Here is a tip to all those who are disappointed that the new app has lost all its motivational features....
I started doing virtual challenges with The Conquerer Virtual Challenges. You can synch your fitbit steps and/or exercise distances either automatically, or manually towards the challenges and I'm finding they are really brilliant at motivating me to keep up my walks and step count. No subscription fee but you do pay for each challenge you do, but for that you get lots of motivational encouragement and at the end you get a real life medal posted to you (and they are very well made, many with cute moving parts). You set your own distance goal, and if life happens and you get sick or something else intervenes, you can reset your goal so you don't get too disheartened falling too far behind to catch up, or conversely, if you've been too conservative you can up your goal as well. If you cheat for no good reason that's entirely up to you, but you're only cheating yourself so it depends on the reason you are doing it.
They have a very encouraging Facebook group if you like that sort of thing, and you can join with some friends of colleagues as a team, or even use it to do a fundraiser, and you can choose to have your progress go towards the company making donations to plant trees or remove plastic pollution from the ocean. Many of the challenges (not all) have street view so can see what you would be seeing if you were really there (I also take my street view 'man' off to side trips along the official route sometimes!
So far I've swum the English Channel, and walked the Flower Route in Netherlands, the Ring of Kerry in Ireland, The Nakasendo Trail in Japan, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, The West Coast Trail in Canada, and I am currently about a third of the way around the Ring Road in Iceland. If you are into fantasy, you can do a more expensive series that takes you through the Lord of the Rings, across a map of middle earth, or a set of Game of Thrones maps, and they are about to release a set of Scooby Doo challenges! The online support was great when I had a few issues working out how to synch my fitbit the way I wanted ....I put my daily steps plus activities into a challenge for 2023 to motivate me to keep up my total daily step count, but concurrently do one of the geographical walks and only use my fitbit exercise activities for those, which encourages me to actually do daily exercise activities, not just count daily steps.
Anyway, for those who are disheartened about losing fitbit app streaks and fireworks, I say try one of the Conquerer virtual challenges! I am not associated with the company in any way, but I am a bit of an evangelist for them now because I really love doing them myself and it has really helped keep me on track after falling into a real downer during the COVID lock downs and losing access to the gym and pool. And it's a bit of fun to receive the beautiful actual medals in the mail after completing each challenge. So I hope this post helps someone else!
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