FitFeud Corporate Wellness Blog

Report: Half of Americans will be obese by 2030

"Something must be done," says Claire Wang, assistant professor of health policy and management at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and lead author of the study that was published in the Lancet.

Source / ABC News

An Unfair Fight: Fitbit vs Garmin Forerunner 410 vs iPod nano vs Runkeeper

I love data, gadgets, and I'm a runner, so when I head out I'm covered with $500 or so of various devices that track my progress or otherwise help me get along. My standard set up is:

• Fitbit
• Garmin Forerunner 410 (with heart rate monitor)
• iPod nano

The iPod nano is strictly for music, but I recently discovered it has a pedometer on it. The Fitbit I wear everyday 24-hours a day. The Forerunner I wear to track pace and be able to see my route, elevation, etc. I also export this data over to Runkeeper, because I like some of their graphs and social features more than Garmin Connect.

I get asked all the time, "How accurate is the Fitbit?" and similar questions, so I decided to compare the data that comes out of all these devices. I call this an "unfair fight" because these devices are not direct competitors and vary widely in price and capability. For example, the Garmin Forerunner costs nearly $300 and tracks your distance and pace via satellite while the Fitbit and iPod nano costs $99 and $149, respectively, and just rely on your motion to estimate number of steps and distance. See, totally unfair!

But, with that caveat, let's look at the data!

	Time	Distance	Steps	Pace	Calories
iPod nano	30:27	n/a	2869	n/a	133
Garmin Forerunner	29:56	3.17 miles	n/a	9.27 / mile	377
Fitbit	31:00	2.15 miles	3791	14.25 / mile	409
Runkeeper	30:00	3.15 miles	n/a	9:32 / mile	409

The first thing that jumps out at me is how far off the Fitbit is on the distance. I trust the Garmin impicitly on this, and it's also backed up by Runkeeper's calculation. So, this is obviously off, and this throws off the pace calculation as well. I'm not sure I could run a mile that slowly. The Fitbit can be calibrated, so obviously I need to tweak the settings here. (Do I lengthen my stride length or shorten it to correct this?)

The iPod nano is even further off the pace in regards to steps. If you use the 2,000-steps per mile "standard" (I know, that's for walking, but I said this was unfair!), it thinks I only went fewer than 1.5 miles! I guess this would explain why its calorie count is so far off as well.

Another odd thing is the difference in times. You would think this would be a pretty basic calculation for all these devices, but there is over a minute difference. Of course, it took me a second to start each of the devices, but I would have thought they would have been within five to ten seconds of each other all the way around. Chalk another one up for Einstein's theory of relativity, I guess.

So, there you go. An unfair fight and a comparison that came to no conclusions. More trivia than anything, but it was fun for me. Has anyone else done a similar comparison? I'd love to see your data and unfairly compare it to mine!

Obesity Quote of the Week

"Reducing the prevalence of obesity and its complications is an important priority for the nation and requires focused and constant attention." ~ Carolyn M. Clancy, M.D., AHRQ director

From the article, Medical Expenses Related To Obesity Costs States Billions.

Corporate Weight Loss Competition Success Story: Ben

The below comment was left on a our blog by Ben, a participant in one of FitFeud's client's weight loss competitions. I asked Ben if I could feature his inspirational story as a blog post itself. He agreed. I'm sure you will find it as touching, motivating, and inspiring as I did.

Dear Nicholas,

Thank you for FitFeud, it was exactly what I needed to jumpstart me into getting healthy. As an athlete in my teens, I could eat whatever I wanted and it wouldn’t hurt much. Not so in my early 20’s when I put on more than 100 lbs over the following 5 years. At 25 and just north of 350 lbs, I needed help.

Insert my large company and FitFeud. I had the tools and knew what I needed to do, I just had to do it. FitFeud allowed my company to track the competitors. I lost 50 lbs during the 12 week competition and have continued even after our corporate competition. I’m now down 82 lbs and feeling great!!! I just wish my company was extending so that I would still have access to the check-ins.

Thank you FitFeud!

No, thank you, Ben.

Why "Biggest Loser" Programs Don't Work: A Rebuttal

The following was originally posted as a comment to Tamara Melton's blog post, Why "Biggest Loser" Wellness Programs Don't Work.

My name is Nicholas Tolson, and I am CEO and co-founder of FitFeud, a web-based system that helps companies set up, run, and track the effectiveness of fitness and weight loss competitions amongst their employees. So, take my comments with however many grains of salt you like.  ;)

Many of the concerns you reference are what I would call common misconceptions about corporate weight loss competitions. They are things that one might think would happen, but in our experience, with thousands of people having participated, don't actually happen in practice. 

It also seems as though your arguments are based on implementing a weight loss competition in isolation, as the only aspect of a corporate wellness program. This is not something we recommend, nor it is something we see our clients doing. (We typically work with large corporations, with thousands or tens of thousands of employees, FWIW.)

As part of a comprehensive wellness program, with supporting efforts in education, exercise, healthy meals, biometric screening, etc. weight loss competitions are a powerful tool to jumpstart a corporate wellness program and motivate employees. In fact, because they are fun, employee-focused, and results-oriented (things commonly missing from corporate wellness programs) weight loss competitions can actually increase participation in your other programs and engage employees who may otherwise not have participated in such programs at all.

Continue to the rest of this post. -->

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