Linking Fitbit and Sparkpeople

I linked my Fitbit Flex. How do I record the steps? It doesn't link these. Help!

I believe the tracker counts bases on the swinging movement of your arm. Walking with the walker would be a totally different movement.

I had a Fitbit One (or the previous version of the One) and literally flushed it down the toilet I LOVED the unit; never had a problem with it. I replaced it with a Zip and can't stand this thing. It's hard to change screens on the unit itself and I CANNOT get it to sync to my Spark page. It worked the first 2 days and now..............zip.. horrible but accurate pun.

Has anyone had this issue and/or have any suggestions?? Thanks so much in advance.

FITBIT and USING A WALKER
I have been using a walker for about 2 1/2 weeks after a pulled groin and shoulder strain after a fall. I thought that my Fitbit had stopped working as it was not recording my steps as I was moving around the house or the office wearing my Fitbit. This weekend, I had my daughter wear it while home for Thanksgiving and it is recording her steps just fine.
There is clearly something about the gait / body movement while using a walker that does not allow the Fitbit to record 'walker steps'.
I'm very glad that I did not replace what I thought was a broken Fitbit!

I have a question. I just linked my new fitbit, but now I don't know how to sync it. I can't remember how I linked it. Would someone please help me!

Ok, I've just linked SP to my Fitbit. Food is going to Fitbit, and steps are coming back to SP.

Question 1 - water logged on SP isn't going to Fitbit, should it be?

Question 2 - When I log actual exercise on Fitbit (like yoga or tennis) it doesn't come back to SP. Should it? I just see one Fitbit entry for each day no matter what exercise I log.

I've read that to lose 1-2 lbs per week you need to create a deficit of 500 calories a day or 3500 per week. You can do this by exercise, walking etc. I've also read women should not go below 1200-1300 calories per day for eating as it's actually counter productive and not healthy.

Hope it helps. I lost 55 lbs over 9 month period and kept it off now for 3 years. Using a formula I read from SP.

Just got my replacement(1st one was inconsistent for 4 days) I felt like I was not contributing, so I had to put my steps on here manually. So glad to have it again.

Thanks!!

Hi Linda,

I did the best I could but I couldn't get the second link to go to the page. It will work if you cut and paste into your address bar in explorer. I've tried it and it works. I was able to post the other as a link and it does go directly to the page. Hope that helps. :D

~Bev

The below links will help you figure how many calories you need to burn.

help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_
ar
ticle/How-does-Fitbit-know-how-many-R>calories-I-ve-burned/?q=Basil+Metabo
li
c+Rate&l=en_US&c=Product
s%3AFl
ex&fs=Search&pn=1

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Flex/Dai
ly-calorie-burn-goal/m-p/823893#M111857

(you'll have to cut and paste this one into your browser address bar. Couldn't get it to link.)

Edited by: M8ITHPN at: 10/30/2015 (20:34)

M8ITHPN
Can you please edit your post using "add a link" so that those that don't cut and paste can get to these links. And please double check the first one, it does not work, even by cutting and pasting??


Edited by: GRANMALINDA at: 10/29/2015 (12:08)

Hi Kim,

Below are links to a couple of articles that you may find helpful.

The below links will help you figure how many calories you need to burn.

help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_
ar
ticle/How-does-Fitbit-know-how-many-R>calories-I-ve-burned/?q=Basil+Metabo
li
c+Rate&l=en_US&c=Product
s%3AFl
ex&fs=Search&pn=1

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Flex/Dai
ly-calorie-burn-goal/m-p/823893#M111857 (you'll have to cut and paste this one into your browser address bar. Couldn't get it to link.)

Edited by: M8ITHPN at: 10/30/2015 (20:33)

Hi Kim,

From your fitbit dashboard -click on "Log" at the top of your page. Scroll down to where you see "FOOD PLAN how much can you eat for the day" Click on the gear wheel and choose "Sedentary" It will then allow you to choose a weight loss Plan that will fit how much activity you want to do during the day. Easy=0.5lb per week 250 calorie deficit per day - Medium=1lb per week 500 calorie deficit per day - Kinda Hard =1.5lbs per week a 750 calorie per day deficit and Hard=2lbs per week at 1000 calorie deficit per day. You just choose one and they will do all the calculation for you.

I hope that helps.
~Bev

Edited by: M8ITHPN at: 10/28/2015 (21:10)

Hi everyone, if i want to lose weight. and i eat around 1300 calories. how many calories do i have to burn. i have the fitbit charge. i do at liest 10,000 steps or more a day. Im just so confused. I just want to lose weight. thanks
Kim

So.. I am not going to be able to stay on the hardest weight loss program right now because I just had total hip replacement 6 weeks ago at 57 years young and have just discovered this morning after doing two days of 11,000 + is too much for me right now. I am sore this morning and need to take a step back. So I'm going to go down to medium and see what happens.

A couple of things I noticed straight away was I've stayed the same weight for the three weeks that I've been back to SP. I unlinked the fitbit from SP and worked solely on the stats the fitbit was giving me and I've lost 1lb already. That is not to say that SP is doing anything wrong, it was my misunderstanding that I could eat those inflated calories they were giving me from linking the fitbit to their site. ;).

The other thing I noticed is it gets more difficult to figure how how fitbit has come up with the daily goal. I'm thinking if you have a deficit or an overage one day it appears to carry over to the next day giving confusing goals. I'll get it figured out.

In the mean time, I'm just going to go down to a plan that I can be successful at while I'm recovering and will continue to report my findings. That is, if folks are interested.
~Bev

So I thought I'd share what I learned by unlinking SP and Fitbit.

First let me say I found that Fitbit and SP have an entirely different way of calculating calories. Fitbit incorporates how many calories you burn just to make your body function everyday. Fitbit allows for all that in its calculations but SP doesn't make that same distinction so your calories burned are very inflated in SP which allows you to eat way more than you are suppose to.

After unlinking from SP, and letting fitbit do all the calculations for me it made perfect sense. I recorded all my food in both SP and Fitbit. In the log food section of Fitbit I chose a food plan that fit best for me. It automatically calculated how many calories I could eat based on the plan I chose and how much calories I earned from activity and those numbers were very realistic.

As far as recording my exercise in SP I just used my Active minutes from fitbit. I used "enter your own exercise" and put walked and entered the time I walked. It gave me 141 Calories.

I did not enter my fitbit steps which was 10,755 and 12 Floors (Stairs or inclines) into SP but I did manually record 6000 steps in the step tracker for what it was worth.

Fitbit had me as burning 2,111 calories yesterday. My total calories on my menu was 1224 so they subtract the 1224 from 2111 which gave me 887 calories allowed. 887 from the calories I consumed gave me an overage of 337 calories. NOW, hold on....:) I chose the hardest option yesterday to test the platform. If you want to lose 2lbs a week you need a calorie deficit of 1000. That means you have to earn them back by walking a lot more than 10,000 steps or do added exercises to earn those calories back. It was very interesting and quite accurate.

They allow you several options from easy, medium, kinda hard to Hard and it will tell you the calorie loss per week for each choice.

With Spark people they add the calories earned into amount allowed but if you want to lose weight you shouldn't eat all your hard earned calories.

I will stay on hardest this week and will report how I made out on Saturday. Not sure I want to keep up that pace, but will commit to one week of it. ;)

Little side note: If your not able to work that hard to earn the calories back in order to keep your calorie intake at a healthy level you should choose a plan that is realistic for you.

Hope this is helpful and not too confusing.

Have a great day!!

Edited by: M8ITHPN at: 10/26/2015 (08:46)

Hi, I noticed that also. So I'm ignoring food tracking on Fitbit, and using only SP for that. My steps are showing up on SP, and are correctly converting to calorie burn there. But Fitbit calorie burn is way too high. So I guess I will need to use both. Fitbit for everything except food and calorie burn. If anyone can figure out why Fitbit calorie burn is so inflated, please let me know. TIA.

Good morning all,

I linked my fitbit to SP and noticed that when I make food choices in SP and then decide to delete some of those choices for the day that they won't come of the Fitbit menu. You have to manually go in and delete the items you took off SP. I was constantly working two menu's every day so they read the same. I decided to unlink from SP and see what happens. Going to rely on the fitbit for a while to see if I can get a better grasp on it. I need to learn more about the fitbit so this will force me to do that.

I don't think so. At first it looked like the two were recoding now, it doesn't seem to be. When I log in what I ate on Fitbit it is not carrying forward the calories to Spark People. It is giving me a false read on calorie intake. Still learning how this all goes.

Is the calorie burn incorporating your base metabolic calorie burn?

I'm not sure if my Fitbit is doing all those things yet. As I said, it is fascinating learning all of its ability on this lifestyle journey.

I just linked my SP to Fitbit a few days ago. It is working, but I can't always get it to update my activity to SP. It is working both ways. I add food to SP, and it shows in Fitbit. Wondering if updating the activity is a timing issue. Because when I ignore it and check it later, it has been updated.

The other issue I have is that the Fitbit device has always shown a hugely inflated calorie burn. Does anyone know how to correct that? SP takes my Fitbit steps (not the calorie burn), and calculates them, and it looks accurate. My Fitbit always tells me I burn around 2,000 a day, and that is not possible..

so can you possibly show how you did it here or is it too complicated? thanks!

Yes, I'm connected to spark and Fitbit. another fabulous spark buddy walk me through it.
Fitbit lets me record my food much better than I could do in the nutrient tracker. So I'm glad about that. Still learning much. Have a great day.
Sarah

I'm sorry I don't have time to scroll but it doesn't track our calories does it. That's separate, right?

Granmalinda,

Thanks so much! I found it! And thanks for explaining about my active minutes. I appreciate it!

RICHELB1,
Go to your food log, scroll down past your last meal of the day and you will see Exercise. It will give you your step count just above water.
SP and Fitbit are only partly friendly with transferring information, SP will only register you "active" minutes, meaning only continuous minutes longer than 10 minutes. I have hit my 10K steps with ZERO recorded on SP because none were steady over 10 minutes.

Full disclosure, they used to count all your steps, translate into minutes and then Fitbit changed what they transmitted to SP and they have not been able to make a better translation. We have complained here and other places but this is what we have!

Questions?

Thanks for the post.. That is where I synced my fitbit with SP but I don't see how that shows or tells me how to find it on my iPhone. When I use the app on my phone I don't see a place to link SP to my fitbit. Will they only sync on the computer?

Many thank for the reply

Trev

Sorry, double post.



Edited by: GRANMALINDA at: 9/15/2015 (16:17)

Patty, does this page tell you what you need to know?

www.sparkpeople.com/myspark/connect-
yo
ur-device.asp

I was able to get my fitbit flex to sync with SP. But will it show on the iphone app? Also, will it sync with my phone rather than my computer?

Hi Trev,

There is a workaround for the syncing issue. You can ask to join the Beta team. I joined the group, and loaded the new, beta version of the app, and my downloads now go smoothly!
You can find all the necessary information on the Fitbit website.

p.s. I'm an ex-Brit!

After what I said, I did have a problem syncing yesterday. I could see it linking but it did not upload any data. I did this a few times and it still would not update. I went away and came back a little later and it worked.

Mine is the other way it sync when i don't want it to. I got mine yesterday and set it up. All I want is the steps to be logged not mileage or calories.

Today it has logged an extra 2000+ calories but only two thirds of my steps. Now being a newbie I can't see anything wrong with the setup.

Trev

Rather than sync my Fitbit to SP, I think I might just leave SP!!!

ok wondering do I need to disconnect my Spark tracker to have fitbit syncing with spark??

Did you look for the Fitbit Manual on-line? I know there is one. I spent a while there myself. They also have a help number too if I'm not mistaken. Where you can call and talk to a tech. They even talk about lining things up with Spark.

Don't give up!

I think I've just given up. Mine doesn't sync no matter what.

Thanks for all the info shared here! I keep wondering the best way to combine Fitbit and Spark info and there are lots of good ideas here and steps I needed!

Edited by: CD14981919 at: 9/6/2015 (15:42)

Hi! I just got my Fitbit in the mail this afternoon. Set up is interesting to say in the least. The print of the directions were printed so small that NO WAY could I read it so I had to go to the companies website. So far so good. I like the idea of not having to jot down every little thing. I'm not crazy about some of the settings though. When it synced none of my foods were added to the list of things that I listed on Spark. I'm wondering if I did something wrong or if my actual day begins tomorrow.

32-by-62, I changed the way SP shows my calories, so that it doesn't give my fitness calories as additional calories available for me to eat.

It shows my total calories, less how many I've eaten, equals my total calories remaining for the day. Then under that, it shows how many I've burned, but it doesn't add that into the total anywhere.

You might want to do yours that way, if you don't want to eat your fitness calories. It's a setting you can change on SP.

If you want to change it, on your "Start" page, under "Track Food" there's a little link that says, "Edit Goals." Click on that and scroll to the bottom, and there's a section at the bottom that says, "How My Daily Calorie Range Is Determined" with a link that says, "Learn More/Edit This Setting." Click on the link to edit, then on the next page there will be an option under "How My Daily Calorie Range Is Determined" that lets you choose whether or not your fitness calories are factored into your daily totals.

Hope that helps!



Edited by: CD15709690 at: 8/23/2015 (18:56)

I just discovered that the foods I enter in the SparkPeople nutrition tracker automatically populate the food section of my FitBit online dashboard! Wow!

This is a great benefit to me, to encourage me to be more active when I have an event in which I want a food indulgence: a glass of wine, a piece of birthday cake, or an event food. I read a SparkPerson's blog (she is at maintenance) and she mentioned how much she added to her daily run for a planned dessert at an event.

Edited by: GAILITCH at: 8/19/2015 (13:41)

Jen, message sent.

Griff it isn't synching to SP.

worried about the calories spark people have said I have burned today. I don't feel I am all that active today. I guess I can just not choose to each eat all the calories if they aren't exercise based. I do love my fit bit and the heart monitor.

Jen, Is it not syncing to the fitbit dashboard or the dashboard isn't syncing to Spark People? In my case Spark People syncs with Fitbit dashboard on its own,(but I still force it by clicking the sync now button under fitness occasionally if I want instant gratification) but sometimes my charge HR is finicky about syncing to the fitbit dashboard.

Edited by: GRIFF0711 at: 8/9/2015 (14:18)

The Groupings function is great, however, I notice if you put your meals in using Groupings, the meal doesn't copy to Fitbit unless you input the meal by hand, item by item. Sort of defeats the purpose of having the apps synced especially if the groupings option won't copy as is. Maybe it's just me but if it's an overall problem, I hope it can be fixed.

Mary you said your food logged in sparks will import to fitbit do you have to do anything.
I just got my fitbit today, so just learning. Thanks for the help.

So I see lots are having little issues with food and calories burned stuff and with syncing. My question is...... is it worth connecting them? I recently started using a Zip and love it! Just praying that the sync is worth my time messing with.