Thursday, March 28, 2024

How to get started and stick with Fitbit in 2020

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Chances are you recently bought a Fitbit for yourself or received one as a gift from a loved one. Fitbits are great tools for monitoring your physical activity and leading a healthier lifestyle, but sticking with one throughout the entire year can prove to be a challenge. Here are a few tips to keep you going throughout all of 2020!

Products used in this guide

  • Track it all: Fitbit Charge 3 ($150 at Fitbit)
  • Smarts galore: Fitbit Versa 2 ($200 at Fitbit)
  • Just the basics: Fitbit Inspire ($70 at Fitbit)
  • Connected scale: Fitbit Aria 2 ($130 at Fitbit)

Customize your goals

Out of the box, the Fitbit app will help you set certain activity goals to meet each day. These goals are designed to help you keep moving so that you have a visual finish line to reach, but at any point throughout your fitness journey, you may find yourself needing to increases or decrease these goals.

Whatever your reasons for needing to shake things up, here’s how you do it.

Open the Fitbit app.
Tap the Account button (the one on the top-left with your profile picture).
Scroll down until you find the list titled Goals.

Tap Activity.

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From here, you can customize your goals for steps, distance, calories, active minutes, floors, and your hourly activity goal.

In addition to this, tapping the Exercise option on that Goals page will also allow you to tweak your weekly exercise goal from 1 to 7 days each week.

Get reminders to move each hour

If you have a job at the office or at home where you’re sitting for long periods of time throughout the day, it can be easy to forget that you even have a fitness band on your wrist. Thankfully, Fitbit makes it easy to have your band or smartwatch remind you to move every so often so that you can steadily make progress to reaching your goals.

To ensure that these reminders are enabled:

Open the Fitbit app.
Tap the Hourly Activity tab (the one that shows a red stick person standing up).

Tap the settings icon at the top right of the screen.

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On this page, you’ll see settings for getting reminders, the time you want these reminders to start and stop throughout the day, and on which days you want to be reminded.

Check out the Community page

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In addition to the wealth of fitness-tracking features, the Fitbit app is also home to an incredible community of like-minded individuals who are eager to share their fitness journies with anyone and everyone.

At any time in the Fitbit app, just tap on the Community tab at the bottom of your screen and you can join various groups based around certain workout types, see what other people are sharing with the global Fitbit community, and cheer on your friends when they share a big accomplishment.

Whether you use Community to interact with just people you know in real life or everyone who’s sharing from around the world, it’s a great place to connect with people and build up a support group.

Sign up for Fitbit Premium

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The Fitbit app has long been a fantastic way to view your health data, compete in fitness challenges, and connect with other Fitbit users. In 2019, Fitbit expanded its app with new features and programs as part of its Fitbit Premium subscription.

Fitbit Premium adds a ton of extras to the Fitbit app you already know and love, including:

  • Mindfulness tools
  • Wellness report
  • Audio & video workouts
  • Guided programs
  • Premium insights
  • Sleep Score details

The main idea behind Fitbit Premium is to take all of the data collected with your Fitbit wearable and give you actionable ways to do things with it in addition to showing you fancy graphs and charts. The wellness report can be shared with your doctor for more meaningful checkups, the guided programs are created for you based on your specific goals and lifestyle, and you can get an even more detailed look at your activity and sleeping stats and what they really mean.

Having guided workouts is another great feature for folks that get to the gym but don’t know what exercises they should be doing. You also get a collection of meditation sessions to focus on after breaking a sweat.

You can get a seven-day free trial of Fitbit Premium, and if you want to keep using it after your first week, you’ll need to pay either $79.99/year or $9.99/month. If you’re serious about living a healthier lifestyle, the Premium service is absolutely worth a look.

Buy a connected scale

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In addition to whatever Fitbit you have on your wrist, you may also want to consider buying a connected scale — specifically the Fitbit Aria 2. The Aria 2 measures not only your weight, but your body fat percentage and BMI.

After stepping off the scale each day, all of this data is sent right to your Fitbit account and automatically available for viewing within the app. If you’re using Fitbit to try and lose or gain weight, this is a great way to easily keep a history of your progress and see how your activity is impacting you.

The best Fitbit gadgets you can get

If you don’t already have a Fitbit but are eager to join the community, here are a few of the company’s top products we suggest checking out.

Track it all

Fitbit Charge 3

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$150 at Fitbit

A powerful, affordable way to stay in shape

While Fitbit’s been getting more and more active in the smartwatch market, the new Fitbit Charge 3 proves that the company can still make one heck of a fitness band. In addition to tracking everything from steps, sleep, heart rate, and more, the Charge 3 can also retrieve smartphone notifications, set timers, and even make payments using Fitbit Pay.

Smarts galore

Fitbit Versa 2

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$200 at Fitbit

Fitbit’s best smartwatch yet

The Fitbit Versa 2 combines a fully-fledged Fitbit tracker and powerful smartwatch into one sleek package. Along with doing things like tracking your steps and offering 24/7 heart-rate monitoring, the Versa 2 also has Alexa built-in, can use apps from Starbucks and Uber, and has Fitbit Pay included by default. The cherry on top is over five days of battery life per charge.

Just the basics

Fitbit Inspire

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$70 at Fitbit

Track the essentials and save some cash

If you want to spend as little money as possible while still getting into the Fitbit ecosystem, the lightweight and compact Fitbit Inspire is for you. This is the most affordable tracker Fitbit sells, and it offers activity and sleep tracking, is swim-proof, and lasts up to five days on a single charge. You can wear it on your wrist, or attach it to your belt/pants.

Connected scale

Fitbit Aria 2

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$130 at Fitbit

Make stepping on the scale something you enjoy

A Fitbit fitness band or smartwatch is a big step towards living a healthier life, but if you want to go the extra mile, picking up a smart scale that ties in with your Fitbit account can be hugely beneficial. With the Aria 2, you can measure your weight, BMI, and body fat percentage and have it sync instantly with the Fitbit app. It’s pretty neat stuff.

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