A Year of Fitbit

I mentioned a couple days ago that as of last Tuesday, I’m wearing my Fitbit again. I bought it almost exactly one year ago and wore it regularly until the clip broke in early April. (I kept forgetting to order a new one so it was several weeks before I got back onboard.) These things — Fitbits, Nike FuelBands, Jawbone Ups — have gotten really popular lately, so I thought I’d share a bit about my experience over the last year.

Hooray! I hit 10,000 steps yesterday!

I chose the Fitbit One. The Fitbit Flex is probably more popular right now, but it hadn’t been released last May and although I knew it was coming, I chose not to wait. While I like the idea of a bracelet/arm band, I went with the One because it’s so much more inconspicuous. It came with both a rubber clip and a wide velcro wristband. During the day, I use the clip to fasten it on my bra and no one ever knows it’s there (well, except for the fact that I just told you). To use the sleep tracking function at night, I switch from the clip to the wristband.

On one hand, this thing is really nothing more than a pedometer. But the ability to sync it (with your computer or via an app on your phone) with software means that you don’t have to spend any time crunching data. You can just log on and see everything in a cool, easy-to-understand way:

I like how I can immediately see how many steps I’ve taken, how many miles that equates to, and a bar graph of how active I was at what times of day. (This is my graph from yesterday as of ~9:00 p.m. Around 1:00, I got on the treadmill for 35 minutes which is easily visible.)

A few observations, both about the device and about what it’s told me about myself:

I was worried about the accuracy, and whether it would be good enough to make the data worthwhile. Turns out that overall, I’ve been pretty happy. It’s not 100% accurate, but it seems surprisingly close.

The default goal is 10,000 steps per day, which is ~5 miles. I had no idea how close I got (or didn’t get) to that number each day until I got the Fitbit, but it turns out that 10k steps is pretty difficult for me to hit — especially on a weekday — unless I specifically spend time exercising.

On a workday when I don’t have many meetings and am therefore at my desk all day, I’ll leave the office only having racked up 2,000-3,000 steps — a depressingly low number.

On a workday when I do have meetings, I go home having accumulated anywhere between 4,000-8,000 steps, depending on how many meetings and how far away they are. Knowing this often spurs me to walk across site to a meeting instead of driving. (We’ll see if that lasts now that summer is approaching again.)

I’m far more likely to hit 10,000 on weekends, when I am up and about for most of the day. Even if I don’t specifically work out, I can sometimes still get there.

I also WAY more into the sleep tracking feature than I ever expected — somehow it’s just fascinating to see how much sleep I’m actually getting, as opposed to just knowing how many hours I was in bed.

Overall, I have enjoyed learning these nuggets about my days and my level of activity. My motivation to accumulate steps is at a high right now, since I just started wearing my Fitbit again after several weeks off. Hopefully I can maintain that drive for a while!