Fitness Fun (Volume 7)

It’s nothing new that I’m a gadget girl, and now I’ve got a gadget that can help me lose these pesky pounds and get healthy. Bill surprised me last week with a Fitbit.

The Fitbit is a cute little pedometer on steroids that is only about the size of a tiny flash drive. What I love the most about it is that it wirelessly syncs to my computer and uploads to my personal Fitbit site. Being a lover of all things social media related, the fact that I can link my Fitbit to my facebook, twitter and FourSquare accounts is really fun. What’s really helpful about the Fitbit is that it not only tracks my steps, but I can track my food, water, exercise and even my sleep with it. With all that data in one place with colorful charts and graphs I can see where my problem areas are and have a better idea of my actual activity level.

Wearing a pedometer appeals to my competitive side, even though I’m only really competing with myself. When I can see how many steps I’ve taken and I know I want to reach at least 10,000 steps I tend to be more active (even if it’s only around the house). In the nine days I’ve been wearing my Fitbit, I only came in under that 10,000 step goal twice and my average for that time is still over 10,000 steps. I know that’s not enough to get myself down fifteen pounds in this millennium, but being active is a start and I’m going to get my exercise and eating back on track…I have to.

I’m struggling with fitting exercise into my day, but I’m hopeful that once school starts up it’ll get a little easier. Right now the only way I could get a workout in would  be to do it before the kids wake up and I’m so tired in the morning that I can’t bring myself to get up at 5:30 to get down on the elliptical. I’m sure that if I could just push through it for a few days it would get easier, but I lack motivation even as the numbers on that God forsaken scale continue to climb.

As far as the food goes, I find that I eat better when I’m diligent about entering everything into my food log. Most days when I give in to my cravings and eat the caramel sauce right out of the jar (with a spoon), I just give up on the food tracker. I have been trying to get more fruit into my diet and I’ve cut myself down to just one bowl of cereal in the morning. Baby steps…Right?

I’m praying that we don’t lose power with hurricane Irene rolling through. My fear is that if we lose power I’ll eat nothing but crap since that’s the easiest thing to eat when the power is out. Pray for me!!

Time to share…How do you fit a workout into your day? Do you use any “gadgets” (i.e. pedometer, heart rate monitor) to help you better understand what you get out of your workouts? Do you use a website to track your goals and progress?