4 Sneaky Ways To Make The Most Of Your Fitbit

For those few people who don't know, I'm a proud member of the cult of Fitbit.  Save for the 10 days last January I was between Fitbits (which we shall refer to as the "Fitbit vs. Dryer Incident of 2015"), I've had one of these little gizmos on me ever since I bought it way back in October of 2013.  Not satisfied with having one on myself, I promptly got my brother, mother, and father to get one as well.  I think I also got a few friends to buy them...  And random people on Twitter.  And a lady at Best Buy who was actually just looking for a watch...

Anyway, long story short, I'm a Fitbit fan.

Inevitably when I come across another Fitbit user, we ask each other the same question:

"How do you use your Fitbit?"

Now we know we're not asking each other how to use a Fitbit.  We're asking each other how we use our Fitbit.  That little secret that we have in our back pocket (or our wrist) that helps us take our Fitbit usage to the very next level.  After all, the more we get out of our Fitbits, the more we're getting out of ourselves.  

So, to answer that time-honored Fitbit Fanatic question, here's the five ways I get the most out of my Fitbit:

1.  Fitbit Premium

Yes, Fitbit is nice enough to give you plenty of tools to get an understanding of your overall activity level and you can function quite well with it.  But Fitbit Premium brings all of that to the next level.  It turns your Fitbit from that workout buddy you check in with at the end of the day into that coach who's in your ear telling you to move yo' butt.  From in-depth food and sleep charts to a virtual trainer, it's a great investment in your Fitbit and yourself.  Frankly, I think the trainer feature is worth its weight in gold.  It develops a 12 week plan that gradually and reasonably increases in intensity, leading you to the overall goal of being more active and, in turn, healthier.  I give that plan developed by my virtual trainer that bumped me out of my "lightly active" lifestyle while dealing with Lyme Disease into an "active" lifestyle.  

A sneak peak of my 12-week training report via Fitbit Premium

2.  Set the alarm

Most Fitbits come with a silent, vibrating alarm feature that gently buzzes you out of your peaceful slumber without waking up the neighbors.  Handy right?  Well, it's handier than you think...  I use my alarm daily, and it's not to wake up (that's why Samsung gave us cell phones).  I set my alarm to remind me to get up and move.  Every day at 9am, 12pm, 4pm, and 8pm my little Fitbit Charge HR hums away on my wrist, reminding me that legs are made for walking, not sitting.  After instituting my alarm-based reminders, I've gone from an average of 7,000 steps a day to 12,000.  Bonus: because the alarm is a silent, vibrating alarm, nobody else has to know that I have to set an alarm to remind myself to not be lazy and there's no disruption of my yoga class.

3.  Connect with other fitness-based apps

I'm always surprised by the number of people who don't know that Fitbit plays well with pretty much every other major fitness app.  From MyFitnessPal to Map My Run and even game apps like Wokamon, Fitbit is begging to share data that helps you make the most of your workouts, your eating, and everything in between.  For my money, the best app marriage that's ever been made was when Fitbit and Weight Watchers partnered up to calculate earned activity points based off of Fitbit's data.  Don't have any apps that you want to buddy up your Fitbit with?  At least check out StepStats which shows you just exactly how far you and your Fitbit have come.

4.  Know what you're looking at and what it means

I don't see the problem there...

I was one of those people that thought the sleep information was neat, but not particularly useful to much of anything.  Then I started to feel run down all the time and I couldn't place why.  That's when I gave that sleep tracker a second look.  Every night, I woke up between 2am and 3am and couldn't get back to sleep.  I tried to correlate that to the other information my Fitbit was tracking and it turns out the culprit was my nightly cup of tea at 8pm and the prolonged inactivity after 7pm.  When I bumped my goodnight tea to 7pm and spent 30 minutes doing a hard workout around 8pm, I saw a change in my sleep patterns for the better.  The moral of the story?  Fitbit gives you information, but it means nothing if you don't know how to use it and apply it.  So sit down, really reflect on what your day looks like and how you can challenge yourself.  This could mean anything from increasing your goals to identifying your weaknesses.  Looking to lose weight but you've plateaued?  Look at your stats and see if maybe it's time to bump up your activity level.  Getting your 10k per day easy breezy?  Reset your goal to 12k per day.  Look at how your performing and compare that to your goals then make adjustments.  That's what the data is there for.  And the more data you add, the more likely you can be successful.

15 days baby!

There are so many ways to really take your Fitbit up to the next level, it's hard to hone it down to only four...  There's the social challenges, the social media updates, the live tracking of activities, the GPS mapping of runs...  But I'm going to stick to my four favorite tricks because I think the number five is horribly unlucky and if I do more than five then people will start to wonder if I really love my Fitbit or if I'm obsessed with it.



If you have a Fitbit, it's begging you to use it in a way that makes you the best version of you that you can be.  Hopefully these tricks will help to point you to living that active lifestyle you've always wanted, or at the very least, delight your friends and irritate your competition on social media.  Because if I was going to give you guys five tips, activating your social media auto-shares would be it...  Because it's a fantastic way to find new friends and hold yourself accountable to your activity goals.  

But as I said, I don't like the number five, so I'll only be sharing four tips today.

Now everybody applaud me, I'm on a 15-day Fitbit streak of hitting my step goals.

Want to be my friend?  Find me, friend me, and let's do some challenges together.  

So let's discuss:

• What are your Fitbit secrets?
• The most creative way you've hit your 10k per day?
• What's your longest goal streak achievement?
• Fitbit says I've walked the length of Japan... Pretty impressive!