I purchased a Fitbit Charge HR ($200CDN) almost a year ago as part of my get in shape/lose the baby weight program.

Lately, you don’t have to look too far before you find someone with a fitness tracker on their wrist; this fitness trend isn’t going anywhere soon, so I thought I’d share my thoughts as well as the features of my Fitbit for anyone considering purchasing a fitness tracker.

Note – Fitbit Fitness trackers vary in terms of function and features provided  – please review each tracker model on the Fitbit website before purchasing to determine if it is right for you. Some of the features offered on the Fitbit Charge HR are not available on the lower models.

 

 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Features

The Fitbit can sync to your mobile, tablet or PC and update your personal dashboard with all your daily activities and achievements (more detail below). This feature is great for people who want to track their fitness and weight loss/gain progress over time. The dashboard provides you with a summary of:

*your recent exercise

*hours of sleep/# of times awakened

*weight left to lose/gain

*water consumption

*steps taken/floors climbed/distance walked

*calories burned/calories eaten

*badges earned

*friend status and activities for motivation

The information shown on your dashboard is customizable. I’ve included most of the information you can select on your dashboard for the picture below. However, I normally only view my recent exercise, pounds left to lose and calorie information on my personal dashboard.

You can add or remove dashboard tiles as needed and click on each tile for more detailed information. The Bluetooth feature lets you update your mobile with your stats and will display a caller’s name on the tracker screen if you have the Bluetooth feature on your phone turned on when someone calls. Unfortunately, no one ever calls me when I work out, so I haven’t gotten to see this feature in action!

Activity Tracking

The Fitbit Charge HR allows you to automatically or manually track your activities. To manually track your activity, press and hold the button on the tracker for 2-3 seconds; the unit will vibrate and a timer will start. The Fitbit will track the length of the activity, your heart rate, estimated calories burned, steps taken, miles walked and floors climbed until you manually turn off the tracker. I always use the manual activity tracker when exercising, but the automatic tracker is a great tool because it recognizes when your activity level increases and automatically tracks the same information.

Nowadays, I only put my Fitbit on when I’m exercising. I like to see if I’m close to or hitting my max heart rate during an activity as well as how many calories I’m (estimated to be) burning.

Below is a snapshot of my activity this week. You can manually enter an activity description by clicking on the “recent exercise” tile on the dashboard (shown in the picture above, top left corner). As you can see below, I’ve been loving my treadmill this week, along with a few resistance exercises mixed in.

Do I need the Fitbit for activity monitoring? Not really – if I’m dripping sweat and really huffing and puffing, it’s pretty safe to say I’m hitting or close to my peak heart rate. Over time, I’ve come to learn how long and hard I have to exercise to hit 200 versus 300 calories as well. However, I do enjoy seeing my calorie burn during and after exercise; it helps me to understand how hard I have to work to burn off that unnecessary bowl of chips. It also pushes me to work harder if I notice my heart rate or calorie burn isn’t as high as I’d like it to be for a certain exercise.

Related Reading: High Intensity Interval Training For Weight Loss

 Exercise/Activity Goals

You can program your Fitbit to determine your exercise and activity goals. I programmed my tracker to set a goal for 5 days of exercise a week. I get reminders of this goal on my mobile, like “you’ve almost reached your fitness goal” which motivates me to meet my target. You can also determine how many steps per day or floors climbed you would like to hit. The default for steps daily is 10,000, but you can increase or decrease this number through your personal settings. You can also get an update on your current heart rate, steps taken, floors climbed, calories burned and miles walked by clicking the button on the side of the tracker at any time while you are wearing it.

Fitbit also allows you to add friends and keep up to date with their activity levels for a bit of competition and additional motivation.

Do I need the Fitbit to keep me active? No – I enjoy exercising and don’t need much motivation. But, there are some days where that extra reminder does help. It also feels great when I get notified that I have achieved my 5-day exercise target. I’m a busy working mom, so this is a tough target to meet at times.

 

Food/Calorie Tracking

I find tracking my daily calorie intake enables me to meet my weight loss goals. The Fitbit dashboard includes a calorie calculator (based on your current weight and desired weight, as well as gender settings). It also allows you to set your own calorie target, which I do, although this disables the Calories In vs. Calories Out dashboard gauge.

You can track your food using the Fitbit food tracking portion of the dashboard, but I don’t find it user-friendly. However, the great thing about Fitbit is it allows you to sync the dashboard to many other food/fitness apps. I use the Lose It food tracking app to track my daily calories and gave Fitbit permission to access my food data via Lose It.

This syncing feature allows me to view my tracked Lose It calories in my Fitbit dashboard. The dashboard updates  your calories burned vs. eaten throughout the day. You can also track the amount of water you drink each day in the Fitbit food tracking section, if you’re into that.

Do I need the Fitbit food tracker? No, I have always used and enjoyed using the Lose It app and I don’t dwell on this Fitbit feature. I know I have to hit the calorie targets that I’ve set up in Lose It if I want to continue to lose weight. But…I can see many people enjoying this visual reminder to help them hit their calorie targets and review their progress over time.

Related Reading: Intermittent Fasting For Weight Loss: Does It Work?

Sleep Tracking

If you wear the Fitbit Charge HR through the night, it will track how long it took you to fall asleep, as well as how long you slept and how many times you woke up. You can set a goal as to how many hours you would like to sleep each night and monitor your progress in your dashboard. This feature also allows the Fitbit to get an idea of your resting heart rate. Your resting heart rate usually decreases as you become more fit and/or lose weight and provides a baseline for Fitbit to track your calories burned. There is also an alarm function on the Fitbit.

Do I need the sleep tracking feature? Definitely not! I only wore my Fitbit at night for about a week right after I bought it and realized that this feature wasn’t for me. I only get 7+ hours of sleep on the weekends and would never meet my sleep targets (unless you consider 5 hours of sleep a night a healthy sleep target?). But, this feature could be interesting to those of you who actually sleep and want to monitor your sleep length and continuity.

Related Reading: Feeling Relaxed With Natural Calm (Magnesium Citrate Supplement)

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So….Do I Really Need It?

While I don’t feel a fitness tracker is a must-have item for fitness, I do use my Fitbit regularly when I exercise to track my calories burned and activity data. Overall, I don’t regret my Fitbit purchase because I do enjoy using it, as well as some of its dashboard features.

If you feel you need a little extra push to meet your exercise targets or simply want something to remind you to get in your 10,000 recommended daily steps, consider using a fitness tracker. There are varying types of trackers as different price points.

Do I think a fitness tracker will keep you fit? That honestly depends on the person using it. Some people may be more motivated to be fit to hit their Fitbit targets, while others may find it useless. Consider your views on exercise and fitness before making the investment.

Don’t feel you need to the most expensive tracker with all the bells and whistles if you are simply looking for a step tracker – there are cheaper options out there! Just download an app to your phone and you’re good to go!

Fitbit offers the Fitbit Versa lite for around $100 that tracks steps taken, calories burned, floors climbed and distance. Many other brands offer fitness trackers as well.

 

Anyone already using a fitness tracker? How do you like it?

 

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