Fitbit Tidbit

I did the entire Round 4 2012 12wbt without a heart rate monitor and coped just fine, but I did think having one would have been handy. When I won my Fitbit, I ignorantly thought that it was a heart rate monitor of sorts – how wrong was I? 

Hugo set it up on the Fitbit website for me, I put it on and then soon realised it was not a heart rate monitor (I was a touch disappointed). It seemed to be a type of step-counter-gadget, a pedometer, with some bells and whistles. I did remind myself that Michelle Bridges thinks these are cool, so cool she has them as prizes, so I had better keep and open mind and give it a chance. 

That night I went to bed a little unimpressed with the fancy pedometer, I could not remember how the sleep ‘thingy’ worked so I left it next to my bed and went off to sleep. The posh contraption stayed there until I got back from work the next day :(

I had committed to giving it a chance – so I got into the swing of things and started to wear it. I started reading my Fitbit dashboard on the Internet and I kept it on me for my workouts. Below is an example of my dashboard.

(BTW I have since found out that there are on average 10 steps in a flight of stairs – in case you were wondering)

Here are two examples of the calorie detail data.

The first sample is of a week day. You can see that I do my work out early (Big up to the 5:45am Club!) and that the red lines show the spike in calories burnt. (warm up and final blast)

This second sample is from the Super Saturday Session of Week 1. Check out these red spikes. Crazy to think each of those spikes was 250 skips with a rope!

On night 3 of having my FitBit I activated the sleep tracker.

After synchronising the data with my computer the following morning – I was now impressed. The sleep tracking reports had me agog!! 

It told me; how quickly I had fallen asleep, how many times I had woken up during the night and of the time I was in bed, how much of it was actual sleep. This was interesting stuff. Take a look at one of my sleep graphs.

I was compelled to do a bit of extra reading about the sleep tracking and how it works. For the sleep tracker to be accurate the Fitbit should be worn on your non-dominant arm (in the wrist pouch that is provided). There are two settings, sensitive and normal.  The sensitive setting will pick up more changes and movement than the normal setting while the sleeping mode is active. Tossing and turning in ones sleep is a sign of restlessness, it suggests that one is not completely resting.  Arm movements are a good indication of how deep or light ones sleep is. The motion sensors in the Fitbit monitors movements and can distinguish between awake and asleep. I wake up on average between 7-9 times a night, I don’t remember every waking, but I have since learned that these wakings can happen in an unconscious state.  

On Thursday evening I put the washing on, put the kids to bed, went into the kitchen and then had a sinking feeling...You know how they say "you don't know what you've got till it's gone"? Well, I realised that I had put my fitbit into the washing machine. I felt ill, already I missed it, I just assumed it was damaged. Nevertheless, I still found myself hurtling down the stairs and stopping the washing machine - there it was, a little wet, but working just fine!

This tiny little piece of technology has been multitasking all the while hanging from my hip. I love it. I don't need a heart rate monitor anymore. (Maybe if I start doing tri-athlons I will need one, but for now, I am so so thrilled with my fitbit, it is perfect for what I need!) 

I downloaded the pictures off my Fitbit dashboard on Fitbit.com