Paul McFedries - Fitbit For Dummies

Fitbit For Dummies

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com

Copyright 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Trademarks: Wiley, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and may not be used without written permission. Fitbit is a registered trademark of Fitbit, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2019942832

ISBN 978-1-119-59231-0 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-59236-5 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-59235-8 (ebk)

1. Chapter 2
2. Chapter 5
3. Chapter 14

1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14

Wait a minute, I hear you thinking, does the world really need an entire book about Fitbit? First, whoa, your thinking is loud. Second, yes the world really does need a book about Fitbit. Sure, most Fitbit trackers are simple bands that you secure to your favorite wrist and start walking (or running or skipping or whatever). However, that apparent simplicity is only on the surface. Scratch that surface and you uncover an entire world of activity tracking thats much deeper and more powerful than most folks know.

Yes, most Fitbit devices are easy to learn and use, but that up-front ease belies a complex background of features, settings, and customizations that can help you get the most out of your Fitbit. And more sophisticated devices such as the Charge 3 and the Ionic and Versa watches are brimming with buttons and options and apps that come with a learning curve.

Finally, its one thing to operate your Fitbit, but its quite another to use your Fitbit to reach a goal. Whether that goal is to get fit, lose weight, eat better, or reduce stress, your Fitbit has settings and features many of them obscure and hard to find that can help you get there.

So, yep, I wrote a book about Fitbit. Welcome, friend, to Fitbit For Dummies, which takes you on a complete tour of the Fitbit ecosystem, from the Fitbit trackers to the Fitbit app to the social features of Fitbit.com. In the end, youll learn everything you need to know to get the most out of your Fitbit investment and have a ton of fitness-related fun.

Fitbit For Dummies offers 14 chapters, but just because they appear sequentially, that doesnt mean you have to read them that way. Use the table of contents or index to find the information you need and dip into and out of the book when you have a question about Fitbit specifically or health and fitness tracking generally.

If your time is limited (or youre just aching to get tonights TV-watching started), you can also ignore anything marked by the Technical Stuff icon or the information in sidebars (the gray-shaded boxes). Yes, these tidbits are fascinating (if I do say so myself), but they arent critical to the subject at hand, so you wont miss anything crucial by skipping them.

Within this book, you might see some web addresses breaking across two lines of text. If youre reading this book in print and want to visit one of these web pages, type the web address exactly as its noted in the text, pretending that any line breaks dont exist. If youre reading this as an e-book, youve got it easy just tap the web address to be taken directly to the web page.

This book is for people who are new (or relatively new) to using a Fitbit activity tracker. Therefore, I do not assume that youre a Fitbit expert, a Fitbit guru, or a Fitbit whiz. However, I do assume the following:

• You know how to plug in and connect devices.
• You have a running Wi-Fi network with an Internet connection.
• You know the password for your Wi-Fi network.
• You have an iOS or an Android mobile device (that is, a smartphone or tablet) or a Windows 10 PC.
• You know how to install and operate apps on your mobile device or PC.

Like other books in the Dummies series, this books margin has icons, or little pictures, to flag things that dont quite fit into the flow of the chapter discussion. Here are the icons that I use: