Alcohol intake tracking on Fitbit device

[richardbartram]

I will be brief .

Following a post tittled features for an average fitbit user found here
https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Charge-HR/Features-for-the-Average-Fitbit-user/m-p/823473

I was recomended to post here.
I said I will be brief. My demographic is 50 year old moderately well off family men in the UK. We use to play sports and still have the time and money to play a little tennis say. We can afford the top of the range fitness gear. We would like not to keel over before we are at least 70. Us Brits do like a sherbert ot three. It's our culture (and to a lesser and sometimies greater degree is the culture of many Europeans ).

Steps, activities, stairs,calories you are looking at fitness in a holistic way, trying to empower your users .

A  simple optional tile, maybe separate or at least seperatable from the general food log allowing drilling down into not just the calories a beer or a single malt has but the frequency of intake and units of alchohol imbibed would in my opinion be usefull for an overview of our general health.

I appreciate that some marketeers might be resistant. My demographic looks bad in lycra and dont look good in adverts!

Is your average fitbit user a fit woman or man who wants to maintain that or an unfit and unhealthy woman or man who wants to improve their wellness?

I take a guess that blokes like me will buy more of your top end devices ( and sign up for premium services) than our kids will!

Richard 
Time for a Scotch and an episode of Madmen.

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject and updated label

[sonomarunner15]

That is a great idea :light_bulb: maybe I will start doing that too

[bekibulmer]

Please could you add a feature to allow us to track units of alcohol consumed? I love everything about my Blaze, but I know that I need to be more aware of my wine consumption. Tracking everything in the same place would be so helpful.

[AtozNYC]

I would love this too.  I've got another app but it would be SO NICE to have it in the Fitbit app - ideally with ability to set a target drink maximum for each calendar day individually, and track against that.  In fact what I would really like is the ability to set up new categories of user-defined goals. I'd like to be able to track whether I meditate each day, for example.  I'm sure other people have other goals.  Clearly Fitbit has all the "guts" for tracking, and just needs to enable user to set up and name new goals. 

[johhn]

A beer tracker would most excellent.  Otherwise, I just drink to thirst, which seems to increase the more I drink, strange how that works. 

[Goosse1962]

For me this would be nice. But more so on the app, not on the Blaze.

[bekibulmer]

Could fitbit work with the Headspace app on this. It would be so good if we could track it all in one place. 

[SPACECADETANT]

+1

Alchohol tracking would be really good. Disappointed that fitbit has removed this functionality. 

[tatumwilson]

Same as water tracker, but tracks your alcohol consumption and shows how you compare to other people's average consumption, similar to the sleep tracker. 

[LizFitbit]

Hi @richardbartram and commenters, thanks for sharing this suggestion. We’re excited to let you know that this Feature Suggestion has been developed by a third party developer, and can be downloaded from the Fitbit App Gallery. You’ll find it by selecting your connected Smartwatch in the Fitbit app, then choosing the ‘Apps’ tile and toggling to ‘All Apps’ at the top of the screen. You can then explore third party apps by category and choose your favorite of the relevant options available.

[sonomarunner15]

How exciting! Thank you for hearing our feedback!

[katertrain]

+1 Vote

Technically, alcohol is a macronutrient. Just because it's not "essential" doesn't mean many of us don't consume it. And mentally calculating alcohol can be a bit challenging, and then some say you can either use against those calories/grams as carb or fat. I believe we should have the option to include it, and ideally, to give us the choice as to where to include it (as fat, as carb). We should at least be able to see it as a macronutrient, how many grams consumed, what percentage of carbs or fat we could use it for (even if it won't calculate for us), and what percentage of our total calorie intake it is.

The truth is, many people consume alcohol, and it is the cause for many a weight problem! So please let's not ignore it all together. 

For those who are against it (I see where you are coming from) , maybe if the default doesn't show 0% alcohol, it can show alcohol for the day as a percentage as soon as we list it in the food/calorie intake list. There are plenty of us out there who try to maintain a healthy lifestyle, but aren't always the designated driver! In some cases being able to track our intake, would help make us aware of it, and could help people from abusing! 

[Steve2017]

Fitbit, please add an alcohol unit recorder. This would help me understand and thus adjust my behavior which is what fitbit is all about right?

[LizFitbit]

Hi @Steve2017 that's a good idea. You can also reach out to the developer directly and give them your feedback!

[Kiwip]

While it is not a “macro nutrient” alcohol is part of what contributes to my calorie intake so I’d like it to show up as per of the macro nutrient tracking.

[sivadiva]

I too think if we could track how alcohol/caffeine affects sleep quality this would be a good incentive to reduce intake

[sivadiva]

Hi,  I too want to be able to track how alcohol and caffeine and believe it would be a good incentive to reduce intake of both if I can filter my skep results and compare the quality of my sleep from when I've had alcohol and caffeine; and when I haven't.  There's a response saying a third party app offers this facility.  If you mean "drinks counter"(?); this doesn't feed into dashboard.   I'm really annoyed to hear from this forum that this function has been removed from the sleep section of Dashboard! Why? (I only stated with my Versa yesterday)Why?

[AlistairL]

Alcohol units, ideally via MyFitnessPal integration would be great

[SleepPh.D.]

I would really benefit from an alcohol use feature. It could be similar to the water feature where a user tracks how many standard alcoholic drinks (e.g., 12 ounces beer, 5 ounces wine, 1.5 ounces liquor) he/she consumed in a day. Then, the user could also receive weekly feedback about average number of drinks and whether it was an increase/decrease from the earlier week. 

[Mrssmbarclay]

It would be great to track alcohol units separate to calories so if I add a pint of beer, the equivalent units will add up over the course of a week. It will also show how many alcohol free days I’ve had too.There are apps out there that do this but it would be great to have it integrated into the Fitbit app.

[AlexandraFitbit]

Hello @Mrssmbarclay ! Thanks for sharing this suggestion, I moved it to this similar post so you can add your vote to it. Please keep sharing your ideas! 

[Joogles]

A dashboard for alcohol units consumed.  This could relate to lower exercise or interrupted sleep. 

[AlexandraFitbit]

Hello @Joogles ! Thanks for sharing this suggestion, I moved it to this similar post so you can add your vote to it. Please keep sharing your ideas with us!

[Moeshriek]

I would like to see a day where I can add / edit widgits on my dashboard. I would like to add something that tracks my alcohol consumption for the day/week. Tracking alcohol consumption will help with doctor visits and track possible trends. Big health alert.

[Gusley]

Like many, I have started the new year with an outcome goal to get healthy, and set myself some simple to gather, and achievable goals for 2019.

1) Eat fewer carbs. I have dropped potatoes, bread & pasta and don't even bother recording that. 

2) Drink less booze. I love drinking and wouldn't succeed with a dry January, so thought 10 DFD (Drink Free Days) might work be possible, and then thought I should be more ambitious, and ended up setting a 100 DFD target for the whole of 2019. I have drawn a 10X10 grid in a notebook, and tick off each day I manage.

3) Exercise more. My target is to clock up 150 mins a week, and I write each day in my notebook the no. of minutes I manage.

4) Lose weight. This is the outcome measure I seek delivered by 1), 2) & 3) above. I am measuring it in my notebook on the first day of each month.   

I actually started doing the diet and exercise prior to the New Year, and just added the drink reduction post New Year. So far it's all going really well. To help last week I bought a Fitbit Flex, and then Fitbit Aria scales, and of course my notebook is now looking a bit redundant: I only need it for the drink monitoring.

Monitoring alcohol units as suggested by others would suit some, but it's hard to gather the data, especially if you have been drinking. Zero drinks per day is clearly a courser level of gradation, than X units per day, and ignore what you might be up to on those days when you do drink. But it has the benefit of inherently being a 'stretch target' for a whole day, and is very easy to record: you just tick a box each day. And like step counting, the build up is rewarding in itself, along with the next day feel-good factor.  Today is the 15th of the month, and I have clocked up my initial 10 January DFDs already. My strategy was to get ahead on my DFD target in January and Feburary, so I can have leave plenty of DDs for holidays and Christmas. But the truth is, in so doing, I have neatly moved DFDs to being my default position, and I can see that what looked like a mountain to climb - 100 DFD - is now looking quite easy. 

Fitbit has nearly enabled me to ditch my notebook, which it could do by adding a simple log for counting DFDs and displaying them as %age DFDs per month. The log could be self-determined, so users could add another for "Smoke" Free Days, or health related in other ways, such as "Gout attack" Free Days - something I also struggled with and overcame using a simple counting system like this to show progress and provide encouragement.

Pete

[Freeway_]

My plead for adding units of alcohol consumed:

Where I live, for a long time an average 1 or 2 drinks a day has been considered no problem or even healthy. Nowadays more and more experts are saying that actually no alcohol at all is best. Personally I do enjoy an occasional glass of wine or special beer.

Nevertheless I would appreciate if I could track the units of alcohol consumed and see how much I drink on average each week.

As a glass of wine, a glass of beer and a glass of whiskey all contain about the same amount of alcohol, counting units consumed would be enough.

Also having a period of abstinence is more and more common: after the Christmas holidays. Many people here decide not to drink any alcoholic beverages at all in January. I am one of them. Therefore may suggestion is to add to the tile for tracking units of alcohol also badges that reward your achievements based on the following facts:

After 24 hours: direct effects of alcohol disappearing and blood sugar level stabilizing.

After 1 week: Alcohol messes up your sleep rhythm. You think you sleep better, but in fact this is going knock out. Often in the middle of the night you will wake up several times and in general quality of sleep will be less. Good news: after one week of no alcohol your sleep rhythm will restore and sleep quality improves.

After 2 weeks: Suffering from heartburn? Chances are this is due to alcohol.After two weeks these complaints will fade away. Also you will start to lose weight.

After 3 weeks: Consuming alcohol will increase blood pressure. After 3 to 4 weeks without alcohol, blood pressure will start to drop.

After 1 month: Not drinking alcohol will have a visible effect. Alcohol has a bad effect on skin (tone and moisture). After 1 month you will start to look better.

After 3 months: Blood cells will get a slightly larger volume due to alcohol consumption which makes transporting oxygen through the body less efficient. After 3 months most blood cells will be replaced (renewed) which will result in feeling more energetic. Also after 3 months effects on organs has been reversed as best as possible, making 3 months of abstinence kind of a "reset" for your body.

Once again: I will not fully stop with the occasional good glass of wine or special brew. I do want to be careful with how much and therefore appreciate if alcohol consumption can be tracked. I myself decided after Christmas to go for the "master reset" and not drink at all until my wife's birthday in April. For that occasion, I already have a good bottle reserved.