Activity trackers, heart rate monitors, wifi scales, calorie-intake trackers/food diaries, GPS watches, goals, and achievements are just some of the many things we can use to keep track of our fitness. The trouble is that even though we have all of these great technologies to help us along our path to become better athletes or shed some pounds, it’s difficult to find a single place to store all of that data. Sure, there are plenty of sites that aggregate a few things into one place, but, unfortunately, nothing seems to be all-inclusive, yet. That said, Meagan and I have found that the Fitbit interface does the best job at “everything tracking” of the sites/apps we have tried thus far. So, in this week’s “Hack Your Fitness” I’m going to explain how to use your Fitbit account as a tool to gather data from (most of) your fitness devices into one spot.
Supplies needed:
Fitbit – ranging from $50 to $100 – This is the only device you need to have for this “hack”. Everything else is up to you.
Level of difficulty: Medium – This one doesn’t take any scripting, but the process of linking everything up can get a little confusing.
The main scenario I’m going to use is how Meagan approaches her daily fitness tracking. This scenario will cover the use of/compilation of data from a Fitbit, Garmin GPS/HRM, Withings Wifi Scale, Lose It!, & Nike+.
Garmin to Nike+:
If you are interested in bringing your Garmin data to your Fitbit, you must first understand how to get your Garmin data into Nike+. If you are interested in doing this, check out last week’s “Hack Your Fitness”, where I explained the step by step instructions required to get your Garmin GPS/HRM data into Nike+. Return here once you’ve completed those steps.
Nike+ to Fitbit:
The easiest way to get your Nike+ data over to Fitbit is to use the tool available via the Fitbit App Gallery called Fitbit Daemon. The app is designed in a way that syncs your Nike+ data with your Fitbit.
- The Fitbit App Gallery can be found at the bottom of the Fitbit website or you can simply click here.
- The app you’ll need is Fitbit Daemon.
- Take a deep breathe and press “get started’. The application will take you through a couple of steps that will connect it to both your Fitbit account and your Nike+ account.
Lose It! to Fitbit:
It seems Lose It! and Fitbit have a very solid partnership going on. So much so that they have made their applications compatible in both directions, meaning that if you add a meal in the Lose It! app, it will push the data to Fitbit, and if you log an activity in Fitbit, it will push it to Lose It!, so no matter which way you want to look at your data, you’ll always see everything you need. Rather than cover this in explicit detail, I’ll let Meagan’s old post cover the specifics.
- The Fitbit App Gallery can be found at the bottom of the Fitbit website or you can simply click here.
- The app you’re looking for is the Lose It! application.
- Again, just a simple press of the “get started” button should get you to where you want to be without too much hassle.
Withings to LoseIt to Fitbit:
This used to be one of the easier steps, but when Fitbit released the Aria, it decided to cut the Withings app from the Fitbit App Gallery. However, you can very easily add Withings as one of your devices on the Lose It! website, which will sync to your Fitbit application, thanks to the read-and-write capabilities between Lose It! and Fitbit.
- On the home screen of the Lose It! website you’ll notice a collection of tabs across the top. Go ahead and click on the tab titled “Apps & Devices”. Once there, scroll down to the section for Withings and follow-through with the steps included to sync your scale to Lose It!.
Once you follow all of these steps, you’ll have access to data from your GPS watch/HRM, sleep tracker, activity tracker, wifi scale, and a calorie-intake tracker in one location! If you have any questions or if you’ve got another great system for compiling your fitness data, please feel free to leave a comment.
Steve is an Executive Recruiter at Robert Half Executive Search in Madison, WI with a business degree in Information Systems and E-Commerce from the University of Toledo. Steve loves spending his time away from work; running, gaming, watching movies, checking out new social networking tools/sites/start-ups and blogging.