Options

[psjohnso]

I heard that some people that visit AC are on a health kick and looking to get in shape. So I'll go ahead and talk about the new gadget I got.

Its called fitbit and I finally got last week after it had been on backorder since September! So far it has been fun. Fun in the fact that I can track my progress of what I eat and how active I am over time with nice charts and graphs. And the ability to track my sleep efficiency is pretty neat too.

For those who don't know:
The Fitbit tracker is a device that senses your motion in three dimensions and converts this into useful information about your daily activities. The Tracker measures the intensity and duration of your physical activities, calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled, how long it took you to fall asleep, the number of times you woke up throughout the night and how long you were actually asleep vs just lying in bed. You can wear the Tracker loosely in your pocket or clipped to your clothing.

The information is sent to Fitbit's website automatically and wirelessly when its in range of the receiver that comes with the device. The receiver also doubles as the charger. And apparently it only needs charging every 7 to 10 days.

The device costs $99 and membership and tracking services are free.
If you just want to join the site without the purchase of the tracker you can do that too, but you would have to manually type in your activity.


Final thoughts.
I just started using this so of course I am hyped about it, but only time will tell. It does kinda suck to type in all the food I eat daily but there is lots of auto-fill options of foods an restaurants already built in so you wont have to type the nutrition facts of all the food you eat. Granted you don't have to track the food but I think it is kinda necessary to properly see calories consumed and calories burned. The tracking of walking and running works quite well and is charted out very nicely. For sleeping you just hold the button on the fitbit down for 3 sec to start and place on the arm band that comes with the device, then hold down again for 3 secs when you wake up. All easy to do and you get lot of data in return. For a statistics freak like myself this is a win. A pretty neat gadget.

This company is still in infancy so I'm expecting more upgrades. Hopefully an API and a phone app soon.

If you join let me know. They do have a social side to the site which allows you to compare your activity level with your friends which might help encourage to stay on track.


www.fitbit.com