Now, on to my newest discovery - the Fitbit. My sister and brother-in-law asked for Fitbits for Christmas and I had no idea what they were. When they showed them to me, I was totally blown away, and I decided to use my Christmas money to buy one. This is my Fitbit:
It's a Fitbit Flex, and it's $99. This isn't the nicest one Fitbit has to offer, but it certainly does a lot. First, it's a pedometer. It counts my steps. I wear it on my wrist and it monitors my arm movements. A lot of people have asked me if it logs steps just by moving my arm. I was curious myself when I first got it, so I looked it up. While it sometimes does accidentally clock steps, it has a 3-point algorithm that only clocks a step when my arm has moved both front to back and slightly up. And considering that it doesn't count steps when you're holding or carrying something, the small amount of mistakes it might make are compensated for.
The Fitbit wireless syncs to my phone. It converts the number of steps I take into the number of calories I've burned and the mileage I've walked. My goal is to walk 10,000 steps a day, and I feel really pumped when I see that I walked 5 miles.
Second, the Fitbit monitors your sleep patterns. I put it in sleep mode and wear it to bed and it monitors how much I move in my sleep. My sleep graphs look like this:
The pink lines represent the amount of time I was asleep, the light blue lines represent the amount of time I was restless, and the dark blue represents the amount of time I was asleep. Last night I slept for 7 hours and 55 minutes, and I was restless 13 times. You can also set your Fitbit up to have a silent alarm. You do this through the app in your phone, and it vibrates to wake you up! (Great for me on the mornings when I have to be at work at 5am.)
Finally, you can also use the Fitbit app to monitor your eating patterns. You can log your calories by scanning a barcode or searching for that food. I don't use this part of the app but I tried it for a day and it was really cool! You can also track the amount of water that you drink. I like this part of the app because I've been trying to drink more water. The goal set in the app is to drink 64-oz of water, or 8 cups. I've only reached my goal once since I got the Fitbit. (In case you're curious, 64-oz equals 2 full Newk's cups.)
You can also link your app with your friends, and challenge your friends. Veronica (my coworker) and I are doing a challenge this week to see who can walk the most steps in the week. The only thing that I don't like about this part of the app is that it's not very user-friendly. You have to know the e-mail address of someone in order to add them as a friend. I wish I could sync it up with my Facebook so that I could add my Facebook friends! Maybe that'll be in the next update?
What I like most about the Fitbit is that it encourages you to have a healthy lifestyle. Wearing a Fitbit is a constant reminder to make better choices. Every time I look down at my wrist, I know I need to walk more, drink more water, or sleep more. It's a constant reminder that healthy choices can be easy and add up little by little! (Cool side note: the Fitbit vibrates when you have reached your 10,000 step goal!)
Living a healthy lifestyle isn't just about looking good. I have tried to constantly remind myself that being healthy for that purpose alone isn't worth it. I try to be healthy to honor God. I have been given two legs, a great set of lungs, and a healthy heart. God gave me a healthy body and I can honor Him by taking care of it! After all, Scripture says...
"Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies." 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
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