Be healthier - Combining fitbit with gps watch - what's best approach

[Dominick]

Hi,

In my efforts to be healthier I started running several times a week and after a few months i realized I never felt so good so I am trying to stick to 'be healthier' and started looking into an activity tracker to use in combination of my gps watch to get insights and stay motivated.

I purchased the TomTom Runner because it has the best integration features of all running watches I could find. So now it's time to purchase an activity tracker and compared the lot but still have some questions, because I am most drawn to a fitbit I just post it here:

- Do any of you also use a seperate gps watch for running, if yes, do you leave your activity tracker on?

- I looked at fitbit's premium option since only stats are available via this but it didn't look that helpful, at least not really worth the money, what is your experience.

- Is it possible to combine the details of my running watch with my fitbit stats to see it in a complete overview?

- In daily life I wear an awesome watch with a lot of emotional value for me that ... tells time.. and I rather don't want to take it off, can I wear the fitbit on my dominant wrist? Or do you combine a fitbit and a watch on the same wrist?

love to hear your experiences!

[Heybales]

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@Dominick wrote:

Hi,

In my efforts to be healthier I started running several times a week and after a few months i realized I never felt so good so I am trying to stick to 'be healthier' and started looking into an activity tracker to use in combination of my gps watch to get insights and stay motivated.

I purchased the TomTom Runner because it has the best integration features of all running watches I could find. So now it's time to purchase an activity tracker and compared the lot but still have some questions, because I am most drawn to a fitbit I just post it here:

- Do any of you also use a seperate gps watch for running, if yes, do you leave your activity tracker on?

- I looked at fitbit's premium option since only stats are available via this but it didn't look that helpful, at least not really worth the money, what is your experience.

- Is it possible to combine the details of my running watch with my fitbit stats to see it in a complete overview?

- In daily life I wear an awesome watch with a lot of emotional value for me that ... tells time.. and I rather don't want to take it off, can I wear the fitbit on my dominant wrist? Or do you combine a fitbit and a watch on the same wrist?

love to hear your experiences!

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1 - Yes, Garmin. Yes leave Fitbit on, because when you create a manual activity, it replaces what Fitbit estimated, so no issues. And even for my running, Garmin more accurate, and I want better details elsewhere.

2 - Didn't need it either, so no comment if it might be useful to you. I desired Fitbit for the other 22 hrs of the day (ya, 2 hr workouts usually or longer) to estimate calorie burn, so my deficit didn't get too big and could handle changing activity levels. 

3 - When you manually log a walking/running workout, your assumed more accurate miles and calories replaces what Fitbit estimated, and in fact steps is recalculated from what was really seen, to your miles divided by the stride length setting. So steps could go up or down, depending on how accurate you made that setting, and your run matched up to it. I don't care about step goals, so I don't care if that happens. I also use nothing on Fitbit except reporting to MFP what my daily burn was, to eat correctly for my level of activity. I use SportTracks for my workouts. Fitbit isn't going to be full-featured enough for it's primary user for me and stats I want that the HRM/GPS can support. Besides, there ain't much of an overview to see. In fact several users do want their exercise specific stuff NOT included in Fitbit steps. Which is good idea too. How do you know if your daily non-exercise activity level and daily burn is going up or down if it always includes exercise. You could have great 600-800 calorie burns most days of the week - but if you are slowly becoming more lazy during rest of the day by 300-500 calories, how would you know?

4 - Several Fitbits don't even go on the wrist, so no issues. My Zip doesn't.

[slysam]

Hi, I've used a Fitbit for a few years now and have always also used a heart rate monitor (sometimes a watch and sometimes a phone HRM/GPS app).I apologize as the Fitbit community doesn't like my computer so my posts are all big walls of text (I can't include paragraph breaks, quotes, etc). 1--Yes, you can leave it on or not--your choice. If you log a workout whatever is logged overwrites what Fitbit had tracked. The main reason to wear both is if you don't log, want to compare, or want your steps intact.The main reason to remove--some users want their steps to reflect their activity outside of their intentional workout. I think most (myself included) want the steps to be inclusive of their workouts. This one is really down to preference, but there is no issue with wearing both. 2--I have Premium and love it. I have two Fitbit devices (A One and a Charge). The Charge is nonpremium and the One Premium. I don't think I could handle the limited information I see on my Charge account--not sure whether it is the same with other new devices or not. It shows less than my free account use to for my One. What I like about Premium, I can export much of my data to a spreadsheet and I have unlimited custom trackers (to track anything I can manually enter with a number or yes/no). I would suggest trying the free account first, a lot fo people are perfectly happy with the information they get. 3--Maybe not in the way you want. You can log your running watch calorie burn or distance to Ftibit to overwrite the information. Does your watch sync with Digifit? I feel the closest I can get to my detailed HRM/GPS data and fitbit data is through Digifit (at least of the services I have tried so far, but I haven't tried anything new lately). I wonder whether it will be different with the heart rate monitoring Fitbit devices. 4--You can wear a wrist worn Fitbit on either wist there are settings options for dominant or nondominant. There are also Fitbits that are not worn on the wrist such as the Zip and the One. My favorite is the One, but I haven't tried the Zip (though it is at a great pricepoint so perfect for people who don't want to spend a lot). I prefer the One because I can use the timer to create sleep and activity records--this function is not available on the Zip thought there are ways to create these records after the fact with a little manual entry on the website. Some I have communicated with on forums who had both felt the Zip was not as accurate as the One for them, a few felt opposite and a few think they are the same.