Getting Healthy Part Three: fitbit

Introduction of the fitbit

In March of 2014, my mom and sister came down to Virginia to visit me. I was already on the road to getting healthy and my mom and my sister were trying to exercise and eat right too.  My sister showed us a little gadget that she had gotten through her company for a competition.  This small green thing that she clipped to her belt was called a fitbit. 

She had only been using it a few weeks, but she could not stop talking about it.  She logged her daily calories on her ipad, showing us about how the website works and how the little gadget syncs to her phone and laptop.  After a hike, she told us how many steps we had walked and how many calories we had burned in the past hour.  It was basically a high tech pedometer, but it counted calories burned and doubled as a time keeping device.  It also made silly faces at you: a sleepy face if you hadn’t moved in a while, and various levels of smiles depending on how active you were being at the moment.

After they went back home, I found myself looking at the website and into getting myself one.  It seemed like such a cool concept and what a great way to keep myself on track. That July, I went up for Sara’s birthday and we agreed that I would buy her a new fitbit as a birthday present and she would give me her old one.

Best deal I ever made.  The fitbit flipped my routine upside down.  I started counting calories and realized that even though I was eating “healthier,” I was still eating a lot of calories.

 I started learning more about calories and the math that goes into it.  In order to maintain your weight, you want to take in as many calories as you’ve burned throughout the day.  If you want to lose weight, you need to take in fewer calories than you are burning.  3500 calories equals one pound so, in order to lose one pound a week, you need to have a deficit of 500 (500calX7days=3500).  How many calories you burn depends on your weight and height and gender, so I had to enter all that into the system and then continuously update as I lost weight.  One thing that was really frustrating was that my allotted calories went down as my weight went down.  I wanted to be rewarded for losing weight, but I was burning less calories, so on the same plan I had to eat less.

Obviously, the fitbit is not exact.  There is nothing out there yet (that I know of/ affordable) that can measure your heart rate while calculating muscle mass, metabolism, and all the other factors that determine how many calories you burn.  I took on the philosophy to log more than I ate, and less than I burned.  If I had about half a 10oz bag of chips, I would log 6 or 7 oz, and when I ate the other half I would log 6 or 7 oz again.  And I was religious about counting calories.  If I had a piece of chocolate at work, I would log it.  If I had a couple of chips, I would log them.

Doing this really helped me train my body into knowing how much I actually needed to eat to feel full--not bloated with a food baby full--but that satisfied feeling when you have enough energy to go back and do whatever you need to do.  It made me realize that I don’t need very many calories to get through a day. There are plenty of filling meals that you can eat that are low calorie.  I fell in love with oatmeal, greek yogurt with granola, and breakfast sandwhiches: everything bagel thins with one egg and an ounce of cheese is only 300 calories.  Lunch or dinner was frozen burritos, fish filets with a side of broccoli, veggies and hummus, apple with peanut butter, baked potatoes, and soup! Soup is the best! Pretty much any can of soup is less than 300 calories for the whole can.

Another feature I really liked about the fitbit was that I could earn more calories throughout the day.  I was on the sedentary plan, which starts you out at a really low-calorie meal plan, then lets you earn calories as you walk around and exercise.  So I knew if I wanted Pizza or Chinese, I could eat a low calorie breakfast and lunch, then spend a good hour at the gym, and I would get home and sync my fitbit, and find out i have another 900 calories to eat for the day.  It was a great reward and a great way to motivate myself, while still keeping my diet on track.

I have reached my goal weight, and even though I am just focussed on maintaining now, I still use my fitbit to count my steps and calories. It gives me the structure I need to stay on track while also allowing and motivation to get my exercise in and still eat the foods I love.