Body fat chart

[rotor]

We desperately need a body fat chart. I'm not interested in monitoring lean body mass, or fat mass. It makes much more sense to track percentage body fat.

Right now, I have to go to the Weight tab, hit "Load 10 more" many times, copy-paste all the text under Measurement History into a Word document, use find-replace to reformat the text, copy-paste into Excel, and manually build a chart. Why can't I just see this chart on my Fitbit Log?

Moderator edit: labels.

[corrado2010]

yes, we need abody fat chart

[Claus]

This is definetly needed. It makes absoutely no sense not to present to two numbers (weight and body fat percentage) as graphs in the dashboard.

Fitbit managed to do it with weight. Why not body fat?

[Ed---]

Agreed, a body fat % graph much more useful than the lean/ fat graph

[PaulTMurphy]

+1 on this. Any status from FitBit on the topic?

[mcglurk]

+1. yes pls, seems like a pretty glaring omission.

[DerrickS]

@rotor Thanks for posting your idea about a Fitbit body fat chart. I definitely see a lot of Fitbit users potentially benefiting from seeing changes in their body fat overtime in graph form, especially if they have weight goals that they are trying to achieve.

Additionally, I want to point you in the direction of our Data Export feature on Fitbit.com where you can export things like weight, BMI, and body fat percentage to a XLS or CSV file.

I'll be sure to take your feature request to our team for further review. Thanks for posting!

[SpringBoard]

The iOS app now has this feature included in its weight display.  I.E. showing body fat % trends over time.

We really need to show it as a dashboard tile and "track weight" pages too.

[ednicholson]

I've been using my Surge and Aria for almost a year now, and I've been so tracking my weight.  The lean/fat chart has been flustrating, because my lean weight changes randomly and has a huge change on he combined lean/fat chart so any change in fat is hard or impossible to see.  Fortunately, there is a small stat that shows on each chart showing the body fat change over the displayed time.  With that I can see that I have had some success in losing fat.  But I think I would get much more by viewing a chart of just my percent body fat. 

I think I would also find interesting and informative a chart showing just the weight of my body fat.  I use a windows PC and an Android phone, so would be interested to know when these or similar feature would be available on those machines.

A useful article, I would like to see, is a description why my lean body mass changes from day to day by as much as 4 lbs. This makes it hard to resolve the changes in body fat when that is plotted as added to the lean mass plot.  I'm sure my lean mass is changing for reasons other than bone or muscle mass changes.  No way they are changing that much or that fast.

I'm using a FitBit Aria scale.  Are my lean mass changes an artifact of that scale and not real?

[ednicholson]

Would a "Just the Fat" chart avoid the daily fluxuations due to "lean fluxuations"?  I want to take out the daily weight fluxuations entirely.  The daily lean mass variations are described in article:

http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/fitness/weight-loss/weight-fluctuations-explained.html

I don't think a % fat will work as that still uses lean mass in the calculations.  What I think we need is fat mass displayed directly in pounds or kg without being added to lean mass.  What I'm asking for, seems to be do-able and should avoid the effects of the daily lean mass variations.  When I observe my fat on top of my lean mass, I see the total, which is the fat plus lean, raise and fall daily exactly in step with my daily lean mass changes.  By visually subtracting the lean, I think the amount of fat doen't seem to be changing much compared to the relatively huge daily lean mass changes.  Again, the daily lean mass fluxuations are confusing and should be ignored. Trying to see the change in fat is hard to see when influenenced by the daily lean mass variations.   Is it possible to just graph/chart/display the fat by itself, rather than added on top of the lean mass or as a percent that is still influenced by daily lean mass variation?

[Elisabetta66]

Hi, I would to know if other people have my problem, each time I weight myself (sorry for my English) it is not the same number, especially with the body fat mass. For example, if I weight my self 5 or 6 times consecutively, the variation can be about 200 or 300 Gramms and the percentage of body fat mass can be about 1 or 2 or 3 %. I think that it could be acceptable a Variation of maximum 100 grams as for weight, but unacceptable 2 or 3% on body fat mass that, in my opinion, it shoul be maximum 1%. I have respected all the rules for taking the weight, but it always changes. Does anybody else have this problem? What does anybody think it should be an acceptable range of variation? Thank you and still sorry for my English.

[SpringBoard]

What the status on this?  We show it in the iOS app -- why not online too?

[Unique_Username]

Dear fitbit:

I suggest you think through how you present lean/fat in a single display, in some way that accomodates a fundamental aspect of your device that your customers (judging by various comments) don't really understand - namely that the precision on the total weight is significantly better than for the body fat %.

Judging by generic answers (e.g. on on Quora), under the best of circumstances the body fat % on your device will easily vary by around 3-5%, or more if not measured consistently. The weight function, by contrast, should be better than 1% precise (for the best models, honestly I don't know where FitBit's product ranks).  (Of course for health purposes, precision is more important than accuracy, so I'm just talking precision here.)

That's the problem statement. I have a suggested solution but you might have better one. Present the chart as today, but with shaded error bars, and include as boundary (for both) what your goals are.

If you think the approach is interesting, I can attach a mock-up.

[TamFB]

Body fat mass rather than a percentage which is visible in a chart would be really helpful at it would allow to see the real change I would be interested to see. I.e. Whether I have lost gained fat rather than an overall calculation taking into account water/ muscle etc

[ednicholson]

I also want this feature.  Requested it earlier.


As always
Ed Nicholson

[Alannarandrews]

I think that it is important to facilitate the body fat percentage as a goal displayed on the dashboard. As a fitness company I think it is important the Fitbit recognizes that weight is not always healthy goal to set. People can be in a weight they deem as "ideal" and in fact have a higher/lower percentage of body fat which could be detrimental to health. Allowing a person to pick which kind of goal they'd like to make would support people who would like to monitor their health as opposed to weight. It is extremely discouraging to set a weight goal (arbitrarily) and see that you are not making progress on it, and in fact are getting further away from it. I started out my fitniess journey at 125 pounds and 25% body fat. I set my weight goal to 130, knowing that I would ideally end up gaining weight as I gained muscle mass. I am not at 133 pounds and 19% body fat. I HATE seeing that I am not accomplishing my weight goal when in fact I am making tremendous strides in my overall fitness and health. You make the Aria, let us utilize it to it's fullest potential!

[RunForFit]

I agree, weight is not necessarily the healthiest mesure. You could have a stable weight but slowly loosing your lean mass to the profit of fat.... not good at all!  Fitbit team, help us to stay focus on this important metric 🙂

[BE-U-tygeekster]

I agree! I don't care if I lose weight but Body fat loss is my goal. It does track this but i would like it to be a goal on the dashboard. We should be able to chose if body fat loss or weight is our goal.

[Kharvey26]

I am looking to set my main goal on my app to body fat percentage instead of weight. Since I am training with weights, I know my body weigh will go up when I build muscle. I really want to track my body fat percentage thugh, since I want to become more tone. This would be a great option to have this as a goal instead of weight.

[chuckb1331]

For measurements coming from the Aria fitbit scale, need ability to show a trend line for the Body Fat% in the mobile app. Since the body fat percentage jumps around on a daily basis, need some sort of trendline over time similar to how weight has a trendline.

[highcamp]

+1 for being able to track BF% goal on dashboard tile. 

[rachiti]

It's all well & good that we're soooo focused on weight loss; however, body fat percentage is also important.  Oftentimes when someone begins a healthier lifestyle, they increase their physical activity as well as focusing on calories & quality of food.  Sometimes one's weight actually goes UP while they're actually getting healthier by the day as their body fat is going down while their muscle mass is going up.  Please, let's focus on HEALTH here not just a number on the scale.  After all, the whole reason I spent over $100 on a scale was to be able to track my body fat so that a lack of weight loss when muscle mass was increasing wouldn't demotivate me.  It's important.  Consumers deserve to have Fitbit include body fat loss on the dashboard & awards section rather than just weight loss as it is an important aspect of overall health.

[P1NKY]

The fitbit mobile and web app allow you to save your body fat percentage measurements.

It would be great to be able to set and measure your performance against ta body pat percentage goal, in a similar way to weight loss. 

Moderator Edit: Added Labels

[jedi327]

I am returning to tracking things on Fitbit after a long absence.  This time, my primary target is body fat percentage reduction.  I was trying to find how to display that as a tile on the dashboard, and when that was unsuccessful, searches brought me here. I am surprised and disappointed that it is not an option to have body fat percentage displayed as the primary goal on a tile - only weight.  Yes, you can set your body fat % goal in the widget, but that is pointless as the tile returns to displaying weight.

What is most confusing is that Fitbit is obtaining my body fat percentage (from your Aria product), and saving it in your database as a part of my user record.  You already have the data, so why is there not an option to select that data as the primary variable to display on the same weight widget where I can set my body fat % goal?  It is an important measurement of health, and I should be able to look at the dashboard and see my current body fat % right there on a tile, without having to dive into the tile or another page to find it.

Please enable this functionality.  It is clear that a significant % of your user base desires this functionality.

Thank you,
Brian

[Joe_SixApps]

This appears to be an 'existing feature'. (See: this article )

I agree that body fat as a goal should be presented more prominent, not only on the dashboard website, but on the app as well.The predominance of focussing on total weight stems simply from earlier days when measuring weight was the only feasible option to monitor 'grows in wrong direction'.

With tools like the new Fitbit Aria 2 scale, it tempting to aim at an optimal (not minimal) percentage of body fat, rather than for a certain weight goal. This makes sense since training and exercising not only burns fat but also make our muscles grow. And muscles are heavier than fat.

[rsga]

Your app currently allows for people to track changes in their body weight total. However, think about allowing for tracking of body fat percentage and setting a goal for same. Many people are more concerned about their overall body fat count then they are about their total weight but still enjoy using the fit bit features.

Moderator Edit: Added Labels