Does This Thing Work? Fitbit

I have been back using MyFitnessPal for three weeks, and have been more successful that I could have hoped for.  Entering food is easy, but I've always hemmed and hawed when it came time to adding the exercise.  Sometimes I've even had to pull out Google maps to figure out how far I'd traveled.

Surely in this modern age, we have the technology to simplify that.  Right?  Well, I've tried several phone apps, and have been far from satisfied.  The ones that tracked my actual movement with GPS often got confused.  If I walked under an awning, for example, it would lose my position, and think I ran across the street for a moment.  If I crossed a bridge, it thought I ran down the side of the cliff, crossed at the bottom, and then scaled the other side.

Simple pedometer apps didn't fair much better.  It was really a sensitivity issue, and maybe I could have adjusted that.  Who knows.

I haven't actually checked, but it seems that Fitbit is the leading name in this field right now.  And I do love gadgets, so I bought one.  I've been using it for a week, and I think it's time to assess if this thing works.  I think the answer is, sort of.

It probably did a great job with the distance.  I say probably, because it often said about 2 miles more than the distance I know I walked.  But I think it's probably fair to say that I walked around the house and office and such for an additional two miles.  I just don't know for sure.

Calories is another matter.  For example, one day it said I walked 8 miles, which is about right, but that I burned 15,000 calories through exercise.  An adult of my size should burn about 100 calories per mile.  But I did go up several flights of stairs, and did 60 pushups.  That, and I'm one of those people who jimmies his legs.  Does it see all this, and report it accurately?  Do I burn way more calories than I think?  I really have no way of knowing.

It does work with MyFitnessPal, and automatically imports my exercise.  I would say that it does simplify things quite a bit.  Not completely though.  I still have to check every day so that I can lower it manually when the number is way higher than I expect.  I'm sure I can give a more through review in the coming months.

I can say for sure, that it is an accurate watch.