Wearing my Fitbit for 3 months

It's been more than 3 months now that I'm wearing my FitBit 3 bracelet. Wow time flies. After the first 4 weeks I gave a first impression on the new tool here.  Since I bought the Fitbit in a "Healthy Habit" campaign at work, I wondered if in the long run this gadget would truly have an effect on my lifestyle.

As a summary I can say that all statistics show that I am consistently moving more than I did at the end of December and January.  This is in my opinion indeed part of it thanks to the continuous awareness that the Fitbit generates...but it's also boosted by the longer lighter days, better weather and the recent increased travelling from Jan (which give the necessity / opportunity to walk the children to school and hobbies more often).


So how am I doing?

Steps

In the recent weeks I have more days above 10000 steps than days I don't and I am positively surprised on how easy it is to reach this commonly accepted goal for a healthy lifestyle.  Well it's easy on days that I can walk the children to school, combined with usually one more chore during the day (picking them up from school as well or walking them to swimming to class or doing laundry at home and run up and down the stairs all the time, or delivering a training at work where I stand-up for hours or ...).

Yet it's easily easy to hardly move during a day. If Jan brings the children to school and if I have just a lot of meetings and nothing particular in the evening, I strand at around 5000 steps.

But this insight that I learned from over the last months, does motivate me to do that one extra little walk ...to go and pick up something out of the garage further in the neighbourhood or not to take the car when it rains to drop off the children or... So the awareness of these steps stimulate me to do a little more. 

In general I've had 6 weeks so far where my weekly average is above 10000 steps a day...and 3 of those weeks were in the last month. So the daily average on steps is going up each month. Yeay... but I guess I'll soon hit a limit and top it off :)

Distance

Distance is obviously related to the number of steps so that should also increase.  However there aren't too many days that I reach the target of 8 kms a day.   I take little steps :p.
Floors



Living in a 4 storey house, I figured setting the target at 20 floors would be a walk in the park.  And on most days it is, but it is helped with walks outside that are not flat. Bringing the children to school adds a lot of "floors" on my app.  
On quiet days where I'm well organised, I get down in the mornings and don't need to run up anymore that much...I can spend most of the day on the same floor in the office and I get home and only go back upstairs in the evening.  And some days I just keep running up and down the stairs.  It's very different each day and that's fine by me. I don't use this as an active target anymore.  

Active minutes

While I seem to move enough, being active is my weak point.  The app picks up activities where I am active for at least 15 minutes after another and that are more strenuous than usual. So I need at least a 15 minute brisk walk or more to get active minutes.  Racing up and down the stairs at incredible speed for 10 minutes is not good enough. Walking too fast too school in 10 minutes and relaxing there is not good enough either.

For good health it is recommended we all "sport" 30 minutes a day.  So the goal is to have 30 active minutes but there's many days I don't get that at all.   Yet again bringing the children to school adds up (as it does add up going and returning so I make it into approx 20-30 active minutes) and going for walks in the weekend boost my average.

However if you look at my excercise spread over the weekend, I've only yet once made it to the recommended 5 days out of 7 with exercise  (and excercise there also adds my logged yoga which is an exercise but not quite active minutes).

So...I move but there is a lot of room of improvement to move more actively and on a regular daily basis!







Sleep




When I was just wearing my FitBit it was a shocking eye-opener to realise how much time a night we all spend "awake".  The time you spend in bed is not quite the time you sleep.  But of course that's always been the case, so I had to watch myself not to overreact and spend much more time in bed to achieve my "8 hours of sleep" because I believed I needed them (and where before my FitBit, I strived to be in bed for a good 8 hours). I functioned before and I still do even if I don't actually make my 8 hours of sleep.

I see that my average is between 7h20-7h40 of sleep per night in most weeks.  It is interesting however to notice that I do need most of my weekends to crack up that average a little and to "catch up".

It's also interesting to see how the last weeks and months I've little by little been sleeping less. Previous week I struggled to get the average above 7h's a night. Ouch.  I felt that and it didn't feel good.  

I guess in January I was very actively managing my sleep as a way to take care of myself and fight stress, worries and emotions.  Now that I've regained some energy (and now that Jan was travelling a lot), I've been in bed later again.  And recently I've also had bad luck with some pretty bad nights where either mine or the children's digestion threw in some nightly challenges.
Anyway, I think I must slightly get up that average again by being more vigilant to when I go to bed.
Beats per minute in rest
I have no goal for heart beats per minute in rest. I don't really understand this measure. My doctor explained me the importance and strength of heart rate coherence (I'll dedicate a different post to just that topic), but claimed my heart rate in rest is irrelevant. 

I see it is higher in the days with more active minutes, so slacking off helps for a low beats per minute in rest while I seem to recuperate slower when I'm very active (or at least my heart beat average is higher).

Yet I find it remarkable to compare the graph in January versus March. In January I really suffered from a lot more (dis)stress and emotional days which have fortunately improved a bit over the last months. So In January I see multiple days "peaking" up to 70 and my very lowest day is at 63 beats per minute.  In March my peak is 66 and my lowest is at 60...a clear difference.  And yet I was moving more.

So it seems to be a bit of an indicator of stress and relaxation. 

All and all I find it very intriguing to follow these stats and see the changes.  I don't want to overvalue the effect of the Fitbit...I genuinely believe I would have moved more without the app as well during the transition of winter to spring but wearing the FitBit definitely creates more awareness and motivation to move more often. So I'll keep it wearing for now.