Wearing a Fitbit for over a year

It's a bit more than a year since I have gotten my Fitbit and started wearing it.  I wear it all the time since I like to check the data it gathers.

Unlike the first weeks (and months) , I don't check it so much anymore. I don't open the dashboard on my computer at work anymore and I don't notice the little buzz each hour at x:50 to entice me to complete my 250 steps per hour.  If I notice, it's more a timekeeper (oh it's ten to ...) rather than an incentive to get up and walk around.

I've given up to check the floors as that's polluted by the differences in heights I walk outside and I've stopped logging how much I drink. That last point, I should pick up again since I really must drink more.

Steps:

But I do keep watching on a daily basis the number of steps I make.  And I am so proud and happy that I made an average of more than 10000 steps a day in 2019. I didn't think that would happen for a long time. As you can see I have quite ups and downs.

If you spread it more over the weeks and months in the 2nd graph, I can point all the peaks to vacation time:
- The peak in April before that: weekend away in Maastricht.
- High values in May -June in Canada,
- Peak in September: weekend away in Scheveningen.
- Peak end of October : vacation in Gran Canaria
- Peak at start of December: weekend in Disneyland

Hahaha, so working is bad for my health as it inhibits my movements and going on vacation is very good for me.  And Jan being at home also decreases my steps as he always walks the children to school if he's at home.  (you also see my steps dropping in the summer months because of that).

I also see that I don't move much in great cold or in great heat. WTF, the heat of July. I clearly didn't make any step more than necessary.  We escaped to the Ardennes in the weekends to hang around in the garden.

I hope to boost the number of steps a bit higher in 2020, but I realise that wearing my fitbit isn't exactly pushing me to do more sports. It just makes me aware of how I live my life and what patterns are in it.

Sleep

Each morning I also check my track record of my sleep the previous night. In a way it is very silly as it is one of the first things I do in the morning as if I need to see it on my phone whether I slept ok or not.

I always claim that I need 8 hours of sleep and tried to be in bed for 8 hours, but I learned that we all wake up many times . So I apparently sleep on average 7h30 to function well (but more in the weekends).  All in all my sleep hygiene is rather well. Especially last year I've paid a lot of attention to my sleep.  Sleeping enough is the base of all health and wellbeing so I'm most days in bed well in time.

I'm very happy with my average which is very very stable throughout the year.  After a bad night, I simply must go to bed early the next days to catch up.  If not, I don't function. 

Funny enough...the vacation period in Canada was rather poor for my sleep: too many people to catch up with and too many rooms with poor curtains! Seriously. Black-out curtains...there's a market for that in Canada (or clearly not, not much need for the locals?).

Since a few months I also get a rating on the quality of the sleep...it can be that 8 hours of sleep is rated rather poorly or a shorter night has a high quality. Apparently fitbit now tries to register oxigen levels in blood etc as well (so it'll notice colds but also alcohol in blood etc). Anyway, that's rather accurate as well.  But they don't make nice graphs about that. Bummer.


Curious how next year will go :).