My slave band of fitness

Someone in my family recently had the great stupid idea of getting a Fitbit Flex band to monitor fitness. I thought I had  been doing pretty good myself – working out several times a week actually. But G was spending too much time in front of the computer and needed something to get him motivated to exercise.

It started out harmlessly enough – G bought a Fitbit Flex before we went on vacation in July. Apparently, it is a big seller, because we made several fruitless trips to Best Buy before we managed to find one on the shelf. He learned how to use it and then almost immediately lost it the day we arrived in Vittel. That sucked for him, because he actually did a lot of sports while we were there. Me on the other hand, I ate lots of French food and drank even more French wine. What?

But when we got back home, we were both ready to start on some kind of regular exercise program. Everyone knows the older you get the harder it is to stay in shape. So G went back to his favorite store (after the Apple store, of course) and was lucky to snag two bracelets.

Oh joy

LindsayLohan
Ex Con

After just two weeks of wearing it, I’m starting to feel like an ex con with one of those “house-arrest” bracelets on my arm.

Here’s the deal – the Fitbit Flex is a wireless wristband that monitors your activity and sleep. (Have I mentioned, I love my sleep?) While you’re wearing it, it tracks your steps taken and calories burned. The company slogan is:

Make fitness a lifestyle with Flex™.

It should be:

Become a fitness slave to Flex™.

Because that’s exactly what happens. You have to:

• Log your activities.
• Log how many glasses of water you drink in a day.
• Log what you eat – and that’s not as easy as it sounds.

Although there are foods – along with their calorie counts – that pop up when you enter an item, most often I have to figure out the calorie count on my own because I pretty much make everything we eat at home.  Like I have the time for that!

It logs your sleep patterns – how long you sleep and how many times you wake up – which is cool. But half the time I forget to put the damn thing in “sleep mode.”

And while you can shower with it on (it’s water resistant) it’s not waterproof, so when we went out on the boat last week I had to take it off to go swimming. I know I would have gotten a lot more credit for exercise while I was in the water because I moved my arms frantically just trying to stay balanced on my pool saddle.

And the worst part of it is, now I have one more thing to feel guilty about if I don’t exercise or if I drink too much wine at dinner.

(The good news is, I now know there are only 25 calories in one ounce of wine.)

For the time being, I’m going to stick to it and keep up with the exercise and calorie counting. But if any of you are considering making the commitment and getting one of the Fitbit Flex bands, don’t say I didn’t warn you!

With thee I do wed…