So, I’ve been using my Fitbit for a while now, and generally, I like keeping track of my activity. But lately, I started getting this nagging feeling. My daily step counts just seemed… way too high sometimes. Like, I’d look at it at the end of the day and think, “Really? Did I actually walk that much?” Some days it felt believable, but others, especially days I knew I’d spent a lot of time sitting or driving, the numbers just didn’t add up in my head.
It got me wondering if the thing was just making stuff up, you know? Overcounting like crazy. I didn’t do any super scientific tests, but I started paying closer attention.
Figuring Out When It Was Happening
First thing I did was just watch it more carefully during the day. I noticed a few things pretty quickly:
- Driving was a big one. On my commute, especially on bumpy roads, I could literally see the step count ticking up. Definitely wasn’t walking in the car!
- Doing chores. Things like washing dishes, folding laundry, even prepping food seemed to add steps. Lots of arm movement, I guess.
- Just general fidgeting. If I was typing energetically or talking with my hands (which I do a lot!), steps would sometimes get added.
It seemed like any significant arm movement had the potential to be mistaken for a step. That kinda made sense, given it’s on my wrist, but it was still annoying because it felt like cheating my step goal.
What I Tried To Make It Better
Okay, so I knew it was overcounting, especially with arm movements and driving. I wasn’t just going to live with it, so I tried a few things.
First, the wrist thing. I remembered reading somewhere that you should tell the Fitbit app if you’re wearing it on your dominant or non-dominant hand. The idea is your dominant hand moves more, so telling the app makes it less sensitive. I checked my settings, and sure enough, I had it set to my dominant hand (my right) but was actually wearing it on my left most of the time. So, I switched the setting in the app to “Non Dominant” and made sure to consistently wear it on my left wrist. I thought maybe that simple fix would sort it all out.
Then, tackling the driving steps. This was the most obvious bogus counting. Fitbit doesn’t have a simple “I’m driving” button, which is a bit silly. I found out you can manually log an activity called “Driving” in the app for the time you were in the car. When you log it, it basically wipes out the steps and calories recorded during that specific time block. So, after my commutes, I started making a point of going into the app, adding the “Driving” activity, and setting the start and end times. It’s a bit of a hassle to do it every time, but it definitely removed those fake car steps.
Dealing with chore-related steps. This was trickier. I couldn’t exactly log “Washing Dishes” to remove steps. For these, I mostly just accepted it. Changing to my non-dominant wrist seemed to help a little bit, maybe making it slightly less sensitive to smaller movements. I also tightened the strap just a tiny bit – not uncomfortably tight, but snug enough so it wasn’t bouncing around loosely with every flick of the wrist. I figured a looser fit might make movements seem bigger to the tracker.
Did It Work?
So, after doing all that – switching wrists, changing the dominant hand setting, and manually logging my drives – did it fix the overcounting?
Well, it definitely helped. A lot, actually. My step counts started feeling much more realistic. The biggest difference came from logging the driving; that eliminated thousands of fake steps each week right there. Wearing it on my non-dominant hand and making sure the setting matched also seemed to cut down on the extra steps I’d get from just random arm movements during the day.
Is it perfect now? Probably not. I’m sure I still get some extra steps counted here and there when I’m cooking or doing other things with my hands. But it’s way better than it was. It feels like the numbers are much closer to my actual activity levels now.
Ultimately, I realized these wrist trackers aren’t going to be 100% accurate down to the very last step. There’s always going to be some weirdness from arm movements. But by tweaking the settings and manually correcting for obvious errors like driving, I got my Fitbit to a point where I feel like I can trust the general trend again, even if the exact number isn’t gospel. It was worth taking the time to figure it out.