I bit the FitBit bullet.... and I like it!

Hey Nerds,
For about a year I had been debating getting a fitness tracker.  The biggest reason I wanted one was because I wanted to know my heart rate while exercising.  There were many times while exercising where I thought to myself... "I don't think I'm pushing myself as hard as I should".  I figured if I could see my heart rate while exercising, then I could see I need to work a little harder, or, I'm exerting myself just fine.

Other reasons I wanted a fitness tracker:

• Track my steps
• Track calories burned (I don't know how it figures that out though)
• Track my sleep

The sleep tracking was really interesting to me.  It takes me a long time to fall asleep, and on a normal work day, I don't sleep that long... maybe 5 - 5.5 hours.  So I was interested to see my sleep cycles in that short period of time.

When Dwayne asked what I wanted for Christmas, I told him I wanted a fitness tracker.  I pointed him towards the FitBit Charge 2 because it was on clearance.  However, the day before Christmas, the FitBit Charge 3 was on sale and only $30 more than what he spent on the Charge 2, so he exchanged it.

I didn't get around to setting it up and putting it on until close to midnight Christmas... or would it be midnight on Boxing Day?  hmm... what about, I didn't put it on until 12:01 AM on December 26.  I opened the box and... there were no instructions.  Even though I'm a programmer and have a Computer Science degree, when it comes to tech devices I can be a bit clueless without directions.  But, ok... inside the box, right below the watch it says the first thing to do is install the FitBit app on your phone.  I installed the app and the app will basically step you through setting up your account and syncing your phone to your app.  It took about 45 minutes for everything to update and sync and "technical stuff like that".

I've been wearing it for about 3 weeks, and I'm really enjoying it.  It does motivate me to get moving (steps) and I do check on my heart beat during exercise, and the sleep chart is pretty cool.  Let's break it down to some bullet points since my mind is sort of scrambled right now.

Steps and Stairs

• I set my step goal to 10,000 steps and I hit and/or surpass that almost everyday.  There was one day last week where we did a lot of house cleaning and went out for a nature walk, followed by more house cleaning; I racked up 18,000 steps that day!!
• From 7 am to 7 pm, my FitBit is set to remind me to move 250 steps every hour.  10 minutes before the end of the hour, my watch vibrates and tells me I have (for example) 120 steps to take by the end of the hour.  I'll get up and walk to a coworker's desk and back, and that usually will fulfill the step requirement.

• In addition to steps, my FitBit also tracks how many flights of stairs I went up in a given day.  Since I live in a two-story house, and I use the stairs at work (4 flights), so it's quite easy for me to get a good number of stairs in (somewhere between 20 to 27 per day).

Heart Rate Monitor

• I was really surprised to see that when I'm at home standing doing either tidying, or cooking, or even just talking to my family, my heart rate is hovering around 90 bpm, which is in my "fat burning zone".  If I'm sitting typing away, my heart rate is around 65-70 bpm.  
• When I'm done exercising, I will look at my heart rate monitor and see how hard I was pushing myself (i.e. heart rate stayed in "fat burning" zone, "cardio" zone, or "peak").  I hardly ever reach the "peak" heart rate.  
• Also note from the below pictures, that when ever my heart rate is in fat burn zone, it marks it at "exercise zones".  I didn't actually workout for 8 hrs and 19 minutes.

Calorie Burn

• Another stat I check after exercising is check my calorie burn
• Check out the below graph.  There's a green spike ("very intense") and yellow spike ("moderate") when I exercised in the morning around 5:15 to 5:45.  Then, check it out people, there's three yellow spikes occuring from 4:15 pm to 5:00 pm.  Do you know what that is?  That's me starting my house cleaning.  I'm like a machine of running around spraying and wiping surfaces, toilets, and sinks
• Someone (or several of them actually), scoffed at me for marking "house cleaning" as an exercise... well this is proof that my idea of house cleaning is exercising
  
  

Sleep Graph

• The sleep graph is pretty cool, and it's the first thing I check when I wake up in the morning.  I'm surprised at how accurate it is at knowing the different sleep cycles, specifically the "awake" cycles.  It will show I take a long time to fall asleep, or, I keep hitting the snooze button.
• I probably don't get enough sleep on a weekday, so my FitBit actually encourages me to go to sleep sooner (and let's be honest, stop scrolling Facebook) because I want to be able to fall asleep and increase my hours slept.
• Below is a comparison of my sleep cycle on a weekend (8 hours) vs a weekday (5 hours).

Notifications
I set up my FitBit to vibrate if I get a text message or phone call... I don't know if this is good or bad.  For now, i think it's good because sometimes when I'm at the store shopping, I won't hear my phone ringing.  But on a bad note, this also keeps my constatnly "plugged in"

FitBit Addiction
Lastly, I want to quickly touch on FitBit addiction... I'm often checking my watch for my step count, calorie burn, stair count, heart rate, etc.  I don't like having to take it off to charge it because I'm going to miss out on one of two stats, depending when I charge it:

• Sleep Cycles if I charge it during the night
• Step Count if I charge it during the day

I was given a good suggestion though: charge it while taking a shower... this is good... I'm not going anywhere, and I'm not sleeping.  My battery can't get a full charge while I take a shower, but it will at least keep it from dying.


Tell me in the comments below, do you use a fitness tracker? are you thinking about it, or turned off by the idea?  Do people checking their FitBit annoy you?