To think someone is cheating on their Fitbit?

[greenmidgetgems]

Totally minor and 1st world problem I know.

But is it actually possible to get 135000 steps in less than 3 days by just going about your day. That includes 65000 steps today alone.

For comparison I do between 8000 and 14000 a day. DH is training for an ultra marathon and did 65000 steps on a 30 mile run.

my steps dropped off to about 120000 per day

People talk about their steps like they honestly believe that that is what they are achieving! Drives me mad. If someone is clearly telling you with actual real life indisputable maths that it's not possible then perhaps the tiny piece of plastic is the thing that is wrong.

wear you fitbits in your front pocket and see what steps you get. I wear mine in my pocket and in a day at home with my husband wearing his on his wristbjust pottering and walking the dog he gets almost TWICE as many steps as me. a grown adult can't seriously believe these numbers.

Front trouser pocket.

Mine isn't too bad for over counting but I wear it on my non dominant wrist and it doesn't pick up things like typing. It does count steps if I'm hula hooping but that's not surprising. My step counts tally with miles walked too and I've also compared a different one and a phone app.

My mil on the other hand...4 of us went on holiday all with some sort of step counter. Heights 5ft1, 5ft6, 2 guys around 5ft11. On days when we did the same trips and outings the guys would have the fewest steps, normally roughly agreeing with each other. Mine would be a bit higher step wise- I'm 5ft6- mil would be massively higher. One day it was something like 12000, 14000 and 21000.

which wrist is it on? It has to be on your less dominant one - I had mine on the wrong one to start with - who knew you could do so many steps standing still chopping carrots

35 mins minus 4 mins for stops 3,700 /31 mins = 119 steps per minute.... would be a pretty brisk walk but probably fairly accurate unless you are slower than that?

Yeah it's a brisk walk. Mainly because it's usually dark and bloody freezing and I want to get home to my wine.

I can clock up 10,000 on my hour long dog walk everyday

Like I said to a pp, realistically you can only do 10,000 steps in an hour at a running pace, it's 167 steps a minute which is pretty much physically impossible, its a 12 minute mile.

Most people are overestimating by going by these gadgets.

My hour long lunchtime walks, once I was in the habit, were about 6500 ish steps iirc. Covering a measurable 3 miles.

That is far more likely!

Folding washing gets me a couple of thousand...
Clapping enthusiastically racks them up too.

as does giving it to your toddler to run round the park with

Yeah, you do need to sanity check them. When going for a walk I use the View Ranger App as it has GPS and offline OS maps, the results do tie in sensibly with my Fitbit hr. The miles will never exactly be the same as one is gps and the other a simple steps x the device stride length. The number of steps and heart range zones do make sense with the distance and pace recorded on Viewranger.

If the device is vastly over estimating its not going to be good if you're using it to gauge how much to eat. One day last month I had a hangover and didn't move from the sofa, my fitbit estimated 1000 fewer calories than a day doing 23,000 steps. Hope no one thinks they are walking 30 miles a day and eats their body weight in biscuits

Check out Jason Manford (the comedian)'s FB post on this! It popped up on my feed today.....

I've had to try out clapping, it didn't change. Hope no one of my work week hustle has one that does that

They are obviously useless for the designed intent.

^ this!

I have wondered about getting a fitbit in the past, having read this thread I'm glad I saved my money! Some of the figures quoted here are so wildly inaccurate its obvious that the fitbit is counting far more than the steps.

Surely the whole point of a fitness watch is to get accurate stats? If it can't do that it might as well be chucked in the bin.

My sister has a pedometer and a fitbit.
She says that when she goes out for a walk they measure the same but when she is pottering around the house the fitbit goes crazy.

At the end of a reasonably active day with a long dog walk she will have 15,000 steps on the pedometer and 27,000 on the fitbit.

I have a job where I am on my feet all day but get few steps at work as my pedometer only counts steps when you have done 10 in a row.

My highest ever day in the nearly 2 years I have been logging my steps was 18,000 steps and that was when we were in Rome and I was bloody knackered I can tell you.

If I leave my phone charging near my husband, his snoring vibrates the floor. Woken up to a shiny award several times for doing 120,000 steps overnight! Silly thing

I think mine is pretty accurate! As I said, it clocks a 34 min brisk dog walk as 3700 steps which doesn't seem wildly wrong. Maybe I just keep my arms pretty still unless I'm walking...
On a day I do a fair amount of walking with the toddlers and including my dog walk I usually clock around 10000 steps. On days I don't do much it clocks around 3000.

Guys, if I don't do anything during a weekend (a common occurance) guess what? I don't get any steps. Like 1-2k tops from walking around my small flat and a bit extra if I actually do any cleaning etc.

The Fitbit has changed my life. I used to drive everywhere and used excuses. when I first got my Fitbit barely anybody had one so I didn't feel competitive and rarely hit 10k a day. I started to think where can I improve this? And now I walk all damn day (and gym and fitness classes) getting the Fitbit feedback really motivates me. But trust me you can't get away with not doing much! I have a friend list about 30 long and I can easily slip down that chart by driving the school run etc!

Agree that they're a good thing, even if not 100% accurate. Mine makes me move more than I would otherwise, so how can that be bad?

I think they are a good thing, but people need to keep an eye on them and beware of there limitations. If you really think that you are doing twice what you are really doing ,they might not be very helpful for you.

I have a Suunto Ambit3 Run for running and biking, which is extremely accurate as it is measuring real distance and speed. I'll survive with just that.

There's no point getting into competitions with my mates about who can jiggle their hand most in a 24hr period!

My steps go up when I'm driving the car!

I'm small (clue's in the name) and since I started step counting, I've realised what an advantage this is. 10,000 steps for me is only 3.5miles so pretty easy to achieve even with a desk job

I have a Suunto Ambit3 Run for running and biking, which is extremely accurate as it is measuring real distance and speed. I'll survive with just that

Well that's fab. For those that can't afford a Suunto Armbit 3, you can get a Fitbit for about half the price.
No one is saying you need both.

I have a different tracker (Jawbone) which seems pretty accurate, I've tested it a few times counting my steps over a certain distance, and it doesn't seem to get many fake readings (e.g. playing music, cleaning or similar don't give me lots of extra steps). But my DSis has a Fitbit and when we spent a few days together, doing pretty much exactly the same activity, hers was tracking massively more steps -sometimes almost double. She is shorter so maybe takes a few more steps for the same distance, but the trackers definitely seemed to differ as well.

As long as you're just comparing with your own performance though I don't suppose it matters too much - but more of a problem if you're competing against other people!