I’ve stopped wearing my Fitbit, after two solid years of clipping it on every day. I have one of bright pink ones with the clip, and the clip broke a while back. I called Fitbit up and they kindly replaced it, but then it broke again and I felt like I’d used up all my good karma so I paid to order a new one, which was surprisingly pricey. Now the clip is broken for a third time and I’m not sure it’s worth it to me to pay to replace it.
I did like checking my stats each day. I did not like sharing those stats with others – apologies if you asked to be my Fitbit friend online and I ignored you. I have a very low steps count daily and on days when I crossed the 5000 mark, I liked to feel good about that, like hey, you did a good job today FOR YOU, and I just could not bear the discouraging thought of being online friends with people who were getting 10 000+ steps a day. I know myself, and that would have been enough right there for me to stop wearing it immediately. I guess instead of a competitive streak, I have more of a roll-over-and-give-up kind of streak.
But although I did feel good about it when I got a high (for me) number of steps in a day, it never did really encourage me to work harder, or try harder. I just went about my business and at the end of the day the Fitbit gave me a mark and on days when I managed a B+ it was like a little bonus prize. Nice to have, but not something I expected or worked towards.
Now that I’m Fitbit free and surrounded by bowls and bowls of Halloween candy, I can find my daily prizes elsewhere. Yum!
TurtleHead 
So interesting this whole Fitbit thing. People know I run, and swim, and essentially have a constant need to be in motion, and they always want to buy me a Fitbit, and I’m always like “why?” I have no idea what I would do with a Fitbit – how it would fit into my life, etc. I think it’s a combination of a) me needing no motivation at all to move – in fact I’m always being told to SLOW DOWN and b) me just not getting into the mobile social thing – I still don’t have email / FB, etc. on my phone and I really don’t want it. So, Lynn, let me officially welcome you back to the non-Fitbit world with me!
You can email me when you get 5,000 steps and I’ll tell you to go eat a Hallowe’en candy bar 🙂
Favorite part: “I guess instead of a competitive streak, I have more of a roll-over-and-give-up kind of streak.” SAME HERE.
Me too! And I am also the same about the Fitbit (or in my case, a Jawbone bracelet thingy) not motivating me to move more. I quit wearing it after a few weeks.
I have fitbit friends, but no true competitive streak. I do like to be encouraging/supportive if you’re having a good day.
I’m a little bit fit, does that count?
I still have mine. Never connected it to “the community” so I’ve never shared my stats and I’m really not competitive so I have zero interest to do so. I don’t check my stats every day because I did this at first and it just wasn’t healthy. Now I’m happy with the weekly stats emailed to me. I do like the silent alarm and have a “watch” on me though!
This is kind of interesting. I too don’t bother with the fitbit and although it’s great to hear people try to challenge themselves to top yesterday’s steps, I’m just not that person. Frankly, I like sitting. But when I start to feel it in the waist/pants area I get off my arse and walk the kids to school more. I just do it for my own sake, not for some internal or external competitive sake.
Says the mom (me) of two highly competitive, sports-oriented kids. Wha? Who are these people I birthed?
Weird…
Oh, Claudette – have you met my Little-League-World-Series baseball star of a son? SISTER. I spent the first part of the fall walking Lucy for an hour every day, hit the gym, did squats and weights, whoo-hoo. Then my hip and knee started hurting AGAIN and last week I felt like crap so I didn’t go to the gym and I can’t walk Lucy for an hour because it hurts too much. It’s all a cycle. A cycle of three weeks of frantic activity followed by three months of healing from said activity. Fuck the fitbit.
I keep toying with the idea of a FitBit. Would it make me walk more? I suspect that I’d have the same roll-over-and-give-up attitude if I buddied-up with anyone (I’m all for competition, I just prefer to win 😉 ).