How does your fitbit track your weight?

[Michiganlady]

I want to know how to track my weight on my flex 2. It had my starting weight then I lose some pounds and it tracked it I guess. Just need someone to explain this to me.

Thank you 

Moderator edit: Updated subject for formatting

[WendyB]

You just need to enter your weights after you have gotten on the scale. You can see the results on the Computer Dashboard under weight. You can also see it on the app as well

Is this what you are asking? As Im not really sure

[HeydyF]

Hi @Michiganlady, it is great to see new members around! 🙂 As @WendyB mentioned, after you know your current weight, you have to enter your weight on your Fitbit account and then you can track your progress towards a body fat goal and/or a goal for losing, gaining, or maintaining weight.  If you have a Fitbit food plan, you can also synchronize the goals with your plan. If you are using the Fitbit app, please take a look at these instructions to set a weight goal or body fat percentage: 

1. From the Fitbit app dashboard, tap or click the Account icon
2. Under Goals, find Nutrition & Body.
3. Select a goal type (lose, gain, or maintain). You'll be prompted to enter your goal weight and, optionally, a body fat percentage goal.

Let me know how it goes! 

[MrTaylor]

It doesn't, it guesses the amount of exercise it thinks you are doing and how many calories you are burning, as the step counter is wildly inacurate it will be wrong.

[Millicent8]

I also have flex 2 - Just began using it mainly to monitor exercise. Have not entered any food data in the system- it tracked 5 days of exercise and 35 miles walked last week. Yet it says I gained .1 pound.

I realize I entered my weight when I set up dashboard, but if Im not entering any food data, how does fitbit estimate I gained weight? Especially in light of all of the exercise. Seems like a flaw in the system.

[Baltoscott]

@Millicent8 -- fitbit doesn't estimate your weight so you've probably done something with the weight field to get the .1 lb gain.  Possibilities are that you entered the weight yourself after the initial set up either manually or automatically through a linked scale, or, possibly, you've linked your account to some other app (MyFitnessPal or Strava, for example) and the weight recorded in that app has updated the weight listed in your fitbit account.  

I haven't tried it (and I'm not suggesting you did), but I suppose it is possible that if you change the units reported from pound to kilograms and back again that the number might change slightly due to rounding in the conversion process.

[Ajayvanjani1984]

After entering your weight after the setup where it says what do you want to do do . Gain loose or maintain . Does fitbit automatically tell you if you lost weight by your excercise and your food you eat ? Because this is the third day I have used it and it hasn't told me anything about loosing . 

[MrTaylor]

The easiest way to loose a little bit of weight while wearing a fit bit is to throw it in the bin, most people have realised by now they do not work.

[Victoria_B89]

I have the same problem! I entered my weight at the beginning - haven't entered any new weights or food info; and despite my number of steps increasing every day and sometimes around 15,000 a day it says every week I gain 1 lb?!

[Michiganlady]

Yes Is. 

Thank you

[GrnMtnBuckeye]

@Michiganlady,   There are a lot of unhelpful replies on here from people who don't know what they are talking about.  I have had the ChargeHR for 20 months.  I have experienced the same thing you have, although over a longer period of time.  The last time I entered my weight on the fitbit was in March of this year (5 months ago).  I haven't entered my weight on any other app or website but the fitbit app says I gained 10 pounds since the March entry date.  I got on the scale and guess what?  The app was correct!  I don't know how it works but I believe it uses the other available metrics to estimate, very correctly in my instance, what you current weight is. I'm sure there are variables that could make this value more or less accurate.  Mine may be spot-on because for over a year I was adding my weight in there pretty regularly (including the latest trend in the wrong direction) so it was able to build a good model for estimation as it compared my other metrics (steps, active minutes, sleep, heart rate...) to the weight.

All of that said, I'm going to offer a piece of (unrequested) advice that may not apply to you:  The best Fitbit metric to track isn't your weight but instead is your resting heart rate.  I say this because it worked for me to get to where I wanted to be a year ago, it is directly linked to your health, as opposed to your body image, and if you focus on pushing your resting heart rate down the pounds will follow without focussing on them.  It was really fun to look at the resting heart rate over time and to look back on how I got healthier.

Now I'm going to follow my own advice and push that weight back down by focussing on my resting HR!

[Michiganlady]

Thank you. You are right. I guess we are on our own. I will do the same thing

[Michiganlady]

It worked. Thanks

[Michiganlady]

  Thank you. It worked

[FitnessLvr]

Yes agreed! Lowering my RHR is one of my goals this year and is a glowing indicator of one's actual overall health and fitness.

[Woodeye47]

No, no. I have never entered anything. Fit bit spits out a number. It used to be about 6 lbs heavy. Now, it’s tracked an approximate 35 lb weight loss and is within 3 lbs of actual. Add my work boats etc. and it’s a little light. How’d it do dat?

[Nottinghamgirl]

I am curious too, how FitBit is knowing I am gaining 1lb every week? I am doing more than 10k steps a day and burning about 2300 Cals. I’m not entering any food data so how does it know i’m gaining weight ha ha? I actually have been gaining weight as since starting running and completing my first 5K race, I got so flipping hungry I was eating too much ha! Also does anyone know how I can link my AltaHR to Strava?

[Baltoscott]

@Nottinghamgirl — I can’t help with the mysterious weight calculations as it has never happened to me.  Although I do log my weight in my primary account (the one I am writing this message from), I’ve got another account set up so I can test two Fitbits at once which is not linked to a scale and the weight on that one does not change.  I speculated in a post above that it may be getting synced over from another app like MyFitnessPal, but several people on this thread report the issue even though they have never log weight in any app.

As to your second questions, to authorize a connection between Fitbit and Strava, go to http://strava.fitbit.com/ or from the Strava mobile app go to Settings > Applications, Services, and Devices > Connect a new device to Strava > Fitbit.

[Nottinghamgirl]

Thanks Baltoscott 😄

Get Outlook for iOS

[DanY1983]

How do I stop fit bit estimating my weight and updating MyFitnessPal with the estimate? It’s about a kg out and I like to weigh myself and manually add the weight to MyFitnessPal once a week.