A Lit­tle Background

Though not really a New Year’s res­o­lu­tion, I started work­ing on my health and fit­ness since the begin­ning of the year. Given then I am a tech and data nerd, it should come as no sur­prise that I found way to track my health & fit­ness activ­i­ties with apps and online tools. I tried work­ing with a trainer on FitOr­bit for a while. After a month, I found that the expe­ri­ence really didn’t meld well with my style. I took a lot of things that I learned from FitOr­bit and went back to the gym. Stay tuned for a post about my progress toward spe­cific weight and nutri­tion goals.

After I moved on from FitOr­bit, I wanted to find a pro­gram and/or app that would allow me to keep track of my food intake as well as daily exer­cise. There are a lot of apps and online tools avail­able, but I decided on My Fit­ness Pal. In a nut­shell, MyFit­ness­Pal has a huge data­base of food (both raw ingre­di­ents and pre­pared foods). I enter my the com­po­nents of each meal through­out the day, and all the calo­ries are dis­played. I also enter my car­dio and/or strength activ­i­ties and MyFit­ness­Pal makes caloric cal­cu­la­tions, show­ing a com­plete pic­ture of my intake and calo­ries spent. If you like data, par­tic­u­lar at the gran­u­lar level, a ser­vice like MyFit­ness­Pal will serve you well. If the idea of man­u­ally enter­ing infor­ma­tion about each meal and exer­cise is syn­ony­mous with fin­ger­nails on a chalk­board, these tools and the fit­ness bands, dis­cussed below, might not be for you.

I use the MyFit­ness­Pal app daily. That account is synced to my Fit­Bit account, because I have a Fit­Bit Aria wire­less scale, which I love! The scale auto­mat­i­cally uploads my weight and BMI directly into my account wire­lessly, using my home WiFi net­work. All of that data between Fit­Bit car­ries over to my account with MyFit­ness­Pal. Con­versely, all of the food and exer­cise that I enter into MyFit­ness­Pal shows up in Fit­Bit. To make it all work, I only rely on Fit­Bit for weight, BMI. Every­thing else is han­dled by MyFit­ness­Pal. It takes some­one ded­i­cated to enter­ing food and exer­cise reg­u­larly to make apps like Fit­Bit or MyFit­ness Pal really work for you. I am, admit­tedly, a bit obses­sive, so enter­ing all of that infor­ma­tion is not a prob­lem. Carla, on the other hand, doesn’t want a device that requires a lot of man­ual input. Thus, the Jaw­bone UP wouldn’t work, sim­ply because of because of the man­ual sync require­ment. She might like the Flex, but only for the daily steps and sleep data. How­ever, she already has a pretty advanced pedome­ter, so unless the sleep data is really impor­tant to her, I don’t know if it’s worth pur­chas­ing.
 

Fit­Bit Flex

A cou­ple of co-workers have the Jaw­bone UP fit­ness band/tracker. Another pop­u­lar band is the Nike Fuel­Band. After doing a lit­tle read­ing I decided to pre-order the Fit­Bit Flex back in March.

The Flex arrived last Wednes­day. After a nearly a week with the band, I am try­ing to decide whether to send it back. It’s not that the device is doing less than what was adver­tised. I guess that hav­ing it on my wrist and look­ing at the data col­lected feels more like a nov­elty than some­thing actu­ally use­ful in my pur­suit of fit­ness and nutri­tion goals.

The Flex band tracks your steps, and it will also pro­vide infor­ma­tion on your sleep pat­terns. You can set step or dis­tance goals using the online Dash­board or the mobile app. The band has a small series of LED lights that show how you’re doing, 20 per­cent per light, toward your goal. The lights also pro­vide a visual con­fir­ma­tion when you tap the band to start or stop the sleep mode. The Flex also has a silent alarm, that must be set online or through the app, that vibrates. I usu­ally wake up before the alarm goes off, so I can’t say that it’s some­thing that would wake me for a deep slum­ber, or sleep walk­ing (see the next para­graph). The Jaw­Bone Up has an “idle” fea­ture that will vibrate the band if you don’t move for a set amount of time. That’s a nice “get off your ass and walk around” feature.

Other infor­ma­tion, such as nutri­tion, and phys­i­cal activ­i­ties that can’t be tracked by the Flex (cycling, swim­ming, etc.) has to be entered into your Fit­Bit account man­u­ally. Speak­ing of enter­ing infor­ma­tion, the Fit­Bit can sync with your account through your com­puter. There’s a small USB wire­less adapter that comes in the box with the Flex. You sim­ply plug the adapter into one of the USB slots on your com­puter, and as long as the Flex band is within 20 feet of the com­puter, it will con­nect. I opted to sync the band with my phone. The other way to sync the data from the Flex with your Fit­Bit account is through the mobile app. The FLex uses a low-power Blue­tooth 4.0 con­nec­tion to sync with the Fit­Bit app on your smart­phone. The Flex will sync auto­mat­i­cally if you keep the Fit­Bit app run­ning in the back­ground, oth­er­wise you have to open the app to force a sync.

As it stands, the only real addi­tive fea­ture of the Flex to my health & fit­ness is count­ing my steps. I typ­i­cally work­out twice a day (Monday-Thursday) and once on Fri­days and Sat­ur­days. I was look­ing to cap­ture the steps I talk all day — hop­ing that it would moti­vate me to walk more dur­ing the day, and take pub­lic trans­porta­tion to work instead of dri­ving. I have fid­dled with the cal­i­bra­tion on the Fit­Bit dash­board, but still can’t seem to get an accu­rate read­ing of my actual steps. For instance, this morn­ing (it’s almost 10 am), my dash­board shows that I’ve walked about 800 steps, but I have only been milling around the house. There’s no way I’ve walked 800 steps. It’s clear to me that the Flex is less accu­rate than the Fit­Bit one, solely because it resides on my wrist. I wear the Flex on my non-dominant hand. You can go into the set­tings for the Flex to indi­cate which hand you’re using to wear the Flex. You can also man­u­ally enter your stride to cal­i­brate the steps. I found that fid­dling with the set­tings has made a dif­fer­ence in the data col­lected and presented.

Track­ing my sleep data is some­thing that made the Flex more com­pelling than the Fuel­Band, or some other bands/trackers on the mar­ket. Again, after a few days, I find myself a bit let down, or even incred­u­lous, by the data pre­sented. I am at a loss to fig­ure out how the Flex (or the Jaw­bone UP) knows when I am awake through­out the night. I can see the dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between rest­less and deep sleep (pre­sum­ably because I am still), but how in the world does the band know that I am awake? Appar­ently the Jaw­bone Up will can­cel the sleep mode when it detects steps. Work­ing on the assump­tion that I am not a sleep walker, I am call­ing BS on the some part of the Flex’s sleep stats. FitBit’s pre­sen­ta­tion of the sleep data is a bit crude. I like Jaw­bone Up’s inter­face much bet­ter. I don’t mind gran­u­lar data. In fact, gran­u­lar is desired. I find it a bit too con­ve­nient (read inac­cu­rate) that I had inter­vals of rest­less sleep — all 11 min­utes in length. That, or I am an amaz­ingly con­sis­tent with my restlessness.

As for the phys­i­cal band … My first impres­sion was that I don’t care for it that much. Even though it’s on my non-dominant hand, it kind of gets in the way — par­tic­u­larly when I’m typ­ing. The metal snap that con­nects the two ends of the band is right in the mid­dle of the under­side of your wrist (read: right where your wrist con­tacts a sur­face). In fair­ness, it’s not as bad today as it was the first cou­ple days.

Other than a wed­ding ring, I’m not much for jew­elry. I used to be a big watch guy, but now I don’t wear one. Per­haps because I don’t wear a watch or any other type of bracelet, the Flex, ini­tially, was quite notice­able; and not in a good way. It is def­i­nitely a chal­lenge to snap on. How­ever, bar­ring deep water div­ing, you’ll only have to take it off once a week to charge. If you are used to wear­ing watches, a rub­ber “cause” band, or some­thing on your wrist, you’ll prob­a­bly be ok — other than fight­ing to get the band securely fas­tened. After five days, com­fort is less of an issue. It’s also worth not­ing that bands look like they will show wear pretty soon. Addi­tion­ally, the lit­tle plas­tic “screen” on the Flex band that shows your LED pro­gres­sion lights can scratch rather eas­ily. For­tu­nately, the Flex is really a rub­ber wrist band that houses a pretty small tracker, and you can pur­chase other bands. I saw a three-pack of Flex bands on Ama­zon that gives you the option to change the band color. That’s pretty cool. You’ll need to be care­ful with the USB charg­ing cord that comes with the Flex band. It’s the only way to the charge the device. The charge con­tacts on the Flex track are proprietary.

In the end, I can see how a num­ber of peo­ple view the Flex, UP, or Fuel­Band, as nov­el­ties or fit­ness fad items. There’s some truth in that, par­tic­u­larly since none of the bands have heart rate mon­i­tors or GPS built in. How­ever, these bands could serve as a visual and vibrat­ing reminder or moti­va­tor for many to get up and out. For some peo­ple that’s needed.

I am pretty self-motivated, but I love data. I’ve shown that I am will­ing to drop some coin for a device, the Aria scale, the auto­mat­i­cally syncs data that I could very well enter myself. How­ever, I must admit that I am rather let down with the Flex, so far and it just might be headed back to Fit­Bit. I think that I will give it another week.

Do you use a pedome­ter, fit­ness tracker or band? If so, please share what you use and your expe­ri­ence.
 

Update (23 May)

I decided to return the Flex.