I thought he was dead...

It was all my fault!  I had become rather complacent, having considered myself far too sensible to do anything as daft as drown the little fella!  Sadly, my complacency was mis-placed, and stupidity took over when I managed to put my Fitbit through a wash cycle.  It was Sunday morning and I got up and went downstairs to have a coffee.  Very rarely, for me, I decided to go down in my nightdress, and, for some reason I still can’t fathom, I attached my Fitbit to the pocket on my nightdress.  WHY on earth would I do such a thing?  It’s not as though I was planning to go for a walk dressed as I was!  Anyway, I had my coffee and went back upstairs to dress, totally forgetting about my Fitbit.  I gathered up a pile of washing, and threw my nightdress into the pile.  I took the pile downstairs and shovelled it into the washing machine without another thought.  It was only later when I as hanging the washing up to dry that I noticed the Fitbit looking very sorry for himself at the bottom of the basket.  I picked him up – his casing looked a bit cracked.  I pressed his button, and, where it should have been giving me numbers of steps, flights, etc, it was giving me words.  Not rude words, thankfully, but it just said things like “Steps”, “Miles” without anything else.  I tried again later and got the same thing.  I was convinced that he was dead, especially as this seems to be a common occurrence if you read the FB forums, and no-one’s FB seems to survive.  I did the only thing I could do – I got on to Amazon and ordered a new one straight away, thinking this was my opportunity to get the new, flashier model, with Bluetooth functionality!! 

I left poor old FB on the charging cradle overnight, and checked him this morning.  When I pressed the button, a little ‘0’ came up – looked promising.  I ran around the room and pressed the button again – a number ‘9’ was displayed!  9 steps!  Rumours of FB’s death were greatly exaggerated!  I quickly got on to Amazon and was, luckily, able to cancel my order. 

Back again!

I thought I’d better check in and give a quick update as it’s been a few weeks.  Although the initial enthusiasm for starvation and increased exercise is somewhat reduced, I have kept up with some of my goals...  First the good news – since the holiday, I have got back onto the mid-week wagon, and have managed to stay off alcohol from Monday to Thursday.  I am also keeping up with the 2 days a week fasting, which is just as well because I have had a couple of fairly indulgent week-ends.  There has been no permanent movement on the scales, only a few mid-week fluctuations either way, so the fasting is managing to balance out the over-indulgences! 

The thing that has gone a bit awry is the daily 10k challenge!  It was difficult enough to get that many steps in a day in the good weather, but over the last month or so the weather has turned miserable, wet and cold, and does not entice me to get outside and walk.  I’m no longer walking round to meet the school bus as the evenings are dark and the walk home is along unlit footpaths – it also means a considerable upping of the whinge level from my son if I dare suggest a walk when it is cold/dark/wet.  On-the-spot walking at the bus stop is all very well, but doesn’t go far enough towards getting to the 10k.  I am contemplating buying a treadmill, but DH is very sceptical and is convinced it won’t get used!  I would like to prove him wrong, but past purchases of steppers, re-bounders, gym balls, weights, a cross-country skiing machine, an “iJoy ride” (don’t ask) and a surfing machine, have not given him confidence that a treadmill will be any different.  I am looking out for a reasonable one on eBay that is not too far away.  This time it will be different....

Further Fitbitting

I’ve now had the Fitbit for 5 weeks and I have to say that it is still surprisingly motivating trying to meet the daily targets of 10,000 steps and 10 flights of stairs.  I am still a bit obsessive about checking the tally at various points during the day, so have taken to wearing it clipped to my trouser pocket, thus avoiding having to fumble down the front of my top to locate the device in the deep depths of my bosom.  Choosing to take the stairs rather than the lift has become second nature, and this works really well at work where I work on the third floor and have to go to the ground floor a few times a day.  I also choose to walk more when the opportunity arises, such as the just under a mile round trip to the bus stop to pick up my son.  I am quite disappointed when it’s pouring with rain and I have to take the car.  If this happens, I now jog up and down on the spot in the bus stop until the school bus arrives.  I don’t know what the motorists going past must think, and it is a main dual carriageway!   If it gets to bedtime and I am sitting at the 9k mark, I run around the house until I get my count up to the magic 10k. 

The Fitbit is not without its flaws, however.  It does exhibit some inconsistencies and strange counting that can skew the logged results.  The first time I noticed anything odd was on the first week-end I had it when we went out for the day.  This was to a “Truck driving experience” (a Father’s Day gift for DH who strangely prefers the idea of driving large trucks to speeding around a race track in a Ferrari....).  This involved an hour or so in the car, followed by a short walk from the car park, a bit of waiting around, 30 minutes or so in the truck (DS and I were allowed to sit in as passengers), and then returning home.  NO climbing flights of stairs or steep hills.  So, when I got home, I was most surprised to see an email from Fitbit giving me my “50 floors in a day” badge!  When I checked the results, it showed that during the time I had been out, I had climbed 68 floors.  More detailed checking of the times I did all this climbing (the display on the website breaks the activities down into 5 minute slots), showed that all that stair climbing had been done whilst I was sitting as a passenger in my husband’s van.  A bit of research on the Fitbit forums shows that driving can frequently log steps and floors, so to get around it you have to record a log of the driving activity.  A bit of a faff, but once I had done this, it wiped out all the erroneous flights of stairs and a number of steps that had been recorded.  More annoyingly, I have to remember to do this every time I make a trip in my husband’s van. 

Another quirk is that the number of flights of stairs it logs when I go from the ground floor to the third varies between 4 and 6.  There are, as you would imagine, 3 flights of stairs between the ground and the third floor.  The first floor is a mezzine floor, so the first flight of stairs is shorter than the others.  Flight 2 and 3 are split in half by a small landing, so technically each could count as 2 flights.  I would probably expect a consistent count of 5, however I sometimes get 4, sometimes 5 and sometimes 6!  What accounts for the difference?  Does it depend on whether I bounce up the stairs enthusiastically, or whether I drag myself slowly??  A mystery.