About Dominique

In addition to reinstalling Fitbit Connect, as suggested by  @WendyB  , you may also want to restart your Fitbit. ... View more

@Heybales wrote: Studies have shown that rate - if your are trying to gain 1 lb of muscle in a month. I was specific to that time frame. Back off the surplus though and allow it to take 6-8 weeks and it'll be less fat gain. Thanks, @Heybales! The links you provided were highly appreciated.   The reason I was asking is I'd like to gain muscle while losing fat. I understand you can't do both at the same time, so I'd like to know what would be the best approach: bulking to gain muscle mass first, trying to minimize fat gain, or cutting fat first, trying to minimize lean mass loss. I'm rather skinny right now (current BMI: about 21), but my body fat % (16-17%) is higher than I'd like it to be (my aim would be something like 10-12%). I'm over 50, which I guess plays a role to some extent.   You wrote in your profile: "Cardio season with triathlon and marathon training, and lifting season to bulk back up what cardio usually takes off." Do you alternate between cardio and lifting twice a year, or more often? What is your ratio of cardio and lifting during each season? ... View more

What update? What cannot you activate? ... View more

@Stegmanco wrote: sedentary (little or no exercise) lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) moderatetely active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week) extra active (very hard exercise/sports & physical job or 2x training)  I have seen similar categories on this TDEE calculator site, for the Mifflin-St Jeor formula:     In my case, the calorie burn target set to me by Fitbit corresponds to the Every day (*intense) or twice daily exercise level. I need about 18k steps of brisk walking in order to reach it.   I've been led to believe Fitbit uses the Mifflin-St Jeor formula for TDEE.     ... View more

@Heybales wrote: Also, you'd need to be eating in surplus and have a full body progressive overload routine and be male for the right hormones to even hope to put on 1 lb of muscle a month, along with 2-4 lbs of fat. Are you saying a male bulking up would typically gain twice to four times as much fat as muscle mass? ... View more

10-12k of walking is more than one hour of exercise per day. If you do this 6-7 days a week, I would say it makes you at least moderately active. Where do you need to choose between those options, if I may ask? ... View more

@Heybales wrote: In this study the men traded Fat Mass for LBM at rate of 3.5 lbs in 16 weeks. Sadly they didn't measure muscle mass, but likely some was.   http://jap.physiology.org/content/76/1/133.short Men in that study had a body fat % of 25.6 +/- 1.5, which is probably quite a bit higher than @Ario's (based on his profile photo). It's easier to lose fat when you've got a lot of it than when you're already quite lean. They brought it down to 23.7 +/- 1.7. For a 80 kg male, 25.6 to 23.7% is a 1.5 kg drop in body fat, which half of what @Ario wants to achieve. Not bad in 16 weeks, but they probably started from a higher level than him. ... View more

@Ario wrote: Loose 3 kg of fat mass while maintaining or increasing lean muscle mass? That's quite challenging (depending, of course, on how fast you want to get there). Let's say you're currently 80 kg and your body fat is 20%. You therefore have 64 kg of lean mass and 16 kg of fat mass. You'd want to keep your 64 kg of lean mass and decrease your fat mass to 13 kg, which would result in a body fat of 16.9%. As @Heybales noted, you'll have to increase your strength training (or add it to your training routine if you aren't doing any yet). You'll probably also need to increase your protein intake. ... View more

You don't have to reach that goal (or any other goal) right away. If it's too tough for the time being, set a more easily achievable goal and progressively increase from there.   Fitbit lets you set a weekly goal (eg. 70,000 steps). This is better than a daily goal IMO, as it gives you more flexibility: you don't have to achieve your goal everyday.   I also found 10k challenging when I started (one year ago). Now it's 20k that's proving challenging, above all because it's time-consuming for someone with a desk job. ... View more

Anything that gets your pulse into the fat burning zone for long enough! ... View more

@SRaeLopez wrote: What kind of exercise should I be doing now (not only for weight loss but for toning up) "Toning" really means two things: 1) putting on muscle, 2) reducing your body fat so your muscles become visible. For this, you need a combination of strength training (increase muscle mass) and cardio (decrease body fat), as Wendy said. You can't decide where from the fat is going to disappear. You may lose some from "undesirable" areas (eg. your chest). ... View more

@whome wrote: I plan to see Dr about getting a max test done - that is a "theoretical" max If your HRM can talk to a compatible smartphone and you are fit enough, you can perform the Cooper running test (all out for 12 minutes) with the Digifit iCardio app. This will give you your actual max HR, as well as other useful information about your personal HR zones, VO2 Max. etc.   Your max HR may very well be above the value derived from the standard formula (220 - age), but I'd say 173 bpm when running at 8.5 km/h sounds quite high for a 60-year-old guy. ... View more

@whome wrote: I also want to get a proper Body fat% measurement - my scale says i am about 10% and I find it hard to believe that I am in that good of shape Does your torso looks like that of the 10-12% guy on the photo included in the following link:   http://www.builtlean.com/2012/09/24/body-fat-percentage-men-women/ ... View more

Looks like a glitch to me. Which Fitbit tracker do you use? Do you use it mostly for tracking your sleep? The reason I'm asking is you've had extremely low step counts since March 19. ... View more

@FortuneCookie1 wrote: I have been tracking my sleep for about a week and my Fitbit One has been seemingly accurate until last night.  It showed 1.5 hours restless with a fairly long stint at one point.  I am wondering if I was sleep walking?  I was thinking of wearing it without putting it into sleep mode to see if it would record steps? AFAIK, putting your Fitbit One into sleep mode is just the same as starting any other activity. In fact, if you forget to start and stop your sleep activity, you can log it afterwards and it will look exactly the same as if you had started it. ... View more

@Zee wrote: Dominique is there a charge for the premium package and I assume there is, what is that charge if I may ask. It's in the link I provided:     The price is in British Pounds because I'm in Europe, but it will be in US dollars if you're on the other side of the Atlantic. Disclaimer: I didn't pay for the package, it was provided to me courtesy of Fitbit (they consider me as some kind of VIP!). ... View more

@weimerj wrote: Dominique, Is that graph located on our dashboards? I'm afraid it's only available if you have the Premium package (that's the Plus sign next to my profile's photo). I believe there's a free one-week trial.   It's the Rank Yourself Against Your Peers feature in Premium. ... View more

@Zee wrote: I will never be the stepper that you are, your numbers are crazy amazing. I'm averaging 20K steps per day. Zee: it is important to realize your current step count already puts you in the very top range of the total population. My average daily step count is "only" 16,500 right now, and look where that puts me:     I think there's a sweet spot somewhere (not the same for everyone, of course) beyond which extra steps become counter-productive. ... View more

@fitat64 wrote: Will fitbit track my steps while I am riding my bicycle. No, see: https://help.fitbit.com/customer/portal/articles/1020095-what-are-%22very-active-minutes%22-   If you want/need the calories in your Fitbit account, you will have to log your biking manually:   https://help.fitbit.com/customer/portal/articles/413311-how-do-i-log-or-record-an-activity- ... View more

@Ilana wrote: I mean, at what point do you consider exercise "obsessive?!" With these stories I hear about people exercising for hours on end, you have to wonder about their social life (unless they exercise with buddies)? I think the chart in the following post is quite accurate for 20-30k and 30k+  ... View more

At what time of the day do you do your walking/jogging? It is preferable not to do it in the evening, when you are close to bedtime. ... View more

Well, the Aria is just a scale, and it is indeed expensive. You mostly pay for the convenience of having your weight and body fat data automatically uploaded to your account. My only regret with it is I purchased it three months after getting my Fitbit tracker, by which time I had lost most of the extra weight I wanted to get rid of. If I had known, I would have gotten both at the same time. Now I don't know how fat I was when I started ... View more

@JustJill wrote: My current goal is to burn 3000 calories by the end of the day and most days I get my goal or pretty close to it. I try to eat less than 1500 calories (though I don't go too crazy with calorie counting) a day. 3000 calories out vs. 1500 calories in sounds like a huge deficit. 1500 is about my BMR, and 3000 calories is what I burn on a very active day (like 30.000 steps). I would be literally starving if I only ate the equivalent of my BMR on such days. ... View more

Slower results are often better, because chances are they will be easier to maintain. ... View more

@Nicomachea wrote: I do 30 minutes of heavy superset weight training and then 20 of higher-intensity cardio (heart rate sustained at 180-210 beats per minute) five or six days a week. Wow, I bet you're young and super-fit, if you can sustain 180-210 bpm for 20 minutes! ... View more

It's the nice thing about the Fitbit Aria scale: it not only tells you about your weight, but about your body fat % as well (and automatically syncs everything with your Fitbit account). Inch measurements tell the same story, but stepping on a scale is more convenient on a daily basis. The idea is that lean mass (muscle) is denser than fat. It's better to have your weight remaining the same and your body fat decreasing than having a lower weight, but the same body fat %. ... View more

A three percentage point decrease in body fat in one month is a lot, and fat loss is usually more desirable than weight loss. I'd say you're on the right track. Are you tracking inches (or centimeters, depending on where you are)? I think you should see a change, even though your weight is the same. ... View more

@Crampt wrote: And if I am wanting to record distances and times does the fitbit do that as well, or should I continue to use my garminfit tracker? Your Garmin will always be more accurate for distances, as (I assume) it derives them from GPS, while Fitbit calculates them as steps x stride length. In fact, you may want to record the same activities in both Garmin and Fitbit, and then use distances from Garmin and step counts from Fitbit in order to determine your average stride length. ... View more

I tried Runkeeper a few months back (when - like you - I started to add running to my program), together with a few other running apps. I ended up settling for Runtastic Pro, despite the fact it doesn't integrate directly into Fitbit (it does indirectly via MyFitnessPal, but I haven't bothered with it). ... View more

@RickSTer1100 wrote: I would take a guess that VOLNAISKRA is just a troll from the company.  The only posts from VOLNAISKRA are recent and regards to this new unreleased product only.  Seems like a cheap way for this upstart company to try to get exposure.  I would suggest just ignoring this thread and letting it die. The best way for him to prove you wrong would be to make the starting date on profile visible to all, just like it is on mine, for instance:   I'm not convinced by the promises related to the heart rate monitoring capabilities:     There is already one tracker that claims to do this (the Basis B1 Band) and plenty of reports say it doesn't work properly. However, I'd be ready to buy it for its calorie intake measuring capabilities, assuming they are somewhat reliable. I'll wait until it's commercially available and will let others be guinea pigs. ... View more

@Hats26 wrote: Yes quite possibly! However I had been training for Survival of the Fittest at the time on top of doing ParkRuns, which was only in 2013. I'm not familiar with either event, but if you were able to do these just one year ago and can no longer do it now, the cause must be elsewhere: I can't believe anyone could go totally out of shape in less than one year. In my own case, I was inactive for most of my adult life, so we are talking about several decades. Could you have a heart condition? I thought I had one and I consulted with a cardiologist. I had a throrough check, complete with echocardiogram and effort test, which (fortunately) indicated that I was only out of shape, but my heart was healthy otherwise. The suggestion by @Mary  of getting a heart rate monitor is a good one. I used mine for doing run-walk-run workouts. I would run until I reached HR zone 4, then switch to walking until my pulse went down to HR zone 2, then run again and so on. My HR would look like this:     The good thing is that you never go out of breath, since you start walking as soon as your pulse is too high. I didn't have to look at my HRM, the Runtastic lady would tell me each time I entered a new HR zone. I found this an effective way to build endurance. ... View more

@Jabrat wrote: How do you adjust your stride with a Fitbit Zip? It shouldn't make any difference whether it's a Zip or any other model, should it? The main problem is that, if you are walking fast enough, Fitbit "thinks" you are running. But your fast walking stride is typically shorter than your running stride, so you end up with distances that are too long and calories that are too high. If you're only walking at a slow/normal pace and jogging/running, this is not a problem. ... View more

@alex45674 wrote: I have had my Fitbit just over a year and so far have done 12930 flights. I've had my Fitbit One for just under a year and: The funny thing is I hardly get to climb actual stairs, since there are no tall buildings where I live. Most of my "floors" come from the surroundings where I walk/run. For instance, this is what the terrain looked like during a 21 km run I did earlier this week:     My Fitbit registered 112 floors during this activity. It quickly adds up... ... View more

@weningerdawn wrote: I have working my but off burning on average 2000 cal a day for 2 months now but not seeing any weight lose. It's difficult to say if 2000 calories is a lot or not, without knowing your age, gender and size. Are they calories for the activities you perform at the gym or your total calories for the day (including your BMR calories)? What kind of exercises have you done at the gym? Fat loss is probably 80% diet, 20% exercising, so your activity at the gym is only part of the equation. ... View more

Hi,  @shawni ! Body fat is body fat, it doesn't really matter what you use to measure it. The main advantage of the Fitbit scale (Aria) is that it integrates seamlessly into your Fitbit account, ie. automatically upload your weight and body fat % to your account. With the Tanita, I assume you will have to manually log the data into your account:   Once you've done that, you're pretty much in the same situation as an Aria owner. Of course, you need to be aware of the shortcomings of the method used by your scale (I assume it's the same as the one used by the Aria, ie. bioelectrical impedance). For instance, the body fat value reported by such scales depends a great deal on your body's hydration level, on what you've eaten previously etc.   There are other more reliable ways to measure body fat, but they are either a lot more expensive, less practical, or both.   Other than that, congrats on your 21% body fat, which is very good for a female! ... View more

@scrow wrote: My sleep efficiency stays between 45-53%. Which sensitivity level did you select for sleep tracking in your settings: normal (default) or sensitive? If you currently have sensitive, try switching to normal. This won't change the way you are sleeping, but at least you won't get extra stress from the reported efficiency rate.   I found my sleep quality improved a lot as I stopped snoring as a result of weight loss, or lower body fat (or perhaps the combination of both). ... View more

@J_adoreDior_ wrote: I guess this is the stage I'm in I know im hitting my deficit ... but the scale isn't moving after my 30lbs loss. Guess it's just going to take some time. . On the positive side, you haven't regained, which means your calories in/out is OK. You could perhaps try to make small adjustments to your exercising routine and to your diet. For instance, walking a little bit faster (should be easier now you are 30 lbs lighter), or even introducing a little bit of running, doing some strength training etc. As to your diet, that could be increasing proteins and veggies, reducing processed food etc. I personally found additional motivation by switching my focus from weight to body fat % (I've got the Fitbit Aria). You may also want to track body measurements instead of just weight. ... View more

@1348gt wrote: Also, does the FLEX calculate steps for the eliptical machines? No (at least not the full amount), because there is no impact. See:   https://help.fitbit.com/customer/portal/articles/1020095-what-are-%22very-active-minutes%22- ... View more