My reasons to give up on Fitbit may or may not resonate with you, but there are four main reasons I stopped.
No Change in Behavior
The primary reason I quit using my Fitbit is that it didn’t change my behavior in a significant way. Walking and running are consistent parts of my weekly routine. Having a Fitbit just logged me doing it. If having a fitness tracker of any kind would cause you to change your behavior, then I highly recommend getting one. For me, it made no difference in my overall level of activity.
Duplication of data
A second reason to give up my Fitbit is duplication in data recording. Running tracked with Runkeeper and the same steps logged with Fitbit result in duplicate data when merged into MyFitnessPal for calorie tracking. Double counting makes it less useful to me in tracking my overall calorie consumption and expenditure.
Side Note: While a fitness tracker isn’t a significant behavior modifier, logging my food consumption is definitely helpful in keeping my food intake in balance with my calorie expenditures. MyFitnessPal is the one food log I find myself sticking to.
Misleading Fitbit data
My third reason for giving up on Fitbit is erroneous data. I started riding a motorcycle for my daily commute sometime in 2013. Fitbit picks up vibrations from the motorcycle and translates those vibrations into an extra mile of steps each day. This makes the data untrustworthy from a quality standpoint. I realize that’s not something that applies to everyone, but if a motorcycle throws off the data, what other scenarios are making it less accurate?
Step Tracking Integration in Smartphones
The fourth reason to give up my Fitbit is reliable step tracking in smartphones. One of the reasons I started using the Fitbit was to capture more of my health data automatically. Sometime in late 2013 or early 2014 the majority of new smartphones started including enough sensors to accurately track your steps. Having an a separate device is no longer necessary. As noted in the video, I occasionally forget my Fitbit, but my smartphone goes with me everywhere.
UPDATE 25 February 2024: Would I still give up on Fitbit?
A decade passed since I originally recorded the video post here. I haven’t tried a Fitbit in those ten years. I started using an Apple Watch. Apple’s approach to closing the exercise and move rings on a daily basis is a better motivator for me than step counting, which was Fitbit’s primary feature in 2014.
Fitbit evolved over those 10 years and Google purchased the company. I suspect if I revisited Fitbit trackers like the Fitbit Inspire 3 pictured near the top of the article, my opinion might be quite different.
I stopped using Runkeeper sometime after writing this. Annual price increases and alternatives like Fitbit and Apple Watch filled the gap with integrated tracking.
