Getting a Fitbit has probably been the single-most important tool in my weight loss. It is SO true that you don’t realize how many calories you are eating if you don’t keep track, and you also have to know how many calories you actually burn so that you know how many calories you should be eating to reach your goals. Let me just warn you that you cannot rely on the internet’s estimates. For a woman of my weight, height and age, all the online calculators say I burn about 2800 calories a day. Not always true. Most of the time I burn about 2400 calories a day, sometimes less. An underestimate of 400 calories can mess you up big time. The automatic calculators also report that cleaning vigorously can burn about 400 calories an hour. Well, what the hell is ‘vigorous’ to you? For me, taking out the trash makes me want to take a nap, but this apparently isn’t exercise. I used to have a Fitbit Flex, which only covers your steps, so you have to manually add your exercise. I now have a Fitbit Charge HR (pictured) which monitors my heart rate and automatically recognizes my exercising. I was miffed to discover that my walk only burned 100 calories. Pffft! BUT, shopping got me 380 calories! Woohoo! I’d much rather shop than take a walk. 😉
The only drawback is you have to enter your food manually on all of them (someone needs to invent a device that records every bite I take – and then shocks me when I go over my calories, I’m just sayin’) but the perk with Fitbit is there are quite a few calorie counter apps that it syncs with – so you have all of your data in one place. I use the My Fitness Pal app to record my food. I purchased the Fitbit Charge HR at Costco (about $140 with tax), and it came with an extra charger (I keep one at home and one in the car) and a 90-day subscription to Fitstar – a personalized video workout that you can connect to your account and track your progress with. Pretty cool. I also like the little feature on the HR where you can push the button on the side and see your stats (calories burned, calories eaten, steps taken, etc.) – the flex has no screen.
Anyway, I was able to get through the holidays without gaining any weight because I knew that after hours of laying on the couch, I could only eat 4 Krispy Kremes and then I was done with my calories for the day. OK, so not the healthiest decision on my part, but it happens and I’d rather be able to do it with the knowledge of how to get away with it and not destroy my progress. I don’t do that often, but I can relax better knowing it’s an option.
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