I want to take at least 8,000 steps/day, which seems like the sweet spot for reducing mortality from all causes. I really like the Casio GBD-200 for counting steps because it uses a watch battery that lasts more than a year and it doesn’t look like a fitness tracker.

However, I got the idea that I would ALSO like to target 500 MET-minutes per week, which is the finer grained version of “150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity exercise.” So to that end, I got a Fitbit Charge 5. It still has a reasonable battery life and it’s still much simpler than the Apple Watch.

Unfortunately, the Charge 5 stresses me out, and I don’t want my activity tracker to stress me out. It stresses me out because the step count is waaaaaaay over the number of steps I’ve actually taken. Every time I jiggle my leg while I’m sitting down, there’s a really good chance it’ll get counted as a step. And I do think all day long.

Other things I find super annoying about the Charge 5:

* It doesn’t sync with Apple Health. Why not? Super dumb. It’s gotta be Fitbit’s (or Google’s) choice not to allow this integration.

* The screen is constantly changing to show metrics I don’t care about. I want steps and I want active minutes; but every time I tap the screen I get distance and other junk like that.

I may try the Apple Watch again. I already have one from 2020. It’s got so many nice features. The battery just sucks.

And I can always go back to the thing that has been the least stressful and most useful, which is my Casio GBD-200.