I am in love. I've re-awakened my inner organizational goddess. The one that likes pretty tools that give instant feedback. It goes along with my quest to better myself and my health. It's all because of this little gadget called a fitbit.
Have you heard of the Fitbit? Perhaps you already have one. Do you love yours? I love mine. It has given me a wealth of information that I use to gauge my health. It is a little motivator in the most surprising of ways.
It's helped my awareness on many levels. I am more conscious of what I eat and inputting the nutritional content of the foods I eat has been eye opening on some levels for both good and not so good! It has helped me understand my eating habits and how high fat but low glycemic my diet is. Understanding how many or how few calories certain foods have and certain activities burn has been helpful. Seeing how efficient (or not) my sleep is and what patterns I have that I am unaware of has also been quite interesting. Having an easy way to track my blood pressure and HR, especially because I have issues with both, is a bonus. Wanting to achieve 20 flights of stairs a day (which I surprisingly do easily most days), 10,000 steps (not as easy) or 5 miles a day encourages me to do a little extra to reach them.
I've had mine about two weeks. I had heard about it through friends who raved about it. I thought it was rather expensive for a glorified pedometer. I didn't get the fascination with it. Then I did some research. I pondered how it could be a useful tool in many ways. I succumbed to peer pressure in a way. I one clicked my way to giddiness thanks to Amazon.com.
It arrived on a Tuesday afternoon. I charged it and put it on right before I went to a 45 minute Viennese Waltz lesson. I looked at it after my lesson. I'd danced a mile! Wow!
Over the next week, I played with it's features. I am hooked and fascinated! It displays a greeting, #steps taken, #flights of stairs climbed, # calories burned (including basic metabolic based on your height and weight), # miles traveled on foot and has a flower feedback display (the flower grows the more active you are). At a 2.5 hour dance party it recorded nearly 7000 steps and nearly 4 miles of dancing! There is a mobile app so you can input on the fly but it will only sync data when it's near your computer.
The really cool part is the dashboard you get when it syncs with the computer, also accessible via the mobile app but only with the most recently synced data. It's easy to navigate and allows you to add more data. You can track calories and nutritional content of the foods you eat and # glasses of water consumed. You can track your weight and # calories consumed vs. recommended 'allowance' based on your height and weight or weight loss/gain goal. You can track your blood pressure, heart rate and glucose levels if you are diabetic. You can also input any other activities you do from house cleaning to running to specific exercises, how long and when you did them and it calculates the 'bonus' calories for you. There is also a journal feature that I haven't tried yet.
One of the really cool things is you can wear it at night, in a wrist band that is very comfortable and you input when you went to bed and when you got up and it tells you how long it took you to fall asleep, how active you were during the night with what time and for how long you were awake or moving and total number of hours/minutes slept vs time in bed. It provides graphical representations of many of these things for the day and over time so you can easily see trends. It gives you weekly averages. You can share certain info with friends who also use a fitbit.
My only complaint is that it's not waterproof!
If you are not familiar, or want to learn more, visit www.fitbit.com. It's a little clip that you can wear on your waistband, pocket or I prefer mine on my bra. Secure and less likely to get forgotten or lost that way! I know many people who've lost theirs wearing them on their waistband or clipped on a pocket of their pants. If you don't have one, I highly recommend them! They are a great tracking tool and feedback device and quite motivating. Maybe put it on your birthday/holiday wish list!
If you do have one, I'm curious what led you to get it, how you like it and what features you find most useful and why.
Hooray for the little things and for anything that gets people moving and making more conscious choices! Go fitbit! :-)
I've just bought one after reading your comments! I'll have to let you know how I go with it :)
ReplyDelete