August 25, 2013: After years of using a basic, reliable Omron HJ-112 digital pedometer, I decided I wanted one that syncs steps with my Lose It! app that I use.  I still highly recommend the Omron.  You can put it in your pocket and forget it.  It saves a week’s worth of data, and you need to replace the battery about every six months (a standard CR-2032 watch battery).  And, perhaps most ideal, it’s very inexpensive, reliable, and sturdy.  It comes with both a clip and a leash, but I haven’t needed either, because my pockets are deep.  It does dual duty as a pocket watch.  If you take your purse (or murse) everywhere you go, you can keep it in there, too, and it will record your steps.  Obviously, I didn’t need a new pedometer, but I did get one, and I am finding it useful.

I’m starting this post three days after getting the Fitbit One. I believe there are currently three models available, and if you’re interested, you’ll want to see which one will work best for you.  I chose the Fitbit One, because it has a digital display, and I can just put it in my pocket — like I’m accustomed to doing already.

If I’m within 20 ft of the Wireless Sync Dongle or my cell phone with the Fitbit app on it, the Fitbit synchronizes automatically (this feature appears to be available on all models).  I could link the Fitbit app wtih my LoseIt! app.  The LoseIt! app appears to synch food diary entries (something I’ve heard critiqued as being a lacking feature on the Fitbit app) to Fitbit and the Fitbit steps to LoseIt!.   Not all other features do not appear to synchronize.  One important one does, and that’s the feature that’s intriguing me even more than the step counting feature.

Sleep.  The Fitbit One comes with a lightweight wrist band, and the Fitbit slips into a pocket in the wristband.  By pressing and holding the button on the Fitbit before I’m ready to go to sleep, I start a timer that runs all night until I press and hold the button again when I wake up in the morning.  While that timer is running, the Fitbit monitors my sleep patterns, uploads to the app in the morning, and I can see how long it took me to fall asleep, how many times I woke up during the night, and times I was restless.  I can also see at a glance how long my uninterrupted sleep cycles lasted.  This is fascinating, but what’s really fascinating is I find myself wanting to try to go to sleep and turn this thing on.  An apparent side benefit of that is, each night for the three nights I’ve used the capability so far, I’ve slept slightly differently.  The first night, I took a long time to fall asleep.  The last two nights I slept relatively well.  Then I have my longest period of sleep shortly after that — usually an hour to an hour and a half.  Then I tend to get restless.  The second night was the most interesting pattern.  Over six hours, I had one half hour period of a lot of restlessness and the rest of the night was relatively quiet.  The third night, I slept for over seven hours, and I noticed less knee pain the next day.  Could getting more sleep result in less knee pain (and other pains as well) over time? That’s something I’ll be watching between now and the time this post is scheduled to go live in four weeks.

August 31, 2013:  Perhaps not surprisingly, getting up at 3 am every night for a week results in plummeting sleep effectiveness percentages on the Fitbit.  I’d blame some of that on an uncomfortable mattress in San Antonio, but I think a lot of it is the 3 am wake up to start the soaker hoses to allow us to comply with our community’s watering restrictions enacted to cope with the ongoing drought.

September 5, 2013.  The Fitbit seems to record more steps than the Omron.  It may be more sensitive (it even records about 200 steps while I’m sleeping, and I don’t sleep walk), but I think this is attributable to normal differences between devices.  I carried them both in my pocket for the first couple of days, then I decided to go with just the Fitbit.  I still have a perfectly working Omron — does anyone want it?  I’ll be happy to ship to give a new home where it can be loved.  It’s a little scuffed, but it works (it will probably need a new battery fairly soon, but I’ll be happy to include a new one when I ship).

Battery life for the Fitbit.  After about a week and a half, the website told me one morning the Fitbit wanted to be charged.  It took about two hours to fully charge, so it was no hardship to do my usual computer routine while it charged and other sundry desk items during that time.  Contrasted with the Omron whose battery is good for six months, but I always overlooked the low battery icon (because I only looked at it one a week or so to record the week’s numbers) and wound up missing a few days of steps in the transition.

Then, of course, the Fitbit also tracks sleep and flights of stairs in addition to the mundane step counts.  The sleep tracking has been the surprisingly interesting feature.

If you’re interested in a Fitbit, check out the three versions available to see which one is right for you.  The iPhone app works very well.  It syncs with Lose It! on several things but not all.  I can’t use the iPad app, because it requires an iPad3 or newer, and I only have an iPad2.  The website dashboard has more data but doesn’t sync as smoothly as the iPhone app.  I’ll be happy to answer any questions I can.

One thing I’d like to see is a more complete app integration.  For instance, some Fitbit app items will update my Lose It! app, some Lose It! app items with update my Fitbit app, and some must be entered twice.  I think this is what I’ve figured out so far:

Lose It! will update Fitbit but Fitbit won’t update Lose It! (Note, I’m using a Premium version of Lose It!)

• food entries (Lose It! is widely regarded as having the superior food database as well as the bar code scanner, so this isn’t a bad thing, but if I enter a food in Fitbit, it won’t transfer to Lose It!, so there’s not point in entering food in the Fitbit app)

Fitbit will update Lose It! but Lose It! won’t update Fitbit

• steps (this was only bad for the day I bought the Fitbit and wanted to make a manual entry — the Fitbit kept automatically overriding my manual entry, and there’s no way to make a manual entry in Fitbit — which is understandable)
• sleep (LoseIt! only tracks sleep time, but the Fitbit app and web dashboard has a nice breakout — if I spring for the $50 a year Premium upgrade at the Fitbit site, I get a lot more exporting options and a few other features, which I haven’t explored extensively yet.  For now I’m waiting to see if there are more features I might want before spending the money.)

Entries must be made to both apps

• weight (if manually entered — if you use an Aria or similar Bluetooth scale, this may update both — I don’t know)
• water
• exercise minutes (except those credited by steps)

Has anyone else noticed more details about this?  Please share.

September 11, 2013  I switched the Fitbit from the wristband to the neck of my pjs, and the sleep efficiency jumped into the 90s with only minimal awakenings and restlessness — well, virtually no restlessness.  Starting tonight, I’ve switched it from normal to sensitive rating to see if that restores what I considered my normal readings from when I was wearing it on my wrist.