Fitbit Tips

I started using my Fitbit a few weeks ago. As insensitive as she was dealing my infertility, Myrtle has always been very generous with giving gifts. Leading into Christmas on 2015, she offered to get me a Fitbit after she raved about hers. "It does more than steps, ittells you about the quality of your sleep!" I had just gone back to work and Kate was flirting with the Four Month Sleep Regression. I didn't need some wrist band to tell me that my sleep was crap. I politely told her that I probably wouldn't use it. She got me one anyway and it sat unopened in my sock drawer for twenty months.

Why was I reluctant to join the Fitbit craze? I had a very snobby attitidue toward it. I figured that since I went to the gym I didn't need to count steps as exercise. Then I read an article on fat loss that made me realise how flawed my thinking was.  It's an awesome article, but carve out some time if you want to read it, as it's rather long. The gyst of how it got me to my Fitbit came when he described the hierachy of important factors for fat loss:

Calorie Deficit

Protein Intake

Strength Training 

NEAT

Cardio

His point is that while cardio is necessary, you need to have those other factors in place first. WTF is NEAT? It stands for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis and is defined as all activity that isn't intentional exercise. He continues in the article, "Okay... why should I give a fuck?"

I have to admit this got my attention. He drew some pie charts to show that if you work out one hour every day, it's only 7 hours per week; which is only 4% of the time during the week. So you should maximise what you do in the other 96% of your time. Walking, light stretching, moving around; it all adds up. "A Simple way to do this is to aim for 10,000 steps per day." And thus, I started giving a fuck about NEAT.

I unwrapped by Fitbit Flex and started making some classic rookie errors. I wallked up and down every aisle in Tar.get and was disappointed when I only registered 36 steps... as my arm was stationary while I was pushing the cart. I began noticing ways that I was picking up cheeky non-steps. Driving my manual transmission to work yielded 65 steps. Even cleaning out the cat box would count toward my steps. WTF is going on that this thing is making me look forward to cleaning cat poop?

Then I discovered there is a setting that inquires if you are wearing your Fitbit on your dominant or non-dominant hand. I'm one of those wierd people who prefers to wear stuff on my dominant hand. Yeah... that really killed my steps. It's a struggle to make it to even 7,000 steps on a work day. Our office was designed to be super efficient and minimise movement. I find myself thinking up excuses to take a walk, but sometimes it's not for good reasons. Like walking over to the hospital to get a Coke.Zero from the vending machine, although in my defense, one time it was because I felt a migraine coming on and I needed caffeine STAT. The trouble with trying to squeeze in extra steps during my work day is that it affects my productivity. I have ADHD at the end of the day and I'm easily distracted as it is. I'm also noticing that I'm becoming slightly resentful as I'm busting my butt to do chores around the house such as emptying the dishwasher or putting away the laundry just to get steps while Husband is just sitting around watching baseball...

Nonetheless, I feel committed to giving a fuck about NEAT. I really want to achieve my goal of getting a PR on my body fat test in October. My other issue with my current Fitbit is that the battery is really weak and I'm needing to charge it every 2-3 days (I'm guess that's from keeping it in the box for nearly two years...) So, I ordered the Flex2 as it can be worn while swimming and I can get credit for my laps in the morning. Does anyone have any advice on how to earn more steps during the day and get the most out of your Fitbit? I recently crowd sourced on Face.book and not surprisingly most of my infertility friends answered. I should have started here in the first place.