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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
Take a complete tour of the Fitbit ecosystem From Fitbit features to the Fitbit app to the social features of Fitbit.com, this approachable book covers everything you need to know to get the most out of your Fitbit wristband or watch. Whether you're a fitness newcomer, a regular walker, or a long-time exerciser, your Fitbit is a powerful device that can tell you much more than how many steps you take each day. This book offers easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions for tracking all that data and getting the most out of your Fitbit investment. * Go beyond steps to track sleep, heart rate, weight, and more * Set up your health and fitness goals -- then go for them! * Connect to third-party apps such as Strava and Weight Watchers * Stay motivated by sharing your activities with friends It's one thing to simply wear your Fitbit, but it's quite another to use your Fitbit to reach your personal health goals. Whether that goal is to get fit, lose weight, eat better, or reduce stress, your Fitbit has settings and features that can help you get there. And this book shows you how!
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Fitbit® For Dummies®
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Trademarks: Wiley, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and may not be used without written permission. Fitbit is a registered trademark of Fitbit, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: THE PUBLISHER AND THE AUTHOR MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS WORK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. NO WARRANTY MAY BE CREATED OR EXTENDED BY SALES OR PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS. THE ADVICE AND STRATEGIES CONTAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR EVERY SITUATION. THIS WORK IS SOLD WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT THE PUBLISHER IS NOT ENGAGED IN RENDERING LEGAL, ACCOUNTING, OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICES. IF PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE IS REQUIRED, THE SERVICES OF A COMPETENT PROFESSIONAL PERSON SHOULD BE SOUGHT. NEITHER THE PUBLISHER NOR THE AUTHOR SHALL BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES ARISING HEREFROM. THE FACT THAT AN ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE IS REFERRED TO IN THIS WORK AS A CITATION AND/OR A POTENTIAL SOURCE OF FURTHER INFORMATION DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE AUTHOR OR THE PUBLISHER ENDORSES THE INFORMATION THE ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE MAY PROVIDE OR RECOMMENDATIONS IT MAY MAKE. FURTHER, READERS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT INTERNET WEBSITES LISTED IN THIS WORK MAY HAVE CHANGED OR DISAPPEARED BETWEEN WHEN THIS WORK WAS WRITTEN AND WHEN IT IS READ.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2019942832
ISBN 978-1-119-59231-0 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-59236-5 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-59235-8 (ebk)
Fitbit® For Dummies®
To view this book's Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and search for “Fitbit For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the Search box.
Table of Contents
Cover
Introduction
About This Book
Foolish Assumptions
Icons Used in This Book
Beyond the Book
Where to Go from Here
Part 1: Introducing Fitbit
Chapter 1: Understanding Health and Fitness Tracking
Introducing Self-Tracking
Why Track Your Health and Fitness?
Understanding the Downside of Health and Fitness Tracking
Learning about Health and Fitness Tracking Metrics
Chapter 2: Choosing a Fitbit
Understanding the Different Fitbit Types
Reviewing Fitbit Trackers
Deciding on a Fitbit Tracker
Chapter 3: Getting Started
Charging Your Fitbit
Getting the Fitbit App
Signing Up for a Fitbit Account
Connecting Your Fitbit Device
Removing a Fitbit Device from Your Account
Taking a Tour of the Fitbit App
Customizing Your Fitbit Account
Setting Your Health and Fitness Goals
Working with Your Fitbit
Chapter 4: Getting Social
Setting a Fitbit Username
Connecting with Friends
Setting Up a Family Account
Joining In the Group Fun
Part 2: Tracking Your Health and Fitness
Chapter 5: Tracking Your Daily Activity Levels
Setting Activity Goals
Left, Right, Left, Right: Counting Your Steps
Staying Regular: Setting Hourly Activity Goals and Reminders
Earning Active Minutes
Going the Distance: Measuring How Far You Walked or Ran
Moving on Up: Tracking Floors Climbed
Achievement Unlocked: Earning Activity Badges
Chapter 6: Tracking Your Sleep Patterns
How Does Fitbit Track Sleep?
Setting Some Sleep Options
Tracking Your Sleep
Working with Your Sleep Log
Setting a Silent Alarm
Chapter 7: Watching Your Heart Rate
Understanding How Your Fitbit Reads Your Heart Rate
Beat-itude: Working with Your Heart Rate
Zoning Out: Working with Heart Rate Zones
Chapter 8: Keeping an Eye on Your Body Composition
What’s All This about Body Composition?
Setting Up Your Aria 2 Scale
Setting Body Composition Goals
Weighing Yourself with Your Aria
Tracking Your Weight, Body Fat, and BMI
Working with Your Weight Log
Part 3: Using Fitbit to Meet Your Goals
Chapter 9: Getting Fit
Setting Your Fitness Goals
Understanding Your Cardio Fitness Score
Getting Your Fitbit Ready to Track Exercise
Tracking Exercise Sessions
Working with Your Activities Log
Chapter 10: Losing Weight
How to Lose Weight the Fitbit Way
Setting a Weight Loss Goal
Specifying Your Food Database
Setting Up a Food Plan
Logging the Food You Eat
Tracking Your Food Plan
Chapter 11: Developing Healthier Habits
Healthy Habit #1: Sitting Less and Moving More
Healthy Habit #2: Exercising Regularly
Healthy Habit #3: Maintaining Your Ideal Weight
Healthy Habit #4: Setting Up a Sleep Schedule
Healthy Habit #5: Drinking Enough Water
Healthy Habit #6: Reducing Stress
Part 4: The Part of Tens
Chapter 12: Ten Troubleshooting Techniques
General Troubleshooting Techniques
You Can’t Configure Your Fitbit
You Can’t Update Your Fitbit
Your Fitbit Won’t Sync
Your Fitbit Isn’t Receiving Notifications
You’re Having Fitbit Battery Troubles
Your Fitbit Displays the Wrong Time
Your Fitbit Can’t Connect to Wi-Fi
Your Fitbit Device Can’t Access GPS
Your Fitbit Device Was Submerged in Water
Chapter 13: Ten Ways to Improve Privacy and Security
Protect Your Account with a Secure Password
Check Devices Logged In to Your Fitbit Account
Control Which Data Can Be Seen By Friends and the Public
Beware of Suspicious Emails Supposedly from Fitbit
Block or Remove a Fitbit User
Lock Your Fitbit Device
Locate a Lost Fitbit Device
Delete Fitbit Data and Activities
Erase All Your Fitbit Data
Delete Your Fitbit Account
Chapter 14: Ten Ways to Connect to Third Parties
Share Fitbit Data on Strava
Share Fitbit Data on Weight Watchers
Share Fitbit Data with MyFitnessPal
Share Fitbit Data with Other Apps
Export Your Fitbit Data
Connect Fitbit to Alexa
Connect Fitbit to Window 10’s Cortana
Get the Weather on Your Fitbit
Listen to Audio on Your Fitbit Watch
Pair Bluetooth Headphones or Speakers
Glossary
Index
About the Author
Connect with Dummies
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 2
TABLE 2-1 Fitbit Feature Comparison
Chapter 5
TABLE 5-1 Example Activities and Their METs
Chapter 14
TABLE 14-1 Apps That Work with Fitbit
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
FIGURE 1-1: Set daily goals for steps, calories burned, floors, and more.
FIGURE 1-2: See who among your friends has taken the most steps.
FIGURE 1-3: The circle associated with each Fitbit stat closes when you’ve reach...
FIGURE 1-4: Your Fitbit nudges you if you haven’t taken at least 250 steps this ...
FIGURE 1-5: Your Fitbit tracks the number of steps you take each day.
FIGURE 1-6: Some Fitbits tell you the distance you cover daily.
FIGURE 1-7: A few Fitbits track the number of floors you climb each day.
FIGURE 1-8: Some Fitbits can track your daily number of active minutes.
FIGURE 1-9: A few types of Fitbits have onboard heart rate monitors.
FIGURE 1-10: Most Fitbits use your BMR and activities to track daily calories bu...
FIGURE 1-11: Most Fitbits can track your daily sleep time.
Chapter 2
FIGURE 2-1: An example of a clip-on activity tracker.
FIGURE 2-2: The original Fitbit Flex wristband.
FIGURE 2-3: The original Fitbit Surge watch.
FIGURE 2-4: The Fitbit Ace wristband tracker.
FIGURE 2-5: The Fitbit Aria 2 weighing scale.
FIGURE 2-6: The Fitbit Charge 3 wristband tracker.
FIGURE 2-7: The Fitbit Inspire HR wristband tracker.
FIGURE 2-8: The Fitbit Ionic watch tracker.
Chapter 3
FIGURE 3-1: The iPhone version of the Fitbit app’s initial screen.
FIGURE 3-2: The Enter Your Account Details screen as it appears on an iPhone.
FIGURE 3-3: Windows 10 users see this version of the About You screen.
FIGURE 3-4: The iPhone version of the Fitbit app.
FIGURE 3-5: The Windows 10 version of the Fitbit app.
FIGURE 3-6: Log in to Fitbit.com to see your online Dashboard.
FIGURE 3-7: The Android version of the Advanced Settings screen.
FIGURE 3-8: The Fitbit app asks you to select an initial goal.
FIGURE 3-9: Set activity targets such as your daily steps, distance, and active ...
FIGURE 3-10: The Fitbit Charge 3 tracker has a single button.
FIGURE 3-11: The Fitbit Ionic watch has three buttons.
FIGURE 3-12: You can customize Fitbit notifications.
FIGURE 3-13: In the device’s quick settings, you can tap Notifications to Off.
FIGURE 3-14: After you select the Fitbit device icon, select Sync to perform a m...
Chapter 4
FIGURE 4-1: The iPhone version of the Display Name screen.
FIGURE 4-2: The Android version of the Friends tab.
FIGURE 4-3: A friend request on the Android (left) and in iOS (right).
FIGURE 4-4: Select Accept Friend to welcome your new Fitbit acquaintance.
FIGURE 4-5: To send a cheer or taunt, first display the friend’s profile.
FIGURE 4-6: Hover your mouse pointer over a friend’s icon to see the Taunt and C...
FIGURE 4-7: A received cheer in Android (left) and a received taunt in Windows 1...
FIGURE 4-8: The overview screen of the Weekend Warrior challenge.
FIGURE 4-9: A challenge request on the Android (left) and in iOS (right).
FIGURE 4-10: The iOS version of the Add Child screen.
FIGURE 4-11: Each group home page includes a text box.
FIGURE 4-12: The Compose screen includes a text box and buttons for sharing achi...
Chapter 5
FIGURE 5-1: The iOS version of the Activity Goals screen.
FIGURE 5-2: See the current step count by tapping the watch clock (left) or open...
FIGURE 5-3: In the Fitbit app, today’s step count appears near the top of the Da...
FIGURE 5-4: In the Fitbit.com Dashboard, hover the mouse over the Today tile to ...
FIGURE 5-5: In the Dashboard, click the Previous and Next icons to navigate your...
FIGURE 5-6: The Steps screen displays your historical steps data.
FIGURE 5-7: Click a day to see a timeline of when your steps occurred that day.
FIGURE 5-8: If you haven’t reached 250 steps this hour, Fitbit tells you to get ...
FIGURE 5-9: Your Fitbit celebrates if you reach 250 steps before the hour ends.
FIGURE 5-10: Use your tracker (such as the Ionic shown here) to monitor your hou...
FIGURE 5-11: Set the consecutive hours you want reminders to move.
FIGURE 5-12: The hourly activity metric in the Today app (left) and in the Fitbi...
FIGURE 5-13: The Hourly Activity screen breaks down the last week by hour.
FIGURE 5-14: The hourly activity summary includes stats for longest and total st...
FIGURE 5-15: Active minutes in the Today app (left) and as it appears in the Fit...
FIGURE 5-16: The Active Minutes screen displays your historical active minutes d...
FIGURE 5-17: The distance metric in the Today app (left) and in the Fitbit app’s...
FIGURE 5-18: The Distance screen displays your historical distance data.
FIGURE 5-19: The floors climbed metric in the Today app (left) and in the Fitbit...
FIGURE 5-20: The Floors Climbed screen displays your historical floors climbed d...
Chapter 6
FIGURE 6-1: Use the Fitbit app’s Sleep Goals screen to set your target for time ...
FIGURE 6-2: Use Fitbit.com’s Sleep tile to set your time asleep goal.
FIGURE 6-3: On your Ionic or Versa, tap During Sleep to Off to silence nighttime...
FIGURE 6-4: Open the Today app to see this version of the time asleep metric.
FIGURE 6-5: The Sleep tile as it appears in the Fitbit app’s Dashboard.
FIGURE 6-6: The Today app’s sleep graph.
FIGURE 6-7: The Hours Slept graph displays the last seven days’ time asleep valu...
FIGURE 6-8: The Sleep Schedule graph displays the last seven days’ bedtimes and ...
FIGURE 6-9: The Hours in Sleep Stages graph displays the last seven days’ sleep ...
FIGURE 6-10: The Sleep Stages graph displays a timeline of the night’s sleep sta...
FIGURE 6-11: The Sleep Stages section breaks down each stage by total time and p...
FIGURE 6-12: The sleep stage timeline and totals as they appear on Fitbit.com.
FIGURE 6-13: The Today app displays your sleep stage totals.
FIGURE 6-14: The 30 Day Avg tab compares that day’s sleep stages with their 30-d...
FIGURE 6-15: The Benchmark tab compares that day’s sleep stages with people like...
FIGURE 6-16: Use the Log Sleep screen to enter a sleep manually.
FIGURE 6-17: Use the Alarms app on your Fitbit watch to add a silent alarm.
FIGURE 6-18: A silent alarm on an Ionic watch.
Chapter 7
FIGURE 7-1: Your current heart rate on the watch (left), in the Today app (middl...
FIGURE 7-2: Your resting heart rate in the Fitbit app (left) and on the Fitbit.c...
FIGURE 7-3: Stopping the heart rate monitor in the Fitbit app (left) and in Sett...
FIGURE 7-4: The current heart rate zone in the Today app (left) and the Fitbit a...
FIGURE 7-5: The Fitbit app’s Heart Rate tile in the cardio zone.
FIGURE 7-6: The Fitbit app’s Heart Rate tile in the peak zone.
FIGURE 7-7: Click Custom Max Heart Rate to On to set your own maximum heart rate...
FIGURE 7-8: Click Custom Zone to On to define your own heart rate zone.
Chapter 8
FIGURE 8-1: Select an icon to identify you on the Aria display.
FIGURE 8-2: Select the measurement unit you prefer to use.
FIGURE 8-3: Edit your Aria user settings.
FIGURE 8-4: Do you want to lose, gain, or maintain weight?
FIGURE 8-5: Tell Fitbit your goal weight.
FIGURE 8-6: The Weight and Body Fat % sections now reflect your goals.
FIGURE 8-7: The Weight screen offers graphs for several different body compositi...
FIGURE 8-8: Use the Log Weight screen to manually enter a weight and body fat pe...
FIGURE 8-9: Use the Log Weight section to manually enter a weight and body fat p...
Chapter 9
FIGURE 9-1: Set the number of days per week that you want to perform at least on...
FIGURE 9-2: The Cardio Fitness graph shows you where you rate compared to your p...
FIGURE 9-3: You can toggle an activity’s auto-recognition on and off, as well as...
FIGURE 9-4: The exercises that Fitbit can auto-recognize.
FIGURE 9-5: Configure your exercise shortcuts.
FIGURE 9-6: Fitbit.com displays check boxes for every activity it can track.
FIGURE 9-7: Configure your exercise voice cues.
FIGURE 9-8: Display the exercise mode you want to configure, then tap Settings.
FIGURE 9-9: Configure your interval sessions.
FIGURE 9-10: Use the Exercise app to track workouts on the Charge 3, Inspire HR,...
FIGURE 9-11: The Ionic looks for a GPS signal (left) and displays
Connected
when...
FIGURE 9-12: The Ionic screen displays various metrics as you exercise.
FIGURE 9-13: To complete your workout, tap the Finish icon.
FIGURE 9-14: Use the Track tab or screen to track a walk, hike, or run using the...
FIGURE 9-15: During the exercise, the Fitbit app tracks your distance, time, and...
FIGURE 9-16: Examine your exercise history.
FIGURE 9-17: Use the Log Exercise screen to log an exercise session manually.
Chapter 10
FIGURE 10-1: Fitbit maintains food databases for a dozen and a half countries.
FIGURE 10-2: Fitbit asks you to choose a plan intensity.
FIGURE 10-3: Click the Show All 4 link to see the details of each plan intensity...
FIGURE 10-4: Use the Add Food screen to log a food item in the Fitbit app.
FIGURE 10-5: Use the Food tab to log a food item using Fitbit.com.
FIGURE 10-6: Click the Barcode icon to scan a food item.
FIGURE 10-7: Center the food item’s barcode within the frame.
FIGURE 10-8: Click the Fitbit app’s Food Plan tile to see your calorie graph and...
FIGURE 10-9: Fitbit.com offers Calories In vs Out and Food Plan tiles.
FIGURE 10-10: The Fitbit app shows how many pounds you’ve lost (left); Fitbit.co...
Chapter 11
FIGURE 11-1: Examine the graph vertically to find your movement blind spots.
FIGURE 11-2: Try to get your average longest stationary period below two hours.
FIGURE 11-3: Fitbit displays your total weekly exercise time and the duration of...
FIGURE 11-4: Use the Duration (Minutes) graph to track your daily exercise durat...
FIGURE 11-5: Fitbit displays your average time in bed.
FIGURE 11-6: Fitbit displays your new time in bed goal.
FIGURE 11-7: Fitbit suggests a wake-up time.
FIGURE 11-8: Fitbit suggests a bedtime.
FIGURE 11-9: Use the Fitbit app’s Add Water Log screen to log your water consump...
FIGURE 11-10: The Fitbit app’s Water tile tracks today’s water consumption.
Chapter 12
FIGURE 12-1: When a Fitbit firmware update is available, you see a notification ...
FIGURE 12-2: The battery level on an Ionic or Versa watch.
FIGURE 12-3: The battery level in the Fitbit app.
Chapter 13
FIGURE 13-1: Use the Fitbit app’s Change Password screen to update your Fitbit p...
FIGURE 13-2: Use Fitbit.com’s Set Your Password page to change your Fitbit passw...
FIGURE 13-3: On Fitbit.com’s Account Access page, click a logged-in device to ge...
FIGURE 13-4: Use the Privacy screen to set custom privacy settings for your Fitb...
FIGURE 13-5: If you see a recent sync time, it means your Fitbit is nearby.
Chapter 14
FIGURE 14-1: Choose which Fitbit data you want to allow Strava to access.
FIGURE 14-2: On the My Day page’s Activity tab, click Sync with Your Fitbit App ...
FIGURE 14-3: Open the activity, click More, and then click Export as TCX File.
FIGURE 14-4: The percentage in the Current Export item tells you the progress of...
FIGURE 14-5: The Settings screen for the Weather app.
FIGURE 14-6: To put your watch into Transfer Mode, tap Transfer Music.
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
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Introduction
Wait a minute, I hear you thinking, does the world really need an entire book about Fitbit? First, whoa, your thinking is loud. Second, yes the world really does need a book about Fitbit. Sure, most Fitbit trackers are simple bands that you secure to your favorite wrist and start walking (or running or skipping or whatever). However, that apparent simplicity is only on the surface. Scratch that surface and you uncover an entire world of activity tracking that’s much deeper and more powerful than most folks know.
Yes, most Fitbit devices are easy to learn and use, but that up-front ease belies a complex background of features, settings, and customizations that can help you get the most out of your Fitbit. And more sophisticated devices such as the Charge 3 and the Ionic and Versa watches are brimming with buttons and options and apps that come with a learning curve.
Finally, it’s one thing to operate your Fitbit, but it’s quite another to use your Fitbit to reach a goal. Whether that goal is to get fit, lose weight, eat better, or reduce stress, your Fitbit has settings and features — many of them obscure and hard to find — that can help you get there.
About This Book
So, yep, I wrote a book about Fitbit. Welcome, friend, to Fitbit For Dummies, which takes you on a complete tour of the Fitbit ecosystem, from the Fitbit trackers to the Fitbit app to the social features of Fitbit.com. In the end, you’ll learn everything you need to know to get the most out of your Fitbit investment — and have a ton of fitness-related fun.
Fitbit For Dummies offers 14 chapters, but just because they appear sequentially, that doesn’t mean you have to read them that way. Use the table of contents or index to find the information you need — and dip into and out of the book when you have a question about Fitbit specifically or health and fitness tracking generally.
If your time is limited (or you’re just aching to get tonight’s TV-watching started), you can also ignore anything marked by the Technical Stuff icon or the information in sidebars (the gray-shaded boxes). Yes, these tidbits are fascinating (if I do say so myself), but they aren’t critical to the subject at hand, so you won’t miss anything crucial by skipping them.
Within this book, you might see some web addresses breaking across two lines of text. If you’re reading this book in print and want to visit one of these web pages, type the web address exactly as it’s noted in the text, pretending that any line breaks don’t exist. If you’re reading this as an e-book, you’ve got it easy — just tap the web address to be taken directly to the web page.
Foolish Assumptions
This book is for people who are new (or relatively new) to using a Fitbit activity tracker. Therefore, I do not assume that you’re a Fitbit expert, a Fitbit guru, or a Fitbit whiz. However, I do assume the following:
You know how to plug in and connect devices.
You have a running Wi-Fi network with an Internet connection.
You know the password for your Wi-Fi network.
You have an iOS or an Android mobile device (that is, a smartphone or tablet) or a Windows 10 PC.
You know how to install and operate apps on your mobile device or PC.
Icons Used in This Book
Like other books in the Dummies series, this book’s margin has icons, or little pictures, to flag things that don’t quite fit into the flow of the chapter discussion. Here are the icons that I use:
This icon marks text that contains something useful or important enough that you’d do well to store the text somewhere safe in your memory for later recall.
This icon marks text that contains some for-nerds-only technical details or explanations. Feel free to skip this information.
This icon marks shortcuts or easier ways to do things, which I hope will make your life — or, at least, the Fitbit portion of your life — more efficient.
This icon marks text that contains a friendly but unusually insistent reminder to avoid doing something. You have been warned.
Beyond the Book
In addition to what you’re reading right now, this product also comes with a free access-anywhere cheat sheet that includes important things you need to know to be healthy and fit, the most useful Fitbit account settings, and a glossary of important health and fitness tracking terms. To get this cheat sheet, go to www.dummies.com/ and type Fitbit For Dummies Cheat Sheet in the Search box.
Where to Go from Here
If you’ve had your Fitbit for a while and you’re familiar with the basics, you can probably get away with skipping the first three chapters and diving in to any part of the book that exudes usefulness or interestingness. The chapters present their Fitbit know-how in readily digestible, bite-size tidbits, so feel free to graze your way through the book.
If you and Fitbit haven’t met yet — particularly if you’re not sure what a Fitbit even does — this book has you covered. To get your relationship with Fitbit off to a fine start, I highly recommend reading the book’s first three chapters to get some of the basics down cold. From there, you can branch out anywhere you like, safe in the knowledge that you have some survival skills to fall back on!
Part 1
Introducing Fitbit
IN THIS PART …
Discover the benefits and learn the basics of health and fitness tracking.
Check out the available Fitbit devices and learn which one is right for you.
Find out how to configure your Fitbit and install and set up the Fitbit app.
Chapter 1
Understanding Health and Fitness Tracking
IN THIS CHAPTER
Getting a grip on self-tracking
Exploring all the reasons why tracking your health is a good idea
Understanding a few health tracking pitfalls
Checking out self-tracking stats such as steps, distance, and heart rate
You are a data-generating machine. When you pay with a credit card, drive through an automated toll system, answer an email, or make a call, you leave a steady stream of ones and zeroes in your wake. This so-called digital exhaust is the trackable or storable actions, choices, and preferences that you generate as you go about your life. Even when you’re just browsing the web, you leave behind not fingerprints but clickprints that uniquely identify your surfing behavior and lengthen the paperless trail that documents your electronic self.
All the data you generate is invariably used to make others rich, usually by selling it to advertisers and marketers. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could generate data that would help you? I’m not talking about data that will make you rich, at least not literally. I’m talking about data that you can use to make yourself healthier, fitter, slimmer, and calmer.
Welcome to the world of health and fitness tracking. In this chapter, I take you on a tour of this world, explore its benefits (and, yes, its few downsides), and introduce you to the types of data you can track. It’s all presented from a Fitbit point of view.
Introducing Self-Tracking
From time to time, you might harbor vague worries about oversharing on social networks or being tracked online by ad networks, but you probably don't think about the data shadow you cast wherever you go. However, a growing segment of the population spends a remarkable amount of time and effort trying to generate more personal data. While the rest of us are content to step out for a short walk after lunch, these people count every step they take. The likes of you and I might groggily estimate the number of hours we slept last night, but these people wear their Fitbits to bed to know exactly how many hours and minutes they slept and what portion of that sleep was spent in the REM (rapid eye movement) state.
I speak of self-trackers, people who use technology to acquire, store, and analyze their own life data. Their self-tracking can create detailed records of food, exercise, and location, as well as mood, alertness, overall well-being, and other seemingly non-quantifiable psychological states. This process of self-digitization is almost always enhanced by a Fitbit or similar wearable computing technology that enables the self-monitoring of physiological states and self-sensing of such external data as steps taken and floors climbed. These self-professed data junkies select from a variety of apps and websites that serve as tools for self-quantifying — and that prod them into doing even more of it. It’s no wonder, then, that the movement as a whole is often called the quantified self and its practitioners are increasingly known as quantified-selfers or, simply, QSers.
You might think that the point of all this self-scrutiny is just to keep a record of vital stats, but self-trackers are not content with merely tracking a few numbers. Their interest lies in quantitative assessment: extracting knowledge from the raw data. They want to put their lives under the macroscope, which is the general term for any technology that enhances a person's ability to gather and analyze data. If that data tells you that you're just as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on days when you managed only five or six hours of sleep, the lesson is clear: You’re one of those lucky people who don’t need seven or eight hours of sack time. If your heart rate spikes when you sit down to dinner, maybe a little family counseling is in order. In short, by analyzing detailed data over a long time, self-trackers turn themselves into self-experimenters, or perhaps even body hackers. The aim? Nothing more or less than the examined life, albeit one where examined means tracked, quantified, recorded, and analyzed.
Why Track Your Health and Fitness?
Self-tracking is a bona fide trend, but is it a bandwagon you should jump on? Perhaps you’ve come to the conclusion that you could be more active, fitter, calmer, and just healthier overall. If so, that’s great! But you might also be asking yourself whether you really need to self-track your activities, exercises, food, and sleep. Why go to the trouble? Can’t you just do what’s necessary and leave it at that?
So many questions! Fortunately, the answers to all of them lead to the simple conclusion that, yes, self-tracking is worth the effort. Why? I’ve come up with no less than ten reasons:
Monitoring your progress
Figuring out what does and doesn’t work for you
Keeping yourself motivated
Challenging yourself
Challenging others
Figuring out what health or fitness activities to try next
Performing experiments
Breaking bad habits
Encouraging good habits
Learning about yourself
In the next few sections, I fill in the details for each reason.
Putting numbers to feelings: Monitoring your progress
Perhaps the most straightforward reason to track your health and fitness is to measure your progress. Sure, when you first start a new health or fitness regimen, at some point you start to feel better, and in many cases a lot better. But that initial massive — and, hence, noticeable — difference soon gives way to smaller — and, hence, not always noticeable — improvements. Before long, it might seem as though you’re no longer progressing at all, which is the point at which many people either scale back their lifestyle changes or quit altogether.
The problem here is that determining whether you feel better isn’t an exact process, especially when those feelings become subtle. Don’t get me wrong: Feeling fitter or healthier is a fantastic reward for all that work you’re doing. But for long-term success, you need to back up those subjective feelings with some objective data. To get that objectivity, you need to measure your progress by monitoring your activities, exercises, and body composition. That’s where your Fitbit comes in, because it gives you a record of what you’ve done, which you can compare to what you’re doing now.
How does that comparison help? Well, if you don’t feel all that much better now than you did last month, but your Fitbit tells you that, say, you’re averaging two thousand more steps per day or your heart rate is five beats lower, you know you’re still heading in the right direction despite how you feel. Oh, and good job, by the way!
Figuring out what does and doesn’t work for you
The road to your best self isn’t a straight line. Yes, the general direction is clear —move more, eat better, and reduce stress — but the specific route to get there is different for everyone. Ideally, you’ll just happen to take the path that’s right for you and not head down a bunch of dead-end streets. Ah, but there’s the rub: How do you know when you’re cruising down the right road and when you’re wasting your time on a cul-de-sac? In short (and to finally move on from that now overdone “road” metaphor), how do you know what works for you and what doesn’t?
That’s where health and fitness tracking shines. After you’ve used your Fitbit for a while, you end up with a priceless trove of data that you can mine for insights into what has been effective for you in the past. For example, if your main goal is to lose weight, you can analyze your historical data to look for periods when your weight dropped steadily and when your weight stayed the same or even increased. Now you can compare what you were eating, what types of exercise you were doing, how much sleep you were getting, and so on for those different periods. Ideally, you’ll start to see patterns in the data that tell you what works and what doesn’t.
Keeping yourself motivated
You might think that you don’t need to track your health and fitness because all you need to do is set a goal and then work towards it day in and day out, without exception. Well, sure, that would be great if you could manage it, but study after study has shown a hard truth: Willpower doesn’t work. By sheer force of will, you can’t make yourself do the work necessary to get fit or lose weight or reach whatever you’ve established as your health or fitness grail.
Does that mean there’s no point in even trying? Definitely not! The secret sauce of success here isn’t willpower — it’s motivation. If you’re sufficiently motivated to reach your goal, willpower is unnecessary because you’ll want to do the work you need to do to get where you want to go.
Motivation comes in many forms: an upcoming beach vacation, a future charity run, or a bet with a friend. You can also use your Fitbit to get motivated: If you look back at your historical data and see your daily steps steadily increasing or your weight steadily decreasing, the motivation to keep that trend going is right there.
Not only that, but you can configure your Fitbit with specific daily goals, such as 10,000 steps and 10 floors climbed (see Figure 1-1). Your Fitbit will show your progress towards those goals, motivating you to walk the long way home or take the stairs instead of the elevator to put yourself over the top.
FIGURE 1-1: Set daily goals for steps, calories burned, floors, and more.
Challenging yourself
One of the main reasons why people fail to reach their health or fitness goals is that they start off well and see some good results, so they just continue what they’re doing. That doesn’t sound so bad, except that your body has a wonderful way of adapting to most things you throw at it. When you start walking or running or lifting weights, what feels excruciatingly hard at first starts to feel pretty good after you’ve done it a few times. The exercise is stressing your heart and slightly breaking down your muscles. Once you stop, your body doesn’t just repair the damage; it rebuilds your heart and muscles so that they’re stronger. That process, which is called adaptation, is one of the secrets of getting fit.
Or, I should say, it’s one of the secrets of getting fit if you slowly and steadily increase the amount of stress you place on your body. If you just keep doing the same old thing, your body will simply adapt to that load and stop improving, which is why all successful health and fitness programs require you to challenge yourself. If you averaged 10 minutes per mile on your runs last week, see if you can run at 9 minutes and 45 seconds per mile this week; if you averaged 10,000 steps a day last month, shoot for 11,000 this month; if you walked 900 miles last year, set your sights on an even 1,000 this year.
How do you know what you did last week, last month, or even last year? Your Fitbit can keep track for you, so it’s easy to look back on your historical data and challenge yourself to be a better version of yourself.
Challenging others
Ideally, with the help of your Fitbit, your health and fitness motivation will come from within, but internal motivation isn’t all you should look for. External motivation — that is, getting other people involved in firing yourself up to exercise or diet or whatever — can be an important part of your new regimen. For example, the simple act of announcing your health or fitness goal to friends or family members can do wonders for motivating you to stick to that goal.
How can your Fitbit help here? As I show in Chapter 4, your Fitbit account comes with a ton of social features. For example, after you’ve connected with some people, the Fitbit app displays a leaderboard that shows who among your friends has done the most steps in the past week, as shown in Figure 1-2. Similarly, Fitbit offers several challenges that you can invite people to participate in. One popular challenge is to see who can take the most steps over the coming weekend.
FIGURE 1-2: See who among your friends has taken the most steps.
Figuring out what comes next
Health and fitness regimens are not — or shouldn’t be — static routines. But even if your program includes steady increases and regular challenges (both internal and external), you’ll still be faced one day with the “What do I do next?” question. I’m not talking about how many steps you should walk that day or what you should eat. No, this is Big Picture stuff: Adding entirely new types of exercise, cutting out parts of your routine, and so on.
These major changes shouldn’t be undertaken willy-nilly. Fortunately, if you’ve accumulated a decent amount of historical health and fitness data, you can make an informed choice without the willy or the nilly.
For example, if you’ve been running and cycling, you can examine your previous workouts to see which sport has shown the most improvement. If you feel you’ve worked equally hard in both but, say, your running performance has improved much faster than your cycling, you might decide to focus more on your running.
Performing experiments
Despite what many so-called gurus will try to sell you, gaining and maintaining health and fitness is not complicated:
To lose weight, your calories out must exceed your calories in.
To eat well, your diet should consist of lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, not too much meat (especially red meat), and little processed food.
To get fit, find an activity or sport you like, start easy, and then slowly but steadily increase the duration and intensity.
If you’ve been sedentary for a long time or have health problems such as heart disease or diabetes, I strongly advise you to see your doctor before beginning any type of exercise program.
To sleep well, avoid screen time before bed, go to bed at a regular time, and get at least seven or eight hours of shut-eye.
If you follow these basic guidelines diligently, health and fitness will follow as day follows night. That said, nothing is stopping you from thinking outside this basic health and fitness box. If you run or cycle, for example, you could try adding some workouts on an elliptical machine or a stair-climber to improve leg strength. Or you could add yoga or Pilates sessions to strengthen your core (the muscles around your trunk and pelvis).
However, you need to set up these trials like an experiment. Your Fitbit data will tell you where you are now, and you can then monitor your stats as you add an exercise or activity to see what effect it has.
Breaking bad habits
You form habits by repeatedly making the same choices over time, to the point where you no longer even think about what you’re doing. Sit at your desk doing work all day; sit on your couch watching TV all evening; repeat tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. Just like that, you’ve developed the bad habit of sitting most of the day, and you probably don’t even realize it.
Ah, but that’s where your Fitbit comes in to save the day. Above all else, a Fitbit is an activity tracker, tracking when you move during the day and when you don’t. For example, your Fitbit can track the total number of minutes you’re active during the day and the hours during the day when you take at least 250 steps. If your total active minutes is very low and you don’t take at least 250 steps most of the hours during the day, you have a bad inactivity habit. But now, thanks to your Fitbit, you know you have a bad habit, which is the first step in breaking the habit and getting more active.
Encouraging good habits
Making bad choices over and over, day after day, leads to bad habits, but here’s the good news: Making good choices over and over, day after day, leads to good habits. Health and fitness tracking can help you get on the good habit path by showing you which activities bring positive results. And seeing those positive results in hard numbers — increased steps, lower heart rate, or a weight closer to your goal — gives you the motivation to keep doing those activities. The result is a virtuous cycle that leads to the formation of good health-and-fitness-enhancing habits.
Don’t expect your good habits to form in a few days or even a few weeks. A 2009 study found that on average is takes people about 66 days to form a habit. So hang in there!
A top-notch tracker will also help you form good habits by giving you small nudges throughout the day. For example, when Fitbit shows you any daily stat, it includes an icon with a partial circle around it, and that circle is completed only when you reach your daily goal. For example, Figure 1-3 shows that today I’ve taken a bit less than 9,000 steps, and the not-quite-filled-in circle tells me that I’m shy of my goal of 10,000 steps. I want to complete that circle, so I’m motivated to keep moving.
FIGURE 1-3: The circle associated with each Fitbit stat closes when you’ve reached your goal.
Similarly, most Fitbits will display a notification at ten minutes to the hour if you’ve yet to meet your hourly goal, which by default is 250 steps, as shown in Figure 1-4. That’s just two or three minutes of walking, so why not get out of your seat and move?
FIGURE 1-4: Your Fitbit nudges you if you haven’t taken at least 250 steps this hour.
Learning about yourself
A typical health and fitness tracker generates a ton of data. Depending on the device’s capabilities, it can track steps, heart rate, floors climbed, distance, pace, active minutes, and calories burned. That wide range of stats has one thing in common: Each piece of data tells you something about yourself. Without a tracker, the days turn into weeks, the weeks turn into months, and the months turn into years, and all the while you almost certainly have only a vague idea of how active you are, how much sleep you’re getting, and how well you’re eating. And, if you’re like most people, even that vague idea is probably an overestimate. Improving your health and fitness means knowing yourself, and the best way to do that is to get some objective data about your activities, workouts, and body composition. That’s right in the wheelhouse of any tracker worthy of the name, so if an examined life is your goal, make a health and fitness tracker your tool.
Understanding the Downside of Health and Fitness Tracking
Downside? With all the positive reasons for tracking your health and fitness outlined in the preceding section, could being a self-tracker have any downsides? Yep. Several pitfalls exist, but they are minor and can be easily avoided if you understand them and are mindful of them as you track your activity. Here they are:
Feelings of pressure or stress to meet your daily goals:
Meeting your daily goal for, say, steps taken or active minutes is a great feeling. However, in your quest to get that feeling, you might end up putting a ton of pressure on yourself. First, remember that although meeting your goals is worthwhile, a relaxed attitude towards those goals is best. Plus, stress can undo many of your health and fitness gains, so there’s some twisted irony to self-generating stress
about
those health and fitness gains.
Feelings of guilt, shame, or unworthiness when you don’t meet your daily goals:
Your daily activity goals are meant to be a gentle goad that gets you moving and making better choices in your life. These goals are not judgements, however. If you fall short of floors climbed or calories burned, shake it off and resolve to do better tomorrow. Remember that the road to good health and overall fitness is a long one (in fact, it is — or it should be — a life-long one) and doesn’t depend on the results of a single day. If you meet your goals most of the time (think of them as “daily-ish” goals), you’ll eventually get where you want to go.
Having your daily routines disrupted or controlled by your desire to meet your activity goals:
If by “daily routines” you’re talking about prolonged sitting at work or in the evening, being active instead is an upside. However, if an old friend invites you out for a coffee or a meal and you beg off because you need to get in a few thousand more steps to meet your goal, that decision is probably not balanced. Go ahead and meet your friend; you can always reach your goal tomorrow. Better yet, ask your friend to go on a walk with you!
Feeling that an un-tracked activity is a wasted activity:
You go out for a long walk, realize you’ve forgotten your Fitbit, and no longer enjoy the walk because now the steps and activity time don’t “count.” Okay, I get it: In an ideal world, you’d never miss a step or a minute or a mile. But in the real world, many activities are untracked. That’s fine because it’s
way
more important that you are active, even if that activity is now “tracked” only in your head.
Lacking motivation to be active if you don’t have your tracker:
This pitfall is related to the preceding one in that an activity undertaken without a tracker isn’t real or important because the activity won’t generate stats. Without those numbers, you lack the motivation to even do the activity. Remember that your health, not a bunch of stats, is what is real and important. Do the activity anyway because it will get you closer to your long-term goal. Your future healthy and fit self will thank you.
If you take a walk or perform some other activity without your Fitbit strapped on, your effort doesn’t have to go unrecorded. You can always log the activity manually, as described in Chapter 5.
Learning about Health and Fitness Tracking Metrics
A metric is a standard that you use to measure something. That standard is usually quantifiable, which means that it can be expressed numerically or statistically. Health and fitness tracking — which earlier in this chapter I said was also known as the quantified-self movement — is all about metrics and the numbers they generate: steps taken, floors climbed, hours slept, and many more.
Fortunately, these metrics are mostly straightforward, but even apparently simple metrics — such as the number of steps you take in a day — have subtle nuances that you need to understand. I spend the rest of this chapter going through the seven metrics — steps taken, distance covered, floors climbed, active minutes, heart rate, calories burned, and sleep time — tracked by most Fitbits.
Note I said most Fitbits. The simpler Fitbit trackers, such as the Ace for kids and the Zip, only track steps taken, active time, and calories burned. See Chapter 2, to learn more about what metrics each Fitbit device can track.
