FitBit

Along with a sweet pair of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pajama pants (yes, I am 28 years old), my parents gave me a FitBit Ultra Wireless Activity Tracker.

Now for those of you unfamiliar with such a device, let me familiarize you.  It's essentially a souped up pedometer.  It monitors movement and sleep and tells you how many calories you've burned in a day.  Using the website, you can see how active you were and when.  It also has a cool little display on it that tells you how active you were in footsteps, miles, calories burned, floors climbed, and there's even a little flower that grows as you've been more active throughout the day.

I haven't gotten into all the features yet.  I'm still logging my intake on Weight Watchers because fruits and veggies are free and points are easier to manage than calories.  The sleep analysis is something I'd also be interested in looking into a little more too.  You can earn badges for achievements too.  They have badges for steps taken in increments of 5000 for instance.

The real benefit of the FitBit is having something with me at all times that reminds me of my goal.  When I check my scores, I know that I have a lot of weight to lose.  I'm less likely to overeat and more likely to try to beat my previous records for steps taken, etc.  I was on the treadmill at the gym the other day when I noticed I had hit 8000 steps.  Normally, I would have gone home at that point, but I wanted to hit that magic 10,000 steps number so I would get the next badge.  Silly?  Maybe, but it kept me on the treadmill for an extra 20 minutes.

So is it worth it?  Maybe.  How does it stack up against other body and activity monitors?  I have no idea.  Will it continue to work? I don't know.  Is it working now?  Yes!   Do you have any experience with an activity monitor?