The Fitbit Personal Health Coach is Google’s latest effort to convince us that AI is helpful in every single aspect of our lives.
Flippancy aside, using AI as your fitness coach could be beneficial, from it always being available to having a wealth of potential knowledge at its virtual fingertips.
Making a fitness plan, finding the motivation to follow it, and ensuring you’re always challenging yourself are very hard to do on your own.
AI chatbots, for all their problems, also do a good job of acting “on your side,” which is exactly what you want in a motivator.
Does this mean it’s worth using? Here are four things to think about before deciding to let Gemini help with your health and fitness goals.
What is the Fitbit Personal Health Coach?
Google describes the new Personal Health Coach feature as:
A fitness trainer, a sleep coach, and a health and wellness advisor, all working together to help you be your best, whether that means maximizing performance on the court, in the office, or at home with family.
The AI will watch over the data collected by your Fitbit or Pixel Watch, supplement it with data from devices like smart scales, and then present trends and offer suggestions on how to improve.
You’ll be able to ask it questions about things like getting better sleep or losing weight.
On the fitness side, the AI will build custom, personalized routines with weekly progression and adjust them based on real-time data.
Through the chat system, you can also tell the AI to change the plan, depending on your requirements.
Finally, it will provide similar insight and advice on how to improve your sleep, allowing you to work on both recovery and fitness.
It’s part of Fitbit Premium
To enjoy the insights, advice, and motivation promised by the Fitbit Personal Health Coach, you’re going to have to pay for it.
The feature will only be available to Fitbit Premium subscribers. This means it’ll cost $10 per month or an $80 up-front cost for a year’s access.
Fitbit Premium already provides a degree of what the Health Coach offers, including a library of workouts, a morning energy score based on sleep and activity, the ability to set different daily goals, and further insights into metrics like heart rate, calorie burn, and sleep.
If you’re already paying for Fitbit Premium, it’s safe to assume you want the additional insights and features, and the Personal Health Coach seems like a great addition to the fairly basic extras already available.
However, if Fitbit Premium hasn’t enticed you already, there may not be enough in the Health Coach to do so now either.
Does AI really know me?
Here’s where the problems start. For the AI to provide helpful, actionable, and realistic targets, it has to know you well and be in a position to give you meaningful information and advice.
Unfortunately, this may not be possible, and it may lead to the chatbot rarely being helpful.
It’s not the first of its kind, and workouts created by ChatGPT for someone training for a marathon were described as “boring” in a recent Time article, and the exercises added to the sessions were uninspired, leading to the author deviating from the plan.
This makes paying for such a service less attractive.
While the Fitbit Health Coach will have access to health metrics ChatGPT did not, there are still concerns over it not fully understanding how fit you are, whether past injuries may cause issues with recommended exercise plans, and if your relationship with food, exercise, and knowing in-depth data points is healthy.
The chatbot can only make assumptions based on the data it’s given, along with information it learns online.
Because Google does not want to find itself in a situation where Gemini has caused an injury after making a recommendation, its workout plans may end up being generic, and its advice intentionally vague.
Will a human personal trainer be the better choice?
If you want a structured workout plan and are willing to pay for it, a personal trainer may be a better choice than the Gemini-powered Health Coach.
A personal trainer talking to Healthline about ChatGPT’s ability to create workout plans called the tool fine for “topline guidance” but warned it wouldn’t be able to “consider individual goals, physical condition, medical history, and physical limitations to craft tailored plans that maximize results while minimizing risks.”
For any fitness plan to work, you’ve got to stick to it, and that means it must be achievable and challenging, which Gemini may not be able to establish from the data it collects.
It will also have to make its recommendations within the confines of not wanting to push someone into doing workouts that aren’t suitable.
However, its ability to understand when you may need to prioritize rest and recovery may go some way to helping you stay on track, provided you feed it this information.
Google sums up how we should think about the Health Coach before starting on a fitness journey with it, saying in the fine print:
This product is intended for general wellness and fitness purposes only. Always consult with a healthcare provider before making changes regarding your health.
Do I want to wear a smartwatch all the time?
To inform you about fitness levels, recovery time, and the best exercise plan, Gemini and the Fitbit Health Coach must have access to all the relevant data.
For example, if it’s missing information on how you slept, it may not be able to recognize when you need to rest, or if you’re primed for a big workout.
What this means is you have to commit to wearing the Pixel Watch or a Fitbit all the time. Otherwise, Gemini will be missing crucial data to build its plans or to provide advice.
It takes us back to whether the AI really knows us, as for it to have any chance of doing so, we have to give it permanent access to all the right data points.
While this isn’t so hard during the day, it is less convenient at night, as not everyone likes to wear a watch when sleeping.
Which conveniently leads us on to the final point you should consider before going all-in with Fitbit and Gemini.
What are the alternatives?
The Fitbit Health Coach is only available on Fitbit devices and the Pixel Watch, which does limit it somewhat.
Neither Google nor Fitbit has a smart ring in the range, which some may find is a far more preferable health and fitness tracker to wear 24 hours a day.
The Oura Ring 4 isn’t all that different in price from the Pixel Watch 4, and its $6 monthly subscription is cheaper than Fitbit Premium. It has an AI advisor built in, which can provide advice on your health and wellbeing, and the smart ring can track some basic activity too.
If Fitbit Health Coach sounds like a bit much for your lifestyle, it may be the better choice.
Also consider the Samsung Galaxy Ring, especially if you already use a Samsung phone.
The Samsung Health app is easy to use and provides plenty of helpful data, plus there’s a selection of workouts and other training plans available.
If you wear a Galaxy Watch 8, the recently introduced Running Coach feature uses AI to create a custom, personalized plan to start running or improve your basic ability.
The Samsung Health app is free to use, and Samsung also has plans to introduce its own AI-based healthcare assistant later this year, and has indicated it won’t require a subscription.
Sign up for Fitbit Health Coach
If Fitbit Health Coach sounds like it’s still the best fit for you, it’ll be available as a beta service in October for Fitbit Premium subscribers, and you can sign up here to be alerted when it’s released.
