On Fitbit again

 It's my tradition in January to make a Fitbit overview from the previous year and see the trends across years.


I can't do it this year for the reason that I was out of a Fitbit for most of the year.  It broke down in early April in Guadeloupe at the beach. It's my belief that it overheated beyond repair.  
Then I've been wearing a very old Apple Watch from Jan for a couple of months. I wrote down my experiences about that switch here...but ironically that Apple Watch also died beyond repair end of August.  For the 2nd time this year I went for a few weeks/months without a watch or health app. 

I waited for Black Friday after monitoring prices for a long time and since I'm not totally enthusiastic about an Apple Watch I bought a new Fitbit. This time I've adjusted my expectations that they don't last much more than 2 years either, so I wanted a bargain price. 


After a full year on and off the watches, I have learned not to track so much anymore.  I am consulting my data a lot less.  As a matter of fact I only discover today that Fitbit abandoned its web dashboard last summer, when I tried to login to make some graphs like I used to do in the past. Ha...no more graphs, so much less easy to compare year to year trends if you are stuck in the phone app.  Oh well. 

Since I am low on energy already since December, I mostly track my amount of sleep, but I know myself well.  I need my 8 hours of sleep, which means I need to be in bed on time and not be awake for various reasons.  With 7,5 h or less , I'm quickly irritated, emotional and get headaches. 

It was a relief to see my assumption that the Apple Watch underestimates my steps and that my return to Fitbit is also a return to the amount of steps that I assume is my regular rhythm. I was wondering a bit since I clearly had multiple off months after my knee injury and I wondered if I had never returned to my regular amount of activity.  
December was over average active with guiding friends in Leuven, walking DuwMee and having vacation time and January is also traditionally low in activity with the return to work, a lot of family gatherings (driving & sitting) and cold weather. 


So all is normal and that's all I need to know. And I can check the time on my wrist again :).  But no more detailed analysis and graphs etc.