Jumping on the Fitbit bandwagon..

Summary: I bought a fitbit. I hope to get more active and lose some weight. It looks like this:

Yes, its a funky looking piece of kit.

If you want the long version:

So my very good friend and mentor +jj Thornton is a junkie for data. He records the details of his activities and health in detail and I remember laughing with him (at him?) at his obsession with data. His idea is to spot health issues before they become issues and try to see if there is correlation in what you do and eat and how you feel. What makes you succumb to a cold? what gives you headaches?? etc etc etc.

He records general activity, sleep, food, exercise, heart rate, blood pressure, glucose levels and all sorts. The crazy man even has blood tests and gets his poop analysed. Did I mention he is crazy? Hell, I still love him though…

Anyhow, roll forward a few years and I still laugh at him and his craziness, however I did just go out and by a fitbit (Charge HR) so that I can monitor my activity levels, heart rate and sleep patterns for no other reason than to try and correlate if the days I waste doing bugger all are preceded by lower than normal activity days and if my sleepless nights (which I have been having quite a few of recently) are related to stress (hoping this is indicated in someway by heart rate).

I’m also hoping that wearing this thing and making a record of my activeness will spur me into more action. Its a dream I have.

I then remembered I have some posh wifi scales (thank you +Firebox ) which I occasionally use which logs my weight (a very depressing story since coming back from travelling) and before you know if (after a quick google search for how) I have that plugged into my fitbit account and I am tracking that too now.

DATA! give me DATA!!!! Well, Lets not get carried away.

Anyhow, I have had it for 24 hours now and I give you this review:

Its incredibly well packaged. Glued in. Impossible to open. I am sure the package designers had one thing in mind: If anyone is going to try and steal this from the shop, they sure aint getting it out of the packaging without making a scene. Quite frankly for me, if kind of ruined the opening experience of the product and the brand.

The only choice was to rip it open!

Wearing it will take a little getting used to if you are not used to wearing a watch (which I am not) but if you are you wont even notice its there. Sleeping it is comfortable and it didn’t bother me at all. That said I was tired after two days in London, two very early starts, long days at work and 8 hours of driving – so I think I would have slept well regardless, but the record of my sleep seemed pretty accurate:

Oh yes, nearly 9 hours of sleep! And wfh today means not getting up till 8am! 🙂

I’ve had it on all day today and been out twice with the dogs around the village – it seems fairly accurate, clocking up 7km of walking (9000 steps) over a couple of hours.

So all in all, so far so good. I’ll keep you posted.

steveslaw

A vanity project for a guy named Steve