Are you honest on Fitbit?

[fifofum]

I know the saying, "you are only being dishonest with yourself"  if you lie when you journal your food intake incorrectly, fudge on activity, steps etc. But I am guessing most people do the same as me and forget to log that extra handfull of almonds or that cup of greek yogurt or in other ways cheat fitbit stats for the day. Do you?

[SunsetRunner]

@fifofum

Have logged food before and did logged everything, it's the best way when wanting to get healthier and make changes. Though mostly the plan told there's hundreds calories left to eat, while being satisfied, not hungry.. always being under the plan anyway, having changed old habits making healthier nutritient food choices mostly, the plan also told, you've done exercise, you can have this many calories more and yet not feeling hungry.. and ate just because the plan allowed to (even when feeling satisfied on less calories / nutritients).

Don't log food anymore, trying listening to body signals when no desire for food / no appetite yet or when needing nourishment.. when eating basing portions on hunger, what the body is asking and how much. Feeling getting more satisfied, stop when having a signal having enough.

Letting go of logging food helped to loose more weight though, however logging the food to check out and change food habits gave more insight in food habits.

Didn't ate anything since yesterday 5pm, until today 11am, had one tea with a bit of milk, not hungry yet and the plan says 764 calories burned.. no need to eat more when the body doesn't desire to have more..

It's a great question about being honest when logging food, but also being honest to your body (to not force feed when not hungry) and trying honoring not having more until being hungry again. Admit, food tastes wonderful and tempting to have when not hungry.. noticed when honoring the body not having more when being satisfied / not hungry. Even when there's food, it says 'we're fine, not needing anything', even if wanting to eat, the body seems to hold back.. no desire to have more anyway.

When the body needs nourishment, and honoring when it needs to, it appears our body knows somehow, taking care of us not needing more than it truly needs (not sending on a food hunt or possible binge eating).

[SunsetRunner]

.. somehow got double posted ..

[Baltoscott]

Heh - @fifofum, I like the title of your post. If I'm being honest, logging food is a pain in the butt. And I haven't been doing it much lately. Fitbit or integrated apps like My Fitness Pal have improved a lot over the years, and make it easier, but if you graze (a hand full of almonds) while you work or are mentally involved in some other activity, there is a good chance you won't get it into your log - mostly because are too busy to do it at the time and by the end of the day you are tired and only remember the 'highlights' of what you ate.
For me, the best approach to snacking is to plan ahead and build it into my daily routine - pack in plastic bags or small containers, or count out 17 almonds at 1 pm every day, for example, and don't have anything snack-wise but what was planned.

[bdaniels04]

@fifofum

I do log my food and my activities using different apps that sync with each other. I use a Mio Link HRM and MapMyFitness to log my workouts and MyFitnessPal to log my food. I have to say that you do have to be honest with yourself or else you will not be successful. Between the three apps and my tracking of things, I have lost 50 lbs in the past year and feel great. I am back to my pre-weight gain weight and size. I think tracking and being honest is extremely important in the beginning because you don't realize just how bad your habits are or can be until you see them in writing and in numbers. A colleague at work got a Fitbit Charge for Mother's Day after hearing several of us rave about having them for a year. Since then, she has also started using MyFitnessPal and has really been awestruck by how much she was eating in terms of calories, fat, etc. that she never realized she was doing before. Being honest is absolutely crucial IMO.

[MissCyndi]

I log all my food accurately. I measure it all.. but I don't trust my fitbit one bit when it comes to telling me how many calories I've burned. I usually run 5-7 miles a day at an 8 min mile pace and do really intense weight lifting for an hour to an hour and a half every day and my fitbit seems to only think I burn a few hundred more calories during both of those than I do when I am laying on the couch all day long..kinda lame. But I like to log the food so I can keep track of all my protein/carbs/fat percentage per meal and day.

[WendyB]

I also log all my food. Even when I have a bad day. Also helps to see why I gained and gets me back on track. 

No point in not being honest with steps or food.

[luisgarcia]

I log everything religiously. What on earth would be the point in attempting to fool myself and failing to do so?

[Heybales]

Log all my food, no problems. Happen to use MFP.

Not hard when your diet is boring and almost the same daily.

Exercise almost always manually logged because I have better estimates of calorie burn.

I'd agree that forgetting as passive term is different than lying which is active purposeful term.

I'm betting there are more that end of having a meal or a day where they just say this is going to be bad so I'm not even going to attempt logging. If because of vacation and eating out - that's true.

If as excuse and you say this day really won't matter - then that's lying to yourself really.

[Pariste]

    I prefer to strait up admit my faults and mistakes, however painful (I had three slices Papa Johns yesterday...it was good.) but in that way I have learned to totally make up for it. Today I've had a large cucumber, two carrots, and a cup of kale.

       In my opinion, lying to myself is a habit that will become apparent in visuable ways. The moralistic honesty when displaying bad habits is a short term misery as long as it's redeemed. It's certainly a good motivator.

    But I'm a health nut so it's easier for me so I can't speak for anyone...Just do what you love is my advice.

[Raviv]

I'm pretty honest about it.

The only time I'm really not is when I eat a ridiculous amount of food (4th of July, I'm looking at you) that is homemade by someone else and almost impossible to quantify.  But that's a rarity.

Even when I don't eat well, it's a lesson.  A couple of weeks ago we had a staff luncheon where the food was amazing.  I ate way more than my alloted number of calories, but I put it all in my food log anyway.  When I looked at it, I could see easy changes I could have made to lower the number of calories without really missing out on anything.  Live and learn.

[DominicJ]

I dont lie, but

I dont dwell on failure either, but

I dont use failure as an excuse to kick start the apocalypse either

If I order desert, I log desert

If I order desert and its a portion 20x what I was expecting, I dont bother logging it

If I order desert and its a portion 20x what I was expecting, I dont use that as an excuse to order a second desert and eat 20 bags of crisps when I get home.

[HelenaFitbit]

I forget to log every now and then, but then again. If I fail, I'm the only one to blame. 

[HelenaFitbit]

I forget to log every now and then, but then again. If I fail, I'm the only one to blame. 

[Alicat2104]

Always as honest as I possibly can be. No point cheating myself...

[MarianneM]

I log everything, even if I go to an all you can eat buffet...I know...bad...luckily we don't have one anywhere near where we live, it's just if we're away somewhere, I take pictures with my phone and log every bite when I get home, I don't have data so can't do it on the spot, if I'm over on my calories for the day then I go for a long walk until I've burned them off, usually we've walked tons anyway so it hasn't been an issue.  We're off to Cuba on Monday and my fitbit is staying at home, I don't want to risk losing it and as it's not waterproof I can't wear it as I'll be in the water most of the time.  I plan to take long walks on the beach everyday and swim laps in the pool, and play volleyball etc.  But I also plan to eat what I fancy but try to be careful, I've lost 28.2lbs in 4 months and don't want to gain a lot back, I'm sure I'll go up a few pounds but I expect that.

[fifofum]

Congrats on your weight loss! 

[fifofum]

50 pound weight loss, Wow, great job! Sounds like you really got this thing figured out.

[hockeyguynick]

I log as accurately as I can, but I use it more for carb and protein intake, not so much for cals. It definitely has made me more aware of what I'm eating. I used to stuff myself at meals and snack quite a bit, when I got up to 220 lbs I decided I better do something about it. Down to 177 now in 4 months, and my metabolism is way higher because of the frequent exercise. I eat multiple small meals a day, and when I'm hungry, I eat. .. but I watch what kinds of things I snack on. Those honey buns and potato chips will add up carbs and fat in a hurry (neither of which I have eaten any of since March)

[fifofum]

Hello MissCyndi,

Your stats are amazing...running  5-7 miles a day with an 8 minute mile. That's incredible! You obviously don't need to lose weight and just must be a work out  junkie...which is awesome! Well done!