I love my Fitbit!

I had not worn a watch or any device on my arms since I experienced an Outward Bound trip in the 1980s.  Through the Employee Health benefits of Conga, I ordered a Fitbit Alta HR and an Aria 2 scale.  I figured that the Alta HR was small and thin enough it wouldn’t bother me.  Yet, for six months I still didn’t put it on.

In April 2019, I decided it was time I needed a health coach and joined Arivale.   [Unfortunately, Arivale shut down a month after I started.] As part of the service, you could connect your Fitbit to their system so that your health coach could view your data.  My impetus to wear the Fitbit came when my coach suggested that sleep was the most important health factor to work on.  The Fitbit automatically records your sleep parameters.  I had my rationale to now start wearing my Fitbit.

I love my Fitbit!

How could I love an inanimate device?  I was introduced to this concept by Katherine James Schutemaker who shared with me her research that led to the HP ad “I love my HP Laserjet!”  She found that with objects that people really like, they often transfer human emotions to that object.

What transformed my liking a Fitbit to a love affair was when I started noticing the implications of activities of daily living on my resting heart rate.  As part of the work with my health coach, I decided to go all in on Colin Campbell’s Whole Plant diet nutrition recommendations.  After two weeks on the diet, my nightly resting heart rate decreased from 69 bpm to 60 bpm.  I couldn’t believe it.

Then I noticed that when I went off diet by having a drink of alcohol, my resting BPM went up by 10 bpm or more even while sitting in front of the TV.  When I would eat a small piece of meat or a piece of cheese or a dish of ice cream the resting BPM would go up by 8 BPM or more.  I was dumbfounded that this device could detect so quickly the physiological changes of diet.  I was hooked.

Then I found that the Fitbit App could also do the mapping of my exercise routines.

Boulder, CO, Wonderland Park

You can see how painfully slow I am walking at altitude and in the heat.  My excuse was I was stopping to enjoy the views and the para sailing.

Once my daughters found out that I had a Fitbit, they asked me to share my data with them so we could compare our exercise activities.  Now the exercise records become a social activity.  However, I still have a long way to go to catch up with their occasional 40k steps per day.

I still get surprised by the vibration and fireworks animations when I pass 10K steps in a single day.  My fitbit even cheers me on WHILE I am doing the exercise.  What’s not to love?

As a “tracker” (not a planner or storyteller), I love that I can set an exercise goal for myself and then my Fitbit just quietly goes about passively tracking my progress towards that goal.  Whether the goal is sleep, or resting heart rate, or exercise, my Fitbit is always on the job.  When I forget to feed it electric power, it sends me an email asking me politely to give it some more juice.

I love my Fitbit!