Well, I’ve finally become one of those people who irritate me. Actually, a lot of people irritate me, so let me narrow that down. I’ve become one of those irritating people who’re constantly mumbling about keeping their step-count up, and comparing their calorie ‘burn rate’ with their friends. (Although to be fair I don’t do much of the latter as I don’t have many friends. By design, I might add….). This is due to me buying in to the Fitbit ‘craze’. Fitbit: it’s like Crossfit but without all the hard work – people just never f’ing shut up about it. At least not at my work – although that could be because of all the company-sponsored hype and activities, and Fitbit raffle prizes. I think all of the employees in my department have one, and they’re always talking about it and taking long walks together, and it’s just so irritating.
But then the GF bought herself a Fitbit Flex a month or so back, and she seemed pretty taken with it. She’s not quite as gung ho as my colleagues abut the whole thing, but it did seem to be prompting her to get more exercise, and lord knows I could do with some of that, having gone from a career low of 165lbs at peak-divorce, back past my fighting weight of 175lbs, to a peak of around 190lbs today. I have an agreement with the GF that if I ever hit 200lbs, she gets to punch me in the face, and has the option to dump me without further explanation. So there’s certainly some incentive there, but I thought that a Fitbit might provide me with some much-needed gentle nagging (the GF doesn’t nag – or even mention my rapidly-approaching weight limit – but I don’t want to take the risk that she’s just quietly biding her time on that one…). So I went out and bought a Fitbit myself.
Of course, I couldn’t just get a mid-range Fitbit Flex like she had. I had to get the top of the range: the Fitbit Surge. I justified this by reasoning that the Surge will also track my cycling, thanks to the built-in GPS, which the cheaper models don’t. It also monitors my heart rate which I figure will come in handy when I’m driving, to warn me before my anger at the idiots on Houston’s roads reaches ‘impending heart attack level’. The Surge also allows you to control the music on your phone (the Fitbit Android app runs perfectly well on my BlackBerry), and can even receive notifications of texts and emails. In this regard it’s kind of like an Apple Watch but a quarter of the price and without all the pointless apps and the simpering smugness that comes with owning any new Apple device. Actually, the Surge does pretty much look like a watch, having a 1.5″ square touchscreen that displays the time when it’s not telling you how many steps you’ve taken, or sets of stairs you’ve climbed, and so on. Which is a bit unnecessary, as I wear it on my right wrist and still wear an actual watch (a very nice Paul Smith timepiece the GF bought me for my birthday) on my left wrist.
When I was in (high) school one of my teachers wore two watches (an analogue one on one hand and a – then new – digital one on the other). I always thought that he was a complete tool for doing so, and now I feel that that’s me: a bit of a tool. So I’ve been keeping my shirt sleeves rolled down, but they only just about fit over my Surge, which keeps peeking out, threatening to draw everyone’s attention to what an ass I am. I guess I could strap it to my ankle, where it would be hidden under my sock but still track my steps, but then people might mistake the slight bulge for a perp tracker, which probably wouldn’t endear them to me any more than it looking as though I think myself so important that I need two watches just to keep track of my busy schedule. But whatever. I’m doing the Fitbit thing for the exercise, and not for the image (cool or tool – you decide…).
Truthfully, it has caused me to focus on how much ‘exercise’ I’m getting, prompting me to take the stairs instead of the elevator, and going for a post-lunch walk around the campus at work (which is exactly one mile…or 1,794 steps!) each day. I’ve also started going back to the gym after a month-or-so’s lay-off, and have also started getting out on my bike at the weekend. Although that lasted exactly one week, as I got a bit of wire wrapped around the rear derailleur going through a 2ft deep ‘puddle’ which bent everything out of shape (including me), so now the bike is in for repair (and in the meantime I’m rollerblading, which isn’t quite as much fun (or macho) as cycling on the dirt trails through the woods).
Sadly, having the Fitbit has actually dissuaded me from getting exercise on occasion. I had taken my Fitbit off to charge it (which it seems to need once every 3 or 4 days), and needed to get something from the other room, but couldn’t bring myself to get up and walk over and get it because I knew I wouldn’t get ‘credit’ for the couple of dozen steps it would take me. My phone I charge at night, but I can’t do this with my Fitbit, because…
…in addition to tracking steps, heart rate, and calories burned, the Fitbit also tracks sleep patterns. It does this fairly superficially by monitoring heart rate and movement, and assuming that if your heart rate is low and you aren’t moving that you are asleep (so I’ll have to be careful that it doesn’t think I’m taking a power nap every time I meditate…), but it’s a reasonably intriguing measure, and I find myself more addicted to monitoring my sleep than I am to monitoring my exercise. The first night I was delighted to see that out of the 5 hours and 45 minutes I spent in bed, I was sound asleep for 5 hours and 38 minutes of that, apparently taking a “time to fall asleep” of “0 minutes” (it’s a gift I inherited from my dad, a champion napper) and having only one restless period. This is much to the chagrin of the GF who goes to bed almost three hours before I do, but also only manages around 6 hours of ‘sleep’ (according to her Fitbit). Of course the downside is that our customary “how did you sleep?” texts now just elicit a response of a screengrab of the sleep screen in the Fitbit app… But to be fair, that’s a bit more informative than the previous response of “OK”, “Meh”, or “Ugh”, depending…
Anyway, on balance, this whole Fitbit seems to be working out pretty well. I have actually been getting more exercise – although my scales would go to pains to point out that this doesn’t actually seem to be having the required effect. But it’s an entertaining distraction, and if nothing else, it’s reassuring when I wake up feeling knackered to be told by my Fitbit “Well of course you do, you were only in bed for 5 hours and were ‘restless’ for two of those”…
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