Fitbit One and Whitings Scale

[jacob]

@inoubliable - If you haven't already found it, we have a group here https://www.fitbit.com/group/22QL7X

[inoubliable]

Thanks! Just joined the group.

[Chad]

Good article on the Apple Watch and it's fitness tracking. It doesn't appear to be much better than the current top of the line trackers, but my guess is Apple will continually update it and apps will significantly improve over the first year.

http://www.mensjournal.com/gear/electro ... 9vLmNvbQ==

[jennypenny]

WaPo: The revolution will be digitized

"Spearheaded by the flood of wearable devices, a movement to quantify consumers’ lifestyles is evolving into big business with immense health and privacy ramifications."

[Chad]

Along with that, Fitbit is going public and it's actually solidly profitable.

http://qz.com/400639/fitbit-is-going-pu ... rofitable/

I'm looking forward to this, as I'm interested in the Tim Ferris style body hack measurements, but I'm not interested in spending the kind of money he has on it. Over the next few years the cost of this will probably go way way down.

[Ego]

FWIW, When teaching spin I would encourage the class to cover the parts of the screen displaying miles, watts, calories burned, and heart rate, leaving only cadence visible. Instead of following the hard data I encouraged them to use perceived exertion and would constantly tell them to think about what they are feeling (40 times per class). Are you taking it easy? Can you push a little harder?

Invariable the hardcore data driven folks would reluctantly agree to me covering their screen with a sheet of paper but were always amazed at how much harder they pushed themselves and how much higher where their total watts/calories/miles when they didn't have moment by moment feedback but but only gauged by feel.

My takeaway was that after a baseline fitness is reached using a data driven approach, the device begins to discourage the user to go above and beyond a particular point. In my experience, being fit is one part consistency, which the data encourages, and one part going to extremes, which the data discourages.

[jennypenny]

Has anyone tried wearing their fitbit during water sports like surfing or sunfish sailing? Do you think it would survive if I put it in a ziploc bag and tucked it into the pocket of my board shorts? I'm curious how many steps it would register.

[Hannibal]

Electronic devices to measure BF% are worthless. They are easily fooled by water retention, which can swing ten pounds in either direction for some people.
The best ERE tools for measuring body fat percentage are this :

1) A mirror
2) A bathroom scale
3) A tape measure (I use the notches on my belt)
4) If you want to get fancy, get a body fat calipers. Reusable, few moving parts, cheap, and precise. You can't even get consistent results with a DEXA scan, a $150 glorified bathroom scale will only make your wallet lighter. The body fat calipers may not be 100% accurate, but it is extremely precise. You will know if you're losing fat with the calipers. Take a couple measurements and average them out. I bought the Accu-Measure Fitness 3000 Personal Body Fat .



Basically, check where you're at at regular intervals. Once a month I'll usually see where my belt notch is at, weigh myself, and take a picture of myself in the mirror.

If the scale isn't moving, but you look leaner/more defined in the mirror, then keep doing whatever you're doing. You're likely building muscle. Lean and muscular is attractive, healthy, and functional for everyone.

If the scale goes up, but your belt (waist measurement) stays the same, you're building muscle.

If the scale stays the same, but your waist measurement goes down, you're dropping body fat.

If the scale goes up along with your waist measurement, it's time to reevaluate your goals. Unless your strength levels are going through the roof, you're likely overeating.

[Ydobon]

I am going to confess to purchasing a Whithings scale during Amazon's 'magic spendfest 2015'. Really looking forward to being told how overweight my wife and I are

Edit: both scale and watch are buggy crap, going back to Amazon tomorrow

[jennypenny]

Is there any way to get the fitbit to register steps when riding a bike?

[jacob]

If there are steps when you're riding a bike, you're doing it wrong. But I see where you're going with this ... tie it around your ankle. You can also just register the biking as an activity and get your calories counted.

[jennypenny]

I'm definitely doing it wrong. I'm a crappy rider. The guy who sold me the bike couldn't stop laughing at me when I took it for a test ride.

It didn't register in my pocket, so I'll try fastening it to my ankle tomorrow.

[jennypenny]

If you have a Charge and haven't run the update yet, fyi ... it's a little buggy. They said it's better to run the update from a computer instead of a mobile app (of course, they said this AFTER I updated it ). One new feature is that the watch face will automatically light up when tapped. It took half the night for me to figure out why it kept lighting up. You can turn it off in settings, device, quick view. Mine is also not counting steps properly now. They told me how to reboot it, but I haven't had time yet today to try it.

Why fix something that wasn't broken??

[jacob]

One day a software engineer looked around the cubicleplex where he lived and decided he wanted a change. So he started browsing the revision control repository. He looked high and low in the versioning tree until he reached a high stream of caffeine that was impossible to get down from. He tried playing Pacman in the rec room and drinking water from the blue-ion fountain, but there was no way.

Suddenly he saw a beautiful piece of code. The code was well written and worked perfectly and the software engineer really wanted to work on it so as to get down from his caffeine high although he saw no way of improving it.

"Hello Mr Code," said the software engineer: "Mr Coffee is broken and Mr Pacman is lying in the corner of the rec room crying. Would you be so kind as to let me work you... I mean on^H^Hwith you?"

"I'm not sure, Mr Software Engineer," said the Code. "How do I know that you wont try to add some new features if I let you recompile me?"

"Because," said the software engineer: "If I cause a error and break you, I would get fired, for you see, I can not program!"

This logic seemed reasonable to the Code, so he agreed to let the software engineer download him. As the software engineer downloaded the code, he immediately saw an area that could be rewritten entirely so as to add a reverse palm to forehead swipe feature and save one line of code by combining the LED differential in the power diode with an ill-supported class he cut and pasted from stackexchange. He hit compile and immediately committed the code to the tree.

"Damnit, you noob! You borked me! Now I'll die and you'll be fired. Why did you do it?", the Code cried out in frustration.

"It's in my nature," said the software engineer.

[jennypenny]

The band is peeling away from the device. Has this happened to anyone else? I'm trying to figure out what kind of glue I should use to fix it.

[jennypenny]

Help. I'm not sure what to use to glue it back together.

[Chad]

What do you do to your Fitbits? You seem to be hard on them. Unfortunately, I would be just guessing about the best glue to use.

[tommytebco]

heart rate monitors:
The writeups say you need the strap for exercise (like running) heart rates to be accurate.

I saw a guy yesterday swimming with one on. It didn't seem to impair him at all.

[jennypenny]

As I was wrapping my son's broken finger, I was inspired ...



Obviously only a temporary solution, but at least I can wear it on the treadmill again.

[jennypenny]

The other side came off as well, so I contacted Fitbit. They are sending me a replacement (new fitbit, not new band) free of charge.

Of course it's what they should do, but it was still a pleasant surprise that they offered to replace it without giving me a hassle about it.