9 things I learned after wearing a fitness tracker for a month

The Fitbit Alta HR is the newest model of the fitness tracker that seems to be all the rage these days. More and more people are tracking down the number of steps they take a day and more, thanks to the very many features the Alta has: people are tracking down their sleep, their daily caloric intake, calorie burn, water intake, heart rate, exercise, and number of steps in an hour.

I wore the Alta HR for a month and if I may: It’s almost a lesson on self-awareness. I learned more about myself than all those damn retreats and recollections I was required to attend in high school.

1. Fat doesn’t mean unfit. I’m not fat but, I pant from just crossing the street! My boyfriend, who is overweight, does the same and doesn't break sweat. Wearing the tracker, I learned that my cardio fitness level was at…poor. I had a score of less than 27.0. No wonder my heart lands in the fat burn zone after just a few steps!

Before using the Alta, you have to download the app, sign up and give them your pertinent details — age, gender, weight. It's how Alta can then score you for all these measures. That’s how the Alta scored the 30-something me.

2. There’s nothing wrong with my chair. A couple of years ago, my lower back started to hurt so bad that I saw a doctor — three actually: A rheumatologist, a nerve doctor, and a PT. I had to get an MRI, a nerve test that felt like how I imagined electrocution would feel like, a take medicines for an epileptic patient. I blamed it on my chair.

Alas, wearing the Fitbit told me it wasn’t my chair. It was me. I sat for too long at a time. Fitbit would have you take at least 250 steps an hour for nine hours of each day. It would send out cute vibrations as reminders for you to get up and stand up. When I heed the reminders, my nasty back pain didn’t show itself.

When I didn’t —as on my third week of wearing the alta because work pinned me down to my desk for hours at a time — Would you believe the pain actually really returned?

3. Doing 5,000 steps a day is easy. Sure, 10,000 steps a day is what’s recommended, but I just started this thing and didn’t want to be defeated too early and life is overwhelming as it is. I didn’t want to pressure myself and I wanted a sustainable fitness thing, so I started small.

My goodness, I soon realized — six hours into wearing the alta — how easy 5,000 steps is. I quickly jacked my goals up to 8,000 steps. It’s still 2,000 steps below what’s recommended, but it’s a good enough goal: It’s challenging enough to make me want to crave and work for it.

Four weeks in, and the 8,000 steps still don’t come easy. Fitbit says I average about 7,300 steps a day. I’ve decided to give myself another two weeks to “master” the 8k before jacking up my goals in accordance with the recommendation of 10k.

4. The stairs at home (or in the office) is an amazing exercise machine. I got a reminder from my Alta at 10:30pm one Sunday: I only needed 2,672 steps to achieve my goal. I whined: 2,672! That’s a lot!

But knowing my goal was already less than the usual 10k, I felt ashamed. So I went up and down the 16-step stairs we have at home. I played a game with myself: four steps down four steps up, eight steps down, eight steps up, and so on.

In less than an hour, not only did I achieve 8,000 steps, I was also able to get a legit 30-minute exercise — which the Fitbit also records, BTW. It has a SmartTrack feature that recognizes movement of at least 15 minutes.

I probably went up and down the stairs for 30 minutes; the next day, my legs were sore but my ass looked nice. So to people who say they can’t afford the gym and therefore cannot exercise: honey, you don’t need to go to the gym. Use the stairs, play a game with yourself. 

5. You don’t really hate your job, or your life. If you think you’re stuck at a dead-end or that promotion is taking too long, you may be right. But, you may be just bored, too. Before making any drastic changes, make small ones first. Get a Fitbit and set up little goals. Those hourly 250 steps help tremendously in making you feel unstuck! Excuse yourself and get walking!

Even if you’re not into this whole fitness brouhaha, meeting them can do wonders not just for your body but for your self-esteem, too! Knowing you have achieved your sleep goals (uh huh, there is such a thing!), is as good an ego boost as, for instance, receiving all those compliments on Tinder.

6. Your body craves for exercise. It’s just your mind telling you you’re lazy. Once you feel the high of a 30-minute walk (and the added dose of good vibes from the confetti Fitbit showers on you when you’ve accomplished them), you’ll want to do it again and again. Pretty soon, you won’t be feeling as bored anymore. And you’ll realize there’s more to learn in your current position, there’s more you can do, and whoops! Promotions are in order in no time.

7. It’s important to measure everything. Fitbit is exactly that: a personalized measurement of what your body is doing and still capable of doing. It’s so easy to fall trap into trends — do this, not that type of thing — even Fitbit has a social aspect to it that will get to your competitive side, but if there’s anything that you’ll learn by having a Fitbit, it’s that there’s no one size fits all solution.

8. There’s a correlation between sleep and everything else. And not just the amount of sleep but the quality of sleep. With the tracker, I noticed my natural sleep cycle, which is why, one time, I got woken up in the middle of a dream – that’s REM for us – I was super lethargic the entire day.

9. You still really have to listen to your body. The Fitbit’s great —I am a reformed non-believer, in fact — but it’s not the end-all and the be-all of fitness. It’s a machine after all. It can’t record that wrist injury. It can get its records wrong. For instance: last week, I had an intense two-hour workout at my climbing gym, but all it said was I was active for just 17 minutes. It said my  heart rate reached its peak zone and it recorded my steps up the wall, but it didn’t record it as a completed exercise (I wanted that star!). So yeah, you still have to listen to your body. — KG, GMA News