The Fitbit Community is a gathering place for real people who wish to exchange ideas, solutions, tips, techniques, and insight about the Fitbit products and services they love. By joining our Community, you agree to uphold these guidelines, so please take a moment to look them over.
Totally agree. I used a weight gain goal during my pregnancy, and was surprised when I changed this to a weight loose goal after the baby was born. All of a sudden I received badges as I gradually went back to my pre-pregnant weight, while none had been awarded as I gained weight. This should be an easy fix, and important for a fitness tracker not to discriminate one over the other.
It's very disappointing to find that FitBit has no food plan for weight gain and, unfortunately, this means that the calorie tile on my FitBit dashboard is absolutely useless to me. It keeps telling me I am going over my "target" when, in reality, I am several dozzen calories below what I know I need to be eating to be healthy!
It seems like such a simple thing to implement yet is so important to the forgotten minority of users who actually need to gain weight to be healthy rather than maintain or loose it.
I'll be switching to MyFitnessPal until this problem is resolved.
It's frustrating that I'm forced to use MyFitnessPal to count my calorie intake when trying to gain weight. If Fitbit allows you to set a weight gain goal, then surely the calorie tracker / food plan should reflect that, no?
It's baffling that the app can't do that natively and I have to use an external platform. It can be halfway through the day and MFP shows I've got a long way to go calorie-wise, but FB says I'm done or over-budget! It's a very counter-intuitive and confusing user experience.
I've gotten a very easy way to combat it for now.. simply, set a maintainence level goal on both the applications and go over budget by as many calories as you want, each day. Voila! You're quite in sync everywhere and it isn't a hassle. Worked out well for me .
Thank goodness I am not the only one. Just do this. It is so logical. Surely it would take a developer/coder no time. How do I tell some we has power to do this. Is there a complaint process? People with medical issues need this feature. Support weight gain calorie functionality!
EXACTLY I have medical issues that require me to gain weight and it's a constant struggle. If I am ABOVE my calorie in-take its a thing of celebration, not negativity. I wish the app would reflect that. It feels like Fitbit has no desire to help their customers 😐
I agree totally. IT's really hard to gain weight. I am wondering if you use myfitnesspal? It tells me I need to eat 300 more calories than fitbit is saying?
I wanted to track weight gain I am currentley working on adding muscle. Muscle is very inportant. The more muscle you have even if its just a little more, the more calories you burn, also more muscle lowers your BMI as well as loosing weight. Even if loosing weight its inportant to make sure its fat your loosing not muscle. It takes more energy to suport muscle therfore naturaly burning more calories. In order to help get your BMI lower gaining muscle also really helps this as well as loosing fat and not muscle Its not always about only loosing weight. I loose a few pounds of fat and then go back to gain pounds in muscle. It would be nice to have this feature and see fitbit work better all around for athletes as well.
Hi everyone, thanks for sharing this suggestion. We're always striving to enhance Fitbit products and services, and we appreciate all of the input we receive from our customers. We do not currently have plans to release this feature. You can learn more about how Fitbit decides what suggestions get releasedin our FAQs. For now, we will leave this suggestion open for votes (and closed to comments) so that we can continue to track community demand over time. Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback with us and we will let you know if anything changes.
FitBit watches offer valuable trackers for sleep, resting HR, etc, but they always come with an assumption of weight loss. Why are FitBit's benefits all geared toward overweight people? You have 7 different products that all basically do the same thing. You offer challenges that are all designed to lose weight. Could you offer a product that helps underweight people increase a healthy BMI?
FitBit doesn't just record movements, it motivates you to burn as many calories as possible. Every challenge is based on burning calories. Every reminder and daily goal is based on burning calories. There are ways to build muscle and strengthen your heart without losing too many calories .
But it is still the calorie in/out logic that will monitor weight gain/loss
Unfortunately exercise first builds up muscle weight loss comes from eating less calories than burnt. Are you looking for a weight gain and fat or in muscle?
Healthy weight gain is a bit more complex than just eating more food.
For example, high intensity interval training is the best form of cardio for underweight people. This method uses short bursts of very intense peak-range cardio. It gives the cardio system a good workout while stopping before the body starts to dip into fat storage. Longer periods of less intense cardio are best for burning fat. Guess which method FitBit promotes? My watch sets daily goals for the number of minutes I do cardio. The longer the duration, the more I get kudos. There are no daily goals, nor weekly challenges, nor any kind of reward system for interval peak-range cardio.
Then say I'm trying to gain muscle mass. Weight lifting is an activity I can log, but only for it to count toward my steps and burnt calories. I can't capture my progress on how much I can lift, how many reps I can do, or anything else. No daily goals, no weekly challenges, nothing.
Then look at the food plan. As long as I'm within 50 calories of whatever goal I set, and I stay below standard guidelines for fat consumption, FitBit says I did great. I can't tell it how much fat I want/need to consume. Underweight women actually need more fat because fat cells make estrogen. Meanwhile I'm assuming that my calorie goal is enough to help me gain significant weight, but I'm really just guessing. Would I need an excess of 500 calories a day to achieve a healthy weight in a reasonable time?
Lastly, and most importantly, is a very simple fix that FitBit could implement right away. If someone logs their weight as being severely below a healthy BMI, their watch should flag them that they are underweight and completely stop coaching them on weight loss.
These are just a few ideas on how to tailor a product for healthy weight gain.
For anyone who wants to gain weight, set your desired weight into the system as if it is real weight and then leave the program at maintain. The calories will automatically adjust to that higher weight. You can play around with lying about your weight and see your daily calories go up and down. Once you do you'll see what I mean. This does mean however you have to keep track of your weight some where else for reals outside of Fitbit. At least this work around will encourage you to eat enough calories and you won't get that annoying you ate too much message.
I very much want to see Fitbit add the feature to allow for actively tracking weight gain and increase in muscle weight. I want to GAIN weight in a healthy way. This is a challenge for me and needs a lot of careful effort. I have to sleep enough, exercise vigorously, eat MORE food - to provide ENOUGH calories and protein to support my desired muscle growth. Between my advanced scale and my Fitbit device - this technology ought to be able to help me track my gains.
It’s great to have the calorie counter, but for people like me who are trying to GAIN weight and not lose it, it’s not very user friendly. It would be nice to have an option to track calories based on activity level as well as support people who are trying to gain weight. I shouldn’t be afraid when it goes to red because it says “I’ve eaten the calories I can for the day.
Hi @Ali_21, thanks for taking the time to share your feedback regarding food plans with us. This feature suggestion already exists so I’ve moved your post here. At the moment it is not planned to implement it. Nonetheless you can still add your vote.
I consider this a bug, but if you all don't agree, then consider it a suggestion for a change.
I started at 165 lbs with a goal of 170, set to gain. I overshot my goal and now weigh 172. I tried to set my goal to maintain 170, but it keeps changing my goal to lose instead of maintain.
I found a workaround. I lie to the app and say I weight 170. Then I set it to maintain a goal of 170. Then I go back and change my weight to 172. Now it keeps the maintain setting rather than changing it to lose. Clearly not convenient to the user to have to go through this process. My suggestions is that you allow it to be set to maintain, no matter where the current weight is. rather than insisting your goal match your current weight.
With the Fitbit "Food Plan" it is currently not possible to do weight gain. Although I can set it as a goal in another section, in the Food Plan section only maintenance or weight loss is possible. Therefore, my suggestion is adding weight gain as a workable plan so that I can use Fitbit to track my macronutrients and goal.
Join us on the Community Forums!
Community Guidelines
Learn the Basics
Join the Community!
Not finding your answer on the Community Forums?
Go to the Help Site
Contact Support