living the Fitbit life

#40

Post by foobarqux »

varelse wrote: post #39
foobarqux wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you got the fitbit or since you decided to start exercising?

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 qu…

To be clear, you lost 35 lbs after getting and as a result of the fitbit?
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