For the past two weeks, I have been wearing a Fitbit during the day to track how physically active I am. Fitbits are small pedometers that also measure your activity level. You can sync your Fitbit to the company web site, and in return you get a fair amount of tracking done for you. Not only does Fitbit track your daily steps, but it also reports back an “Active Score” for each day using some sort of algorithm. Many people also wear their Fitbits at night to get sleep tracking, but I found that mine was pretty inaccurate. Plus, wearing the Fitbit at night ended up giving me a step count to start the day with (around 600 steps) even though it should have been 0.
I’m hoping that the Fitbit will be a long term project for me, and I don’t find the short term data to be terribly useful yet. I’m hoping to learn how my activity levels change on the weekends and over the seasons. I also want to find any correlations my activity level has with mood, weight, and sleep quality (which I track with my Zeo). Meanwhile, I am using the Fitbit to set modest fitness goals for myself – which I may or may not raise over time.
I have already found out some interesting things from wearing my Fitbit. My first discovery is that it’s not terribly difficult for me to get in my goal number of 10,000 steps a day. It’s not particularly easy either though, and I probably wouldn’t be getting this much activity if I didn’t have a constant measure of it. I like to be physically active, but it’s very hard to be motivated to go out in the Texas heat. In order to get my 10,000 steps, I have to consciously get up from my desk or chair every so often and walk around a bit. One pleasant surprise is that forcing myself to walk more has made me put off chores less. Anyway, I suspect that I won’t have to take this “whittling” approach in the cooler weather when a long walk to the bookstore actually feels nice.
The other thing I’ve learned with my Fitbit is that I’m more sedentary than I’d like. Even if I’m taking a walk or two each day and doing yard chores, I’m still a nerd who spends a lot of time programming, writing, reading, and watching movies. I’m not sure how much I want to change these habits, so I’m thinking about also focusing a bit more on my interests that are less sedentary (like gardening and outdoor photography). I don’t want to take away from my reading and work time, but I probably could move around more and surf the web less.
Finally, I am starting to suspect that getting in a little more walking is good for my sleep quality (which I measure with a Zeo). Until I got my Fitbit, I never had gotten a sleep score in the 90s, and I rarely got a sleep score in the 80s. The 80s are starting to become more of norm for me, and I’ve gotten into the 90s twice. So far, it just seems like I’m raising my set point. My limited data suggests that getting in a large amount of steps (like 14-16K) doesn’t mean I have even better sleep. I’m very eager to experiment with this over time. As it turns out, sleeping better feels awesome.
