My First Fitbit Week…

A week ago I joined the Fitbit wagon. I admit for a long time I didn’t even have any idea what the deal was with the fitbit stats (steps, floors, etc.) from some folks in my Twitter feed. I thought it was just another activity app and for the sake of my phone’s battery life I’m not willing to have one of those run 24/7 . The moment I actually read that Fitbit is a stand-alone gadget, I was more interested. Not to say intrigued. I know I should be more active in my every-day-life, but it’s not always that easy, when you have no measured data of how active (or lazy) you really are. It’s not easy for me at least and I tend to be more lazy than active on most days. So last Friday after work I rather spontaneously drove to the store and paid 90 EUR for a tiny black Fitbit One. Never thought I’d pay that much money for a gadget smaller than my thumb, but this time I did. And so far haven’t regretted the purchase at all!

For those who still have no idea what Fitbit is, it’s a small tracking device, to clip on your clothes (or wear around your wrist) which measures steps taken, and combines it with user data to calculate distance walked, calories burned, elevation climbed and more. You can sync it with the app on your phone via bluetooth or with your computer via USB and then you see a few nice, simple, colourful charts about your level of activity and such. I think it’s pretty neat, but I’m a nerd sometimes, so…

I’ve been trying to loose some weight since July. Not religiously, but I try to log and monitor how much and what I eat and have been using the myfitnesspal app for that and will continue to do so, because it it’s easier than to set it all up in fitbit again. But it syncs so now I have pretty good idea if I’m allowed to eat that additional chocolate/peanut butter treat or if I’m not, because I haven’t burned that many calories that day…

But more importantly after only a few days I have a much better picture of how active/lazy I really am and how I can easily raise my level of activity. In simple ways like parking my car down the road and not in front of the door. Or at least not get pissed when I don’t find a spot right in front, but embrace the necessity to park farther away ;-). In the simple way of taking the stairs instead of the elevator. And yes, I KNOW that’s basically the 101 of burning more calories. But I obviously don’t do too well with 101’s, but need colourful charts, and green smilies and badges for achievement.

Throughout the day today I knew I would be rather lazy than active: sleeping in, catching up with my TV shows, seeing a movie, going out to dinner… and I was ok with that. I’m not religiously about it all, remember? But when I checked my fitbit tracker when I got home and saw only 3009 steps so far, I knew that I didn’t want see such a miserable number at the end of the day.
So I grabbed my iPod and went out for a stroll around the block to raise that number at least. (And burn off some of the yummy Indian dinner). A week ago I wouldn’t have done that. I would have known I had been rather lazy and I probably would have also felt a bit guilty about it, but I still would have opted to curl up on my sofa or just sit in front of the computer regardless anyway. So, yeah, I think this tiny gadget was a pretty good purchase :-)

fitbit

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