I lost 35 lbs my wife lost more but she would not want me to say the number!

After Hurricane Sandy we had to walk up and down 36 flights of stairs because our building lost power. We made 36 flights very quickly and my heart rate (Heart Rate iPhone app) returned to normal very quickly. (Sorry not going to share too much here lol). If we had tried this before we would have been DOA half the way. We made several trips up and down over the course of a couple days and we had to walk from downtown to mid-town for many things because so much of the area was without power.

Since you got the fitbit or since you decided to start exercising?

I've exercised regularly since the age of 22 when my ballerina girlfriend dumped me for someone effectively identical to me in every major way except that he was ripped and he could dance (and oh yeah, Atari ST versus Amiga). He and I have even indirectly intersected over the years. That event was both heartbreaking and catalytic for me. I have been a fitness freak ever since.

"Big things have small beginnings" to quote David from _Prometheus_.

Anyway, the Fitbit uncovered that I wasn't walking enough even though I had a pulse of 50 or so and all my vital signs were more or less awesome. My response was to address that immediately. But that does not seem to be the norm. The norm (at least in America) is to return to denial. A solution for that IMO is the killer wearable business model.

Well, you probably had the Amiga 1000, as I did. We jumped in early and suffered for it. They shitcanned the 1000, and it cost you a ballerina.

Somehow you overcame the bitterness and turned it into a positive.

To be clear, you lost 35 lbs after getting and as a result of the fitbit?

In my case, 13 pounds, and yes 100% directly attributable to the mindful state induced by wearing the fitbit. But as I've said in my other two posts in this thread, my response to the information it provided does not seem to be the norm.

Or as the old joke goes: How many psychoanalysts does it take to change a light bulb? One, but the light bulb has to want to change. Devices like the fitbit offer you either the blue pill or the red pill. Which one you take is up to you.

In late 2011, when I won a fitbit in a white elephant party, I came to the awful realization I only walked 4,000 steps per day. Over the next 2 months, I gradually upped my steps to 20,000 steps a day and lost 13 pounds.

I am now known as the fitbit fascist by my friends because whenever someone kvetches about their weight, I offer to buy them a fitbit. I have followed through on this twice. In both cases, the victims wore their fitbits for several months and then gave up on increasing their daily step count, removing their fitbit so they'd stop being reminded that they were only walking 2,000-3,000 steps per day rather than do something about that.

Figure out why that happens and I think you'd drastically increase how to increase the mass market appeal of quantified self wearables like this.

>Figure out why that happens

fat people are lazy. You need a pill, or a cap full of electrodes that would make them shiver in their sleep .

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/05/shivering-as-a-form...

I have been both fat and slim. I don't think the change was caused by a change in my moral turpitude.

This is the first time a comment on HN has made me go WTF?!

> What actual benefits have you seen? For example, weight loss, increased muscle strength, blood pressure, heart rate?

This is the bit I'd be interested in. Some data to correlate the improved "fitness"[1] (or at least increased activity) with improvements in other metrics.

I'll be gathering such data sometime soon as, altohugh I'm reasonably active, I'm aiming for an Ironman triathlon in 2016 and I'm a long way off being in the right shape for that right now. Whilst I aim to lose the 20kg or so I need to lose I'll be gathering data including: HR (whilst exercising), weight, cycling power output (PowerTap hub).

Although my exercise regieme will vary there will be certain exercises I do every week:

* An hour of 5-a-side football (compare distance covered and average HR)

* A couple of specific training routes on the bike (time, power output, HR avg, segment times)

* Running (time, HR avg, etc)

Having the data to play with is a good motivator in itself!

1. Very hard to actually measure or even quantify.

The biggest benefit of the technology/data is the motivation it provides to continue being active. If that doesn't motivate you, then there is no value... unless you share the data with a physician who finds value in it, which seems increasingly likely, but not yet common.

My anecdote: it allows much better estimate of calorie expenditure for use in weight management.

I've lost almost 60 pounds over the last two years, a bit over half with the use of Fitbit. I find the data from Fitbit let me know how active I really was which enables me to more consistently hit my weight loss goals. This generally meant either eating less or going out and exercising more to hit my daily budget.

My wife uses Fitbit in the same manner.

Fitbit isn't a panacea, but it is a piece of the puzzle. On its own the benefits are small, but it is very helpful as a component in a larger health strategy.

I lost about 10 pounds with FitBit then gained it back after taking a startup job. (I blame free lunches and not the device.)

I echo others' comments that better calorie tracking would be great. The biggest problem with their dashboard is duplication: it's overwhelming to have 30 different brands of croutons to choose from when logging your lunch. I think a curated list would be better than an expansive user-generated list.

I get a discount on my health insurance premium from my company.