Why I gave up counting calories with Fitbit
Tuesday night after dinner, I sat, phone in hand, scrolling through results for the search “snow peas” on the “calories consumed” page of Fitbit’s iOS app. I had consumed, as part of my homemade dinner, what I estimated to be about 5 ounces of snow peas. But if you search this vegetable through Fitbit, you won’t find a result for plain snow peas. You will find Chicken with Snow Peas from Manchu Wok, Snow Peas & Gourmet Sauce from Frieda’s and Thai Peanut Chicken and Snow Peas from Au Bon Pain. I searched an adjacent vegetable, the sugar snap pea. For this vegetable, there are countless results, including some raw, unsauced versions. I grudgingly choose the sugar snap pea in place of the snow pea. This process took about 2 minutes, and I had only logged 1/5 of my meal. If I had eaten the Manchu Wok Chicken with Snow Peas, I would have been done in 30 seconds. This process seems broken to me.
When a company makes prepackaged, preprepared and restaurant meals the easy option, it is telling its customers that these foods are the best option. And they’re not. The best option is fresh, whole ingredients. Period. Whether the Fitbit user is trying to lose weight or not. (This is a good place to point out that I’m not a dietitian.)
I don’t eat many pre-packaged foods where the calories are listed on the label, which would make inputting calories a snap. Instead, I’m entering that I ate two cups of brown rice, five ounces of tofu and one cup of kale, which takes a lot longer to enter than saying I ate an Asian-inspired Lean Cuisine. (I understand that the meal I chose to illustrate this problem could not be more annoyingly trendy, and I am sorry.) I also have to estimate what amount of homemade sauce I consumed on this portion of stir-fry; the whole sauce recipe is 1/4 cup soy sauce, 1/4 lemon juice and 1/4 cup honey. But how much of each ingredient did I consume for dinner? It’s enough to make my head hurt.
I’ve been wearing the Fitbit Flex and using its accompanying app for about a week, and, so far, I am enjoying the experience. I’m mostly interested in tracking activity and sleep patterns, so the ineffective calorie-tracking tool doesn’t bother me too much. The message that Fitbit is sending by making its calorie-tracking so cumbersome, however, does bother me. A lot.
I understand that it’s practical and easy to log calories using processed foods: the calories in a Pepperoni Pizza Hot Pocket will always be approximately the same, but the calories present in a homemade calzone will vary wildly. Is a homemade calzone a “healthy” choice? Maybe not. But it’s possible to stuff a homemade calzone with vegetables, lean meats and natural cheeses. Calorie-wise, the calzone is probably still a splurge (for anyone, not just a dieter), but it would most likely contain fewer preservatives and milligrams of sodium. Eating a calzone full of real ingredients is also almost sure to lead to a more satiated appetite than eating a Hot Pocket (trust me, I’ve been there).
It’s already easier to eat packaged food than to make fresh food: heating up a frozen dinner takes five minutes, while making the equivalent meal from scratch could take an hour (Kid’s Cuisine chicken nuggets, mashed potatoes and gravy, I’m looking at you). A simple dinner like scrambled eggs and greens on toast is an alternative to the frozen dinner and takes maybe five more minutes to prepare. And you can put Sriracha on top (five calories). But a Fitbit user who eats my suggested quick dinner then has to calculate the calories of each component instead of entering the calories of his or her whole meal with one click. Adding that additional obstacle makes the idea of making a meal (and doing the accompanying dishes) seem that much more undesirable.
The rest of Fitbit tracking is relatively hands-off. Entering glasses of water is simple, only taking two clicks. Tapping the wristband display five times before going to sleep is easy. Hopefully the next Fitbit iteration will make calorie tracking more intuitive and more time-effective. Integrating technology like the photo-based calorie tracking in the app Meal Snap could be a solution. We’re all taking photos of our food anyway, right?
