According to Thompson, this step count was coined in the 1960s when a Japanese man created a pedometer entitled the “manpo-kei.” This name literally means “10,000 steps meter.” And experts think that this fueled our current 10,000-step obsession. 

But when you begin tracking steps with Fitbit, you learn that it can seem darned near impossible to reach this number. You walk, and walk, and walk…only to find that you’ve reached perhaps half of that. Eventually, many people find that they need to add an actual walk for exercise once or twice a day to meet this goal. And it becomes a lifestyle, which fuels weight loss.

But that’s not all that Fitbit does.

Tracking Sleep Patterns and More

It can track your sleep. When you wear it at night, it tells you how much sleep you have logged. Then when you click on this section of the app, it will give you the full time that you slept in general. So, for example, if you’ve slept 7 hours and 57 minutes, it will give you this figure. 

It will tell you how many times you woke up and how often you were restless or awake…and when. So if you were restless 21 times, it will reveal this. This may mean that you turned over or did something else that was not considered to be fully restful. Then it ranks your general sleep quality, which you can regularly review in the sleep log associated with the app.

You can use the Fitbit app to track your food intake. This is helpful for weight loss because the Fitbit will tell you how many calories you’ve burned in a day. By tracking food and calories, users can see whether or not they’re taking in the correct amount of calories needed (or not needed) to translate to weight loss.