One of the things that has helped me stay on track and stay focused to get in shape in a way that matches my lifestyle, work schedule, and kid schedule is to use a Fitbit. A fitbit is a little pedometer about the size of a pinkie finger. It tracks many things and keeps statistics online and on your mobile device. You can connect with friends and cheer each other on. I’m going to share a little insight into what I look at each week. See the chart below to see these things tracked:

• Total steps – my goal has recently changed from 10,000 steps (which it has been for the last year, since July 2012, to 12,000 steps per day (or daily average)
• Total distance – my goal is 5 miles a day (35 for the week). I should probably change this to 6 miles a day for 42 per week.
• Total floors climbed – my goal is 10 flights of stairs a day (basically my commute involves stairs)
• Total calories burned – I have no goal here, unless there is a default or I set one initially and forgot about it?
• Weight – I am tracking this to go down, not every week, but in a general trend downwards.
• Sleep – this one is tricky, I think my goal is 6 hours of sleep per night on average

A week in the life of Sonya S. Fitbit stats

The numbers for this week are some of the best I have ever posted except for a couple of weeks when I was on vacation and walked everywhere, every day. I was at a conference for the first half of the week so the 20,000 steps per day weren’t unexpected. The 6,000 steps before 2 am was totally unexpected on the night we hung out and danced until they kicked us out. Seeing 6,000 steps on the Fitbit as I fell into bed gave me a chuckle. I walked or ran every morning and if I didn’t, I made a concerted effort to walk during the day to get to the 10,000 steps in. Looking at this week in more detail:

• Total steps – I blew away my goal of 10,000 steps a day and my new goal of 12,000 steps a day with a daily average of 15,923. I was really pleased to see this and the total step count. I’ve been trying to reach 70,000 steps or now 84,000 steps and any week that exceeds 100,000 total is a good one!
• Total distance – This week was slightly over 7 miles a day on average, which exceeded my goal of 5 miles a day.
• Total floors climbed – This week I doubled my goal of 10 flights of stairs. The convention center in LA is full of stairs and long walks to various breakout rooms. I always took the stairs and I think that helped exceed this goal.
• Total calories burned – I have no idea how this one got set but anything over 2,000 seems good to me!
• Weight – My weight fluctuates all week long and I measure it using a WiFi scale from Withings. It keeps track and measures the weight change on Mondays. I hate it when it shows a gain of 2 pounds from Sunday to Monday to wipe out any good that went on for the week. But the thing to remember with this measurement is to look at the downward trend, not any one particular day. That’s why I like the bar chart on the Fitbit dashboard!
• Sleep – I almost never, ever meet my sleep goal of 6 hours a night, despite my effort to go to bed by 10 or 10:30 pm and get up at 6 or 6:30 am. It always shows little sleep (4 hours and 19 minutes here) and a long time until I fall asleep (24 minutes here) and many times waking up throughout the night (7 here). I calibrated it on regular, not sensitive. Maybe I should do an experiment with those settings.

Yes – I am a Fitbit Fanatic! These numbers keep me going and keep me motivated to do better and keep things moving in the right direction. What do you do to keep yourself motivated to stay fit and healthy?