Fitbit smartwatches are among the most popular health tracking devices available on the market. You can track your weight, calories, exercise, sleep, and macros all in one central location, making it easy for most people to stay on track. However, many people have one big question: how do you set your Fitbit up for a ketogenic diet?
Currently, Fitbit does not offer a keto setting to any of its tracking components. So to get the most out of your Fitbit, you’ll want to sync an additional app to make things easier for you.
With the popularity of keto, it amazes me that Fitbit hasn’t implemented a way to keep track of macros for this diet. Fortunately, it can be done but does require a bit of extra work to set up.
What Is A Fitbit?
Even if you don’t know what it is off the top of your head, you’ve likely seen a Fitbit many times. In the most basic terms, a Fitbit is a smartwatch and fitness tracker all rolled into one.
Fitbit is a technology company that produces several different variations of its smartwatches. Some of their products are inexpensive and accessible for all, while their more expensive options provide additional features. With that said, Fitbits are among the most affordable smartwatches on the market, especially compared to the Apple Watch and other competitors.
The most popular feature is the step tracker. If a step tracker is your primary goal, but you want something a little more advanced than a typical pedometer, Fitbit has an option that clips onto your clothes and counts your steps. For more in-depth tracking, one of the watches is your best choice.
Another thing I love about my Fitbit is that it syncs with the app and automatically puts all of your information in one place, making it easy to track your progress.
What Makes A Fitbit Special?
Most people know that a Fitbit is an activity tracker but don’t realize all the features that have been put into the products. Depending on the model you choose, some of the most popular features include:
- Step tracking
- Calorie tracking
- Travel distance
- Number of active minutes per day
- Calories burned
- Number of floors climbed
- Sleep tracking
- Silent vibrating alarm
- Call notification
- Text messages on screen
- Reminders to move
- Exercise tracking
- Personalized workouts
- Guided breathing sessions
- Heart rate readings
- Music control
- Calendar notifications
As you can see, the Fitbit is much more than just a watch, and these are just the most popular features. A Fitbit is customizable to what YOU want it to be.
How Can A Fitbit Help You Lose Weight?
Many people are turning to devices like the Fitbit as an integral part of their weight loss journey. After all, it’s a wearable device connected to an app that helps you track your steps, keep track of how many calories you’re burning, monitor your heart rate, and so much more.
Here are just a few ways that your Fitbit can help you lose weight:
- Accountability
If there’s one thing that will keep you motivated to lose weight, it’s accountability. For many people, it’s easy to cheat when trying to lose weight. Having someone to answer to makes cheating far less likely.
Accountability can come in several different forms. Some people make it a habit to go to the gym with a friend. Others hire a personal trainer. If you’re paying someone to train you, you’re far less likely to want to throw your money away by not showing up.
People also do things like challenges through the workplace or hiring a nutrition coach. So if you struggle with accountability, find whatever works best for you and go for it!
So what does any of this have to do with your Fitbit? It’s literally your own accountability partner that is a part of your body 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Whether it’s a goal to get 10,000 steps a day or 8 hours of sleep at night, your Fitbit is going to let you know when you aren’t hitting it. This allows you to identify where you’re lacking and what you need to do to crush those goals.
2. Realistic Goals
Setting realistic goals is something many people struggle with, especially in the beginning stages of the process.
It’s been proven time and time again that people who can measure something they want to improve have far more success than someone who goes for it with no plan.
For example, someone might want to lose 100 pounds. That’s a great goal that can be hit with time and dedication. The problem arises when the person who set this goal doesn’t hit it quickly. Let’s be honest, it’s going to take most people a long time to drop 100 pounds, and if that’s your only goal, it might seem like it’s out of reach.
Instead, it’s important to set smaller, realistic goals. For example, instead of that 100-pound goal, maybe you should aim to lose 5 pounds in your first month and then a pound per week after.
Your Fitbit can help you track your calories eaten and burned, ensuring you’re able to focus on your smaller goals. All of these goals add up over time, which means hitting your overall goal.
3. Healthy Habits
According to James Clear, author of Atomic Habits and creator of the Habit Journal, it takes an average of 66 days for something to become a habit. That means in just over two months, new things you started doing to lose weight will become automatic for you.
Entering information into your Fitbit daily will go a long way to creating these healthy habits. This includes things like logging the foods you eat and tracking the exercise you perform. For example, you can make a goal to take 10,000 steps every day, and your tracker will track all your steps to ensure you reach your goal. Before you know it, that step goal will be part of your daily life.
Setting Up Your Fitbit for Keto
One of the most significant features many people looking to lose weight use is the ability to log the foods they eat. The Fitbit food log makes it easy to scan or enter the foods you are eating. It automatically tracks the serving size, calories, carbohydrates, fat, protein, and more. There is one thing that the log doesn’t do, however. It does not track net carbs, which is an essential metric if you’re following a ketogenic diet.
Many people have reached out to Fitbit asking for this feature to be implemented, but the reply is that they appreciate the suggestion but have no plans to add a net carb feature. It’s disappointing when you consider the popularity a keto lifestyle brings to the table.
Fortunately, there are a couple of workarounds to make your Fitbit work with your way of eating.
- FitBitKeto
FitBitKeto is a Google Chrome browser extension that removes the sodium column in the food logger and replaces it with net carbs. While this is great, there are a couple of downsides to this extension.
First, the extension only works on the Fitbit website and will not work with the mobile app. Another problem is that while the change will take place in the food log, which is fine if you’re a free user. However, if you have a premium Fitbit subscription, the net carbs section will not appear in the premium food report section.
2. Carb Manager
If you want to eliminate the computer and keep everything on your phone, the Carb Manager app is a great option. Since the built-in Fitbit food log lacks keto functionality, it makes sense to go with the app that was made for keto dieters.
One of the best things about Carb Managers is that it pulls the data from your Fitbit and imports it directly into the app. This means you can use one single app instead of switching back and forth when you want to do different things. In addition, pulling the data allows the app to tie all of your information into your macros and nutritional data to give you an overall view of your fitness and the factors that may be impacting your weight loss.
As you can see, both of these options work great, depending on whether you want a computer or phone app option. Of course, if you’re like me, you can use both, so you’re covered no matter where you find yourself logging in.
