Dominant or Non Dominant hand?

[AilC]

OK, so, I got my Fitbit Inspire 2 today. I had it on my non-dominant hand, which is my left. It was also on this setting.

I have anxiety, so I tend to wiggle my leg. I also fiddle with soft objects with my left hand to help me fall asleep. I'm an animator, so I work with my right hand but also need to use my left for general animation things (flipping, deleting etc). I also game, and switch the dog's lead when walking as I prefer her on the wall side. I have OCD, so I feel weird using a watch on my dominant hand when **ahem** toileting. This is a lot of info, but I believe in context.

So, I was sitting down and felt anxious, so my left leg was doing the jig. Suddenly my steps decided to go up, and I was perplexed and a little flustered. 

After some Googling, I switched the settings to dominant when the watch is still on my left wrist. I feel almost bad for lying to this non sentient robot, as honesty is one thing I practice almost too well. As you can see, it has its limits!

I was wondering, does having the watch on you non-dominant hand while setting it to think it's on my dominant one, actually affect the watch negatively? This is important as while I do believe in honesty, accuracy is even more important as I will obsess over steps that I didn't take! It definitely seems more accurate now, but it is weird to have to fool a gadget to get an accurate reading xD

Anyone else here presently wear on their non-dominant but have the watch think otherwise?

[AilC]

Also, forgot to add and don't know how to edit: how does doing the ol' bamboozle work for you?

[alexthecat · Accepted solution]

I would suggest trying not to over think this. I think it's common, when someone gets a new Fitbit, to have to try different settings to find the ones that work best. It doesn't mean that you're "lying" to the device. It's a little gadget and you own it now. You're allowed to make it do what you want.

I wear my Fitbit on my nondominant hand during the day and that's how I have the app set up. At night, before I go to sleep, I switch it to my dominant hand, but I don't change the settings for that. I've done that for years and that works for me. Other people do different things and that's cool too. 

[Heybales]

purpose of that setting is to make it less sensitive to movement that could create bogus steps.

normally that would be on dominant hand.

common method you used for when your non-dominant hand also generates lots of non-step movement.

while you may get some bogus steps - I'm betting the distance calculated and resulting calorie burn is very minimal for them.

[LZeeW]

@AilC   I have a real life handedness quirk.  I have mixed hand dominance.  I am predominantly left handed, but I write with my right hand.  And no, I wasn't forced to write this way.  Fitbit's says your dominant hand is the one that you write and eat with.  Except that I write with my right hand and eat with my left hand.  I wear my Fitbit on my left wrist, set to dominant.

@Heybales is correct in saying that you can use this feature to reduce bogus steps.  I like to mess around with settings to see what happens.  I will get at least 1000 bogus steps on a busy work day if I set mine to non-dominant.   Using the non-dominant setting on your dominant wrist is recommended by Fitbit to reduce bogus steps.

[AndreaFitbit]

Welcome to our community @AilC. I haven't thought about that thing, I usually wear my Fitbit on my non dominant hand and set it as non dominant but I think that @alexthecat has a point with that and you can't set it how you feel best and don't think that you're cheating. 

@Heybales, explained how dominant and non dominant work and as @LZeeW stated, using the non-dominant setting on your dominant wrist is recommended by Fitbit to reduce bogus.

@AilC, don't stress with those things. You'll find what suits and is best for you with time.

Catch you later.