Family and FitBit

I count myself very lucky, I have a big, wonderfully, loving family – the kind who you would choose to be your friends. There are six  special members, who are outside of my immediate family are one of my biggest supporters in everything I wish to do (except for when I ran away from home when I was younger - they sent me back). They are my beloved Uncle Stephen, Aunt Mariam, Chris, Jess, Mylie and Humphrey (the dog).

The Old Couple

Their little terrors

Uncle Stephen has been spoiling me since I can remember – he’d buy me expensive French dresses, porcelain dolls, sweets, teddy bears, toys etc. there was definitely some favouritism going on (though he still claims to love us all equally).  He has been spoiling me ever since, and my lovely Aunt Mariam carried on the tradition when they met and married, which was a huge relief, as I feared he might forget about me (though now I have to share the ‘spoiling’ with their three apples of their eyes).

My FitBit - and loom band that Mylie
and Jess made me for my birthday

So just like the last 24  years, this year for my birthday I was spoilt by them too; they got me a FitBit Flex. I’ve been wanting one for a while, and suspected that I might open one up on my birthday, but if I didn’t I was going to treat myself to one. The FitBit Flex is a device you wear on your wrist (like a bracelet or watch), which tracks your movement 24 hours a day; including sleep patterns. It has a display of 5 LED lights, each light indicates 20% of a goal you want to reach for the day. The default setting is 10,000 steps a day (which is just under 5 miles), and when gentle tapped the lights indicate how far you’ve got towards your goal for the day e.g. 4,500 steps – 2 lights (and the 3^rd one flashes, to show that you’re working towards lighting up the next 20% of your goal). It’s waterproof; so you can wear it in the shower – so it really doesn’t need to be taken off at all, except for when it needs charging – the battery lasts around 6 days, and takes a couple of hours to charge.

I particularly wanted the Fit Bit as it works with My Fitness Pal – as I;m a Monday – Friday calorie counter,  it helps me work out how many calories have gone in (taking data from MFP), and then works out how many calories have gone out. So each day you are left with your deficit for the day – great if your losing weight, as it keeps you on track. It also syncs with your smart phone via Bluetooth, so at any time of the day or night you can open up the app and see exactly how many steps you’ve taken, how many calories burnt, how many active minutes you’d had etc…

I’ve been wearing the FitBit Flex for just over a week now, and I’ve realised that pre-fitbit I was bloody lazy. I wasn’t lazy when I was running or at the gym obviously, but my day-to-day activities were very sedentary.

Getting the lights to shine adds a sense of game-ification (except you are the only one in the game – though you can challenge other friends who have one - I’m yet to know a friend of mine who has one).  You also earn badges along the way, so you get one for the first 5,000 steps you do (that’s an easy one), then for the first 10,00 steps you do in one day, then for the first time you do 15,000 steps in one day etc. You also get badges for the number of miles you walk in total, and last week I earned my 50 mile badge – yes I walked / jog / ran 50 miles in one week (I’d like to thank a weekend in Paris for that). If you’ve read my earlier post you’ll know I like goals, so these badges work as little goals for me to set for myself. These badges work as a great motivator for me, actually just having the flex on my wrist works as a great motivator; as every time I look at my wrist it’s a little reminder that I need to move some more.

The online dashboard is helpful & fun too – as it tracks you every day, and puts things into nice little pie and bar charts. As I’m a bit of a Geek I love seeing all my stats laid out there.  You can set all sorts of different goals, and check in every day to see how close you are to them, and get a weekly view too (I actually think I walked more on Sunday than any other day, but the battery died half way through the day).

As I was planning on buying one myself, I read a lot of reviews on the FitBit Flex and it’s other competitors that are currently in the market place. Most reviewers complained it wasn’t accurate enough, but that seemed to be their complaint about all of them – complaining that it can be too sensitive and tracks brushing your teeth or typing as steps, (due to the wrist movement). Unless they strap something to your legs, you’re probably not going to get much more accurate that this for now, plus just like the calories I count on My Fitness Pal, it’s a rough estimation, which is fine with me.

If you are using one and want to get become my 'fitbit' friend; let me know so we can challenge each other.