I have a Surge and it does two things for me:  1) monitor my runs (I'm trying to become a better runner so, for example, my run last night was my best 5K ever, and the Surge with the GPS makes it easy to monitor that). 2) It lets me see if I've been lazy, right now I'm at 8715 steps for today (which is below average, I average 11-12k), so maybe taking a walk to the store to buy some eggs wouldn't be the worst thing in the world... Fitbits don't make you fitter, but they help you measure objectively how active you've been so you can do something about it.