I have absolutely zero desire to have one, but I honestly think this is the first thing I've read or heard by anyone who has one and doesn't seem to love it.
Do you get rewards for meeting milestones or it's just they're providing a discount? We basically don't get reward money if we don't track with the fitbit.
Here's a hint to cheat, should you need to reach certain milestones- set it as if it's on your non-dominant hand then wear it on your dominant hand.
I had one for about two months. I was averaging 12000-14000 steps per day (yay, running) but for me tracking everything sent me into a very unhealthy mental place, because of course the point of tracking things is to win, and if I'm just competing with my own self-control then of course I can win, and I wound up thinking of calories as rewards for moving in a way I thought was pretty stupid for me. Everyone else I've talked to really finds it motivating, etc.
Then my friend washed her Zip and I gave her mine. Good riddance.
There are weekly competitions, and all sorts of other weekly prizes for participating (most improved, etc). Basically I do not plan on budgeting time in my schedule to increase my steps, so why am I bothering?
Here's a hint to cheat, should you need to reach certain milestones- set it as if it's on your non-dominant hand then wear it on your dominant hand.
Ours is the clip-to-your-clothing kind, so the more obvious way to cheat is to clip-to-your-four-year-old.
I honestly think this is the first thing I've read or heard by anyone who has one and doesn't seem to love it.
People who are inclined to spend $$ on a gadget like this are inclined to love it. Now that they are starting to be given away as freebies in the context of employee wellness, programs, the selection bias inherent in fitbit success stories is starting to become apparent.
My working theory is that wearable fitness devices are effective at getting people who are already obsessive about exercise to become even more obsessive. I have yet to see convincing evidence that they do anything to shake sedentary people out of their torpor. Or, more charitably, that they do so reliably enough to be cost-effective.
But hey, shiny object! Consumer engagement!
These opinions are so anathema to my employer that I am almost reluctant to post them under this pseud.
Either way, couldn't you just put it in a something padded and run it on the tumble cycle of your dryer?
The all-seeing eye of Sesamore Hillstreet is upon us.
We had a group-against-group competition (gameification! social pressure!) to get the most steps taken. One guy gave the fitbit to his son and paid him $20 to run up 10,000 steps. The son outsourced the task further by attaching the fitbit to the dog. The dog then lost the fitbit.
Oh, yeah, you can now buy a wearable activity tracker for your dog. The company claims that pet owners who use the device lose weight themselves, because they are more likely to be motivated to take the dog for a walk than to do it for themselves.
I think the main thing keeping me from doing cross fit ever other than everything about it is the word "burpee." What the fuck is that?
I have yet to see convincing evidence that they do anything to shake sedentary people out of their torpor.
Also people around Heebie U had anecdata of how it spurred them to start going for walks, but again selection bias - this is a group that wouldn't spend the money on a fitbit, but this program is opt-in.
I just went to our community page. The two people in the lead have over 200,000 steps. I am in 45th place (out of 58) with 54K steps. Neither of the two current winners are on campus right now - one is on sabbatical and the other is doing a study abroad semester-long program.
I have a Withings tracker and my phone counts steps too. The numbers are handy for reminding me when I've spent too many days inside, that's all. I don't see being obsessed by them.
I think the main thing keeping me from doing cross fit ever other than everything about it is the word "burpee." What the fuck is that?
It's how you cross from the outgroup to the ingroup. And then get back up again.
I have a Withings tracker
I keep reading this as a Withering tracker. Smearcase, maybe that is the tracker for you?
11: I refer you to the weaker form of my hypothesis in the same comment.
My working theory is that wearable fitness devices are effective at getting people who are already obsessive about exercise to become even more obsessive. I have yet to see convincing evidence that they do anything to shake sedentary people out of their torpor. Or, more charitably, that they do so reliably enough to be cost-effective.
Well, there's a big middle ground between sedentary and obsessive. I mentioned in a previous exercise/calorie thread that the latest iOS's Health app, which tracks steps, inspired me to do many, many more miles of walking than I previously did (on a good day I reach 10k, and only on the most sedentary do I not get above 5k with normal activities). I'm not remotely obsessive, and competition doesn't motivate me (much), but that nudge was sufficient to get me out there for one last walk, and to make that walk be more than a few blocks. I'm curious what my baseline will be now that the weather has turned; I wasn't exactly avoiding going out, even in the bitter cold, but there were surely marginal steps not taken when it was 5° with icy sidewalks.
I certainly don't plan to get an Apple Watch any time soon, but I am curious what it would be like to have the health/activity data a bit more accessible: it's easy enough not to open the Health app, but if you set the watch to keep you informed, there the data would be.
I haven't exercised since last Friday, and hence I haven't showered, well since Sunday, since my showers are tied to exercising usually, and it would take extra thought to carve out time and I hadn't thought about it. I'm starting to feel pretty greasy.
Several cow orkers wore them during MWC last week - as a result we confirmed what our feet already told us, you walk a hell of a lot, between 16 and 19km a day. (I didn't, but I did bring an IMSI-catcher detector app.)
Meanwhile the Grauniad had a great piece this weekend about the downsides of wiring yourself into a cybernetic sensor-effector loop: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/mar/07/fitness-addiction-ill-scarlett-thomas
(Hell, at least 1960s psych experiment subjects got free LSD for their pains.)
the more obvious way to cheat is to clip-to-your-four-year-old Roomba.
Anecdata from authority.
For me, Krugman (as always) gets it exactly right. Wearables can't do anything for the unmotivated*, but they can make the motivated much more effective.
Probably worth noting that some significant fraction of the overweight/out of shape are poor and/or overworked, which is to say they're the people who are battered by unpleasant choice** and so not really reachable by this sort of thing. IOW, wearables are yet another thing that boosts those who are already in a decent position while doing little to aid those at the bottom. Not exactly the fault of wearable makers - they're going where the market is, plus I doubt anyone on those teams has thought it through in these terms - but it's a big handicap to that kind of approach.
*that's not quite the right term for heebs, but she's not motivated to do the thing FitBit is trying to get her to do
**you know what I mean. We've talked about it before, the way that life in poverty exhausts our decision-making apparatus, such that making the decisions we know are better/preferable becomes almost literally too hard. We're all susceptible to this, but poverty (and overwork) get us there faster, more consistently.
Since I converted to the pedestrian lifestyle, just getting to and from work is 4.5 miles a day. I have no interest in tracking things beyond that. I assume that sustained walking at a brisk pace for 20+ minutes is better, fitness-wise, then getting up and walking to the office down the hall and suchlike (I have no idea, actually, but it makes sense).
Wearables can't do anything for the unmotivated*, but they can make the motivated much more effective.
I think there's a large group of slightly tuned-out boomers for whom a thing like a fitbit is useful. Kind of set in their ways, aging but not quite old yet, their kid or their work bribes them with a fitbit, and it nudges them toward being more active.
I've found the way to drive up my steps count, at least for the wrist-wearable version, is things that involve repetitive arm motion- shoveling snow, chipping ice, painting, sanding, etc. IYKWIM.
Since I converted to the pedestrian lifestyle, just getting to and from work is 4.5 miles a day. I have no interest in tracking things beyond that.
#humblewalk
24: Actually, I thought that current thinking was that for weight gain/loss/maintenance/whatever, differing levels of incidental activity were the explanation for a lot of puzzling interpersonal differences. The person with a 'high metabolism' is likely to be doing a lot of fidgeting/pacing and so on that isn't perceived as activity, but that adds up.
27: Hey, I earned my bragging rights during the last few weeks of single digit temperatures in the morning.
Front page posters, can someone with the keys to the blog please fix the pseud slippage in 17?
28: I always assumed that the puzzling interpersonal difference was secret drinking.
I find trackers useful for getting over things - pneumonia, sprains - because I don't seem to have a natural sense of where I am between sessile & as-I-ever-was. Keeping my number near a slowly rising target is useful.
The rest of the time the gamification is slightly irrational-making.
Academic Lurker, my PT has been telling me that walking a little bit every half hour is as important as a big lump of exercise.
I hadn't heard 28, but it makes sense to me. I can't talk on the phone while sitting*, which used to drive officemates crazy, and when I was young and "had a fast metabolism", I was a lot more likely to run places (not jogging, but like running from the car to the door of the store) or jump over things or whatever.
*often the person on the other end will start to tell me a phone number or something, and I'm 2 rooms away from my desk, leading me to hustle back ridiculously. Last night I made thank you calls to donors for the M/dw/fe Center, and I took advantage of a mild evening to do it while walking around outside.
33.last: yeah, more and more it seems that the evidence is that anything that breaks sedentariness is a win. Ideally you'd have heart-raising activity as well as ongoing mild activity, but neither extreme is (appreciably) better than the other.
I misplaced mine a week ago, I think after a workout class. It's still checking in a couple of times a day, so I know it's around here *somewhere*, but it's maddening that I can't find it.
See, the thing that confuses me is why to wear some kind of trackable thing provided by your employer. I mean, you're actually providing them with health data with your name on it, which seems like the world's biggest no-no to me, regardless of whether you're doing more or fewer steps.
I actually am pretty darn active* and I'm still paying about $50/month extra on my health insurance because I won't do my employer's incredibly invasive health coaching/medical history interview stuff. They ask you all kinds of stuff about your household, your partner, your family health history...just wild stuff, and the guy who called to try to conduct my first one had absolutely no idea about data security. Plus they don't actually disaggregate the data, apparently, just turn it over to the employer. When the guy told me that I didn't believe him - I thought he was just clueless. But it actually turned out to be true. And what's more - you can't participate in any of the employer-provided discount fitness things without doing the health interview. I tried to sign up for one and it was all "oh, we ask a few health questions" and then "a few questions" turned out to be all kinds of shit absolutely not relevant to, like, discount mat pilates courses.
*I have added weight-lifting, pilates and a bunch of other stuff to my usual cardio and I've morphed in recent months from "kind of fattish but fairly springy looking" to "kind of fattish but also kind of tank-like".
Would it be possible to just say "Don't Know" or lie your way through the questionnaire? I don't think I'd give away my health history to my employer for $600, but that's way above my price for telling lies about things that I don't think are somebody's business.
38.2: Get them to start asking about how many guns you have in your home and you can enlist the 2nd Amendment nutters on your side!
Our pediatrician always asks about guns. I assume he's worried about unsecured guns and say 'No.'
38: Totally agree. I'm vehemently opposed to employer "wellness" programs because employers should not be encouraged to stick their noses into their employees' personal lives.
43: Objectively pro-metabolic syndrome.
The trackers seem so ultra Anglo Saxon to me, sort of grim and punitive OR tight lipped prissy competitive, and zero sense of moderation or perspective. How do they measure the pleasure of a late evening stroll with your beloved? Or a rousing roll in the hay on a weekend afternoon? Not to mention the profoundly satisfying mental and aesthetic training of a meticulous but slooooow dance class?
So um no - not interested.
Anglo Saxons will get you every time.
The trackers seem so ultra Anglo Saxon to me, sort of grim and punitive OR tight lipped prissy competitive, and zero sense of moderation or perspective. How do they measure the pleasure of a late evening stroll with your beloved? Or a rousing roll in the hay on a weekend afternoon? Not to mention the profoundly satisfying mental and aesthetic training of a meticulous but slooooow dance class?
I think it's a sort of blinking display that reads "12:00".
44: I like to think that my antipathy is supported by science.
33 is an interesting point. I recently aggravated an old knee injury running around with my dog. With my unstable joint playing poorly with the icy, uneven sidewalks I was shocked at how quickly my mediocre cardio went completely to shit.
Most doctors agree that you shouldn't injure your knee.
Nobody has made an app for that yet, in case somebody is looking for a side project.
See, the thing that confuses me is why to wear some kind of trackable thing provided by your employer. I mean, you're actually providing them with health data with your name on it, which seems like the world's biggest no-no to me, regardless of whether you're doing more or fewer steps.
Heebie U doesn't get any data. It's just a Fitbit, I had to sign up with the company, but I am 100% certain that Heebie U would not pay for the data, which would only be the number of steps I take per day.
I don't have any sense of scale for fitness goals measured in steps. How many steps are in a mile? And how many swift strokes of the wrist are in an average male masturbation session?
For me, at this moment, 3,271 steps is supposedly 1.37 miles.
I suppose I'm shorter than the average person.
I really don't get fitness wearables at all, but then I don't really do fitness deliberately so it's not like I would. If you want to walk more, just walk more. I don't see why measuring steps makes any more sense than looking at your watch.
so ultra Anglo Saxon
One is moved to wonder, what the fuck does this even mean?
I haven't showered, well since Sunday
You know how you can say something out loud, and the world doesn't stop, and you feel like you've unloaded some of your shame? Well, this is just gross.
I'm telling you, I've found the perfect way to get and stay in shape: buy a house at least 4 miles from work, at a job with easy access to a locker room with a shower, stay at that job years longer than you wanted to, and bike to work regularly. Be sure to do this in one of the metropolitan areas with the worst traffic in the country so that driving to work would save no time, and in a climate where biking is viable almost year-round. It's easy!
See, the thing that confuses me is why to wear some kind of trackable thing provided by your employer. I mean, you're actually providing them with health data with your name on it, which seems like the world's biggest no-no to me, regardless of whether you're doing more or fewer steps.
In theory your personal health information is held at one remove from your employer, who isn't allowed to peek. But the privacy protections there are leakier than they should be. I sold my info (including blood draw) to the wellness manager for a $600+ annual premium discount, but Mrs. Roosevelt refused to do the same because of privacy concerns.
The ACA actually encourages the practice (THANKS, OBAMACARE!). The theory is that employers collectively bear most of the health risk for the under-65 population (because of the prevalence of self-insurance), and they also have a fair degree of influence over the insured (the employees, if not the dependents). So if anyone is going to have the incentive and the ability to figure out how to influence health behaviors, it's large employers. To date, the evidence is thin that employer wellness interventions are cost effective, but the idea is that you let a thousand flowers bloom and some successful models will eventually emerge.
Employer interventions are most likely to be cost effective at the "top of the pyramid", with the small number of patients who account for the majority of healthcare expenditures. Programs that get people who have unmanaged chronic conditions into a proper plan of care have a good chance of being cost effective. Blanket biometric screening to flag Frowner as a high risk of developing coronary artery disease or Type II diabetes is more questionable. Interventions targeted at getting Moby to walk a little more or drink a little less have very weak evidence for cost effectiveness.
58.last: come on, you caught the thing where she's solo parenting all nine of her kids in her dirt-floored hovel while her husband's been conscripted to fight the Hun, right? Give poor heebs a break.
I'm really bad at managing to regularly do any sort of proper exercise but I like to walk a lot, so I wonder how I'd measure up on these things. Not enough to want to actually buy a device, though. But I get irritated when people don't want to walk short distances, like last night when my hosts insisted on driving me the mile or so between campus and restaurant for dinner.
let a thousand flowers bloom
Obamacare = Socialism, you heard it right here.
The theory is that employers collectively bear most of the health risk for the under-65 population (because of the prevalence of self-insurance), and they also have a fair degree of influence over the insured (the employees, if not the dependents). So if anyone is going to have the incentive and the ability to figure out how to influence health behaviors, it's large employers.
(a) EWwwwwww, yuck.
(b) I sure wish this logic had worked a bit better to convince large employers of what it really should have convinced them of, namely, to support single-payer with all their might.
As the great philosopher Steven Wright wrote in the Bible, "Everywhere is walking distance, if you have the time."
I will never understand why the financial advantages of a single-payer system didn't line up every single business interest in lockstep (besides the insurance industry).
58
so ultra Anglo Saxon
One is moved to wonder, what the fuck does this even mean?
Puritan? WASPy?
Puritan? WASPy?
Paying wergild? Building a meadhall? Killing Grendel's mother?
The ACA actually encourages the practice (THANKS, OBAMACARE!). The theory is that employers collectively bear most of the health risk for the under-65 population (because of the prevalence of self-insurance), and they also have a fair degree of influence over the insured (the employees, if not the dependents). So if anyone is going to have the incentive and the ability to figure out how to influence health behaviors, it's large employers.
THANKS, OBAMACARE! This is an example of something that, while true and arguably it will even be effective (arguably...), it is taking bad elements of the current system and, under the guise of working with those existing elements, is both reinforcing them and introducing brand new bad elements of its own, in a way that is so perfectly emblematic of the worst aspects of neoliberalism.
67: They get too much pleasure out of having the ability to terrorize their employees with the prospect of suddenly being left uninsured. That explanation works for the pre-Obamacare days, I don't know about now.
I will never understand why the financial advantages of a single-payer system didn't line up every single business interest in lockstep (besides the insurance industry).
I'd say the answer is mostly ideological solidarity / instinctive suspicion of government. But I will challenge your premise a little bit. The healthcare industry (hospitals, most doctors, anyone who sells anything to or through either one) despises single payer almost as much as the insurers do. The opposition of providers, not insurers, is the main reason we didn't get a robust public option.
I think it's a sort of blinking display that reads "12:00".
A clock that's blinking "8"s
63: if you have an apple doohickey there are apps that work well (we've talked about them before and people have claimed they -- specifically Moves -- aren't as accurate as the wrist thingies, but there's a guy in my lab who has both a wrist thingie and an apple doohickey and he claims the correlation between Moves and thingie is pretty good).
Fitbit just emailed me to say I've earned a Marathon badge. It's taken me half of March to cover the distance that some people cover in four hours, hooray!
I regret putting my data even in fitbit's cloud, let alone an employer. The Dwarf Lord refuses to and found a just-local tracker with some memory.
They get too much pleasure out of having the ability to terrorize their employees with the prospect of suddenly being left uninsured.
I think you meant to say, "Employee benefits strategy is a key lever for human capital managers to drive employee retention and loyalty."
I regret putting my data even in fitbit's cloud, let alone an employer
Especially after the first generation product shipped with the function that tracked sexual activity set by default to "share".
75: My iPhone is terribly, hilariously bad at judging how far I've actually moved in a given day. Plus the UI for a given day is atrocious.
I think you meant to say, "Employee benefits strategy is a key lever for human capital managers to drive employee retention and loyalty."
DYAC
I think you meant to say, "Employee benefits strategy is a key lever for human capital managers to drive employee retention and loyalty."
Only if it is tax deductible.
84: yeah I think that's pretty bad. I was specifically talking about Moves.
Stupid A3 paper. Who sends documents formatted for A3 paper?
Who sends documents formatted for A3 paper?
People who want to include a very detailed diagram that needs to be large enough to be readable?
I had to reset a half of dozen things to get that to use regular paper.
89: Because we don't have that here by default.
Right. The whole problem is that the printer was waiting for me to use the hand-feeder tray to add some made-up paper size. It did not want to let go of the idea that I was going to put in some strange paper size until I canceled stuff at the printer and at the computer.
Why did the US and Europe never manage to agree on a standard set of paper sizes? The discrepancy is annoying.
Europe put all of its effort into more important research.
I like to think that Napoleon and those other guys just put such things in the laundry.
but there's a guy in my lab who has both a wrist thingie and an apple doohickey and he claims the correlation between Moves and thingie is pretty good).
I stacked my iPhone's normal Health app (or whatever it's called) against my mom's fitbit when she visited, and they were generally only out by about 100 steps or less, which totally could be explained by individual things like a bathroom break, etc, so despite my initial skepticism they do seem roughly in tune with each other for things like walking.
96: Fascists said "Blood and soil" by way of euphemism.
97: Yeah, when you're talking about 10k steps, who cares if it misinterprets the odd soup-stir or what have you? "Oh noes, I've only been achieving 9900 steps per day! Now I'll die sooner!"
That said, I wish it didn't interpret bicycling (or at least vigorous biking; I'm not sure how it's counting pedal strokes) as walking. When I did a century last month, it put me at 100k steps or something. Hint: If I'm maintaining 12 mph for more than an hour at a go, I'm almost certainly not on foot.
The Fitbit doesn't have a GPS, does it? If it's just an accelerometer, it can't tell how far or fast you go, just try to interpret certain acceleration patterns as steps.
Nope. But I gave my height, so it has a crude measure of my stride length.
What I've learned is that childcare uses many more steps than teaching or Xfit.
101: So does my eight-dollar, third-of-an-ounce pedometer. I'm sure the Fitbit has some attractive features, but I like having something losing which is no problem.
I've completely accepted, even if no one else has and honestly no one cares anyways, that I overwhelmingly comment here from my phone and am thus doomed to loony ellipticalness and can't be bothered to spell it all out anyways even if on a full keyboard but excuse me? Ultra Anglo Saxon with *similes in the same sentence* and you ask what it means? "One" is moved to question your reading comprehension.