Looking for Fit Bit Disers!

[contempory4me]

Anyone else using the Fit Bit? I just got mine last week and love it! If you have one I would love to here tips for increasing steps. I love that you can link to friends. My SIL is at WDW and killing me this week in steps! I even bought one for my sister for her bday so that she can join in the fun as well. I am a slightly competitive person so this approach will work for me. Incidentally the Fit Bit Zip was only $52 at Amazon (normally $60).

 

[Pinkflmngo]

Yes, I have one also (the Zip) and I love it!! I try to walk or run almost every day and have accumulated 2,132,690 steps since I started in mid-October. I got one for my 87-year-old mother and she tries to get 5000 every day. The fitbit is great for telling you how much you move without really thinking about it, i.e. in the grocery store, parking lots, working in the yard.

Have fun moving! You will love it. If you ride a bike (regular or stationary) it helps the count if you hook it to the hem of your pants/shorts while you ride. I found that if it was on my waistband the steps did not register accurately. Be sure you check your stride length and enter that on your profile.

Lynda

 

[heathere3]

I'm another Fitbit lover! I've had mine now since Christmas. We went home to Canada for a visit and I accidently left it on the table at home and I was stunned how much I missed checking to see how I was doing. I nearly went and bought another one!

 

[wiigirl]

Love my Fit Bit!

 

[contempory4me]

So great to see so many Fit Bit users. How many of you set your stride? I didn't want to mess with it and figured that I had a baseline to start with and would increase it, not too concerned with accuracy of miles traveled.

 

[kgsmith]

I love my Fitbit One!

 

[Pinkflmngo]

Stride length is one of the reasons I never had much luck with pedometers of any kind. This time, however, I wanted to do it right. It is not hard to do, just takes a little time and a little math. It is also really necessary to have a pathway that is known to be a mile. If you have a GPS watch or some other kind of distance measure, it will be easy. This is how I did it:

1. I went to the park and right before I started my GPS watch (Garmin Forerunner 205 -- LOVE IT), I wrote down the starting number on my Fitbit.
2. I started my watch and walked at my usual pace and stride until I reached 1 mile. At that point, I wrote down the Fitbit number on the paper I had in my pocket.
3. I walked another mile and wrote down the number. I repeated this until I reached 5 miles.
4. Subtract the 4-mile number from the 5-mile number, 3-mile from 4-mile, etc. until you have 5 amounts. These represent the number of steps you took in each of the 5 miles. They should be approximately 2000 to 2200 steps. If you don't want to do 5 miles, then do 3 miles or whatever. The more numbers you have, the more accurate it will be.
5. Figure the average of your numbers. Add your 5 numbers and divide by 5 or however many numbers you started with. My 5-mile average was 2184 or something like that.
6. Now it gets a little harder. Divide the number of inches in a mile (63360) by the average number of steps you take in a mile (in my example: 2184) and you will get the average length of your stride (in my example: 29 inches or 2 feet 5 inches). Enter that distance in feet and inches on your Fitbit profile.

If that is "too much information", according to a lot of websites, the average woman has a 24 inch stride. I am 5'3" and found that my stride is a lot more than average. If you are walking with a purpose, I bet you would be longer too. I estimated my running stride length would be the same as my walking because I am a lousy runner.

I have crosschecked the Fitbit distance with the Garmin distance and found it to be surprisingly accurate.

Good luck,
Lynda

 

[contempory4me]

Great info Lynda! thank you! Do you know what the default stride length is? I am only 5'0" so my stride length may be shorter than average.
Kate

 

[indygirl99]

Fitbit bases your stride on the information you enter, height, male, female etc.

I find that Fitbit is pretty accurate for me on the default setting.

I my fitbit. Have used it to let me know what I do at the parks, what I do at work, and what I do for my runs including a half marathon. Seeing the numbers has been a total motivation for me.

There is a DIS community board and I think I copied it correctly.

http://www.fitbit.com/group/22CL6G come join us.

 

[Pinkflmngo]

I'm glad that Indygirl answered your question about the default stride length. I did not realize that the Fitbit default would be different for everyone based on gender and height. I just thought that was the default for everybody until they customized it. I don't remember what my default was. I did find that my own calculation based on actually walking 5 miles was longer than the default by quite a bit. I took a few inches off of my calculation because I know I don't walk around the house at the same length that I do when on a "real walk".

Of interest, I rechecked several walking/running websites this morning and the average female (whoever that is) has a length of 26 inches (not 24 as I said in a previous post). Because you are only 60 inches, I guess you would be below average, but not in a bad way, haha. A suggested calculation for females is your height in inches x 0.413. For men it is 0.415. That is probably how Fitbit figures it. So by that your length would be 60 x 0.413 = 24.78. You might round that down to 24 because many of your steps will be around the kitchen, etc., where you are taking much shorter strides. That might be a more fair estimate of the distance you travel in a day.

 

[Pinkflmngo]

Thanks Indygirl for the Fitbit group link. I just joined the group and posted a response!