So here we are again, the month where we all make promises to quit this and stop that, to do more exercise and eat less, to swap our vino for water, the whole shebang. January is renowned for the month that we are told to basically do better, to dust ourselves off from the heavy carb loaded christmas and alcoholic tendencies of New Years Eve and make a new you.
Don't get me wrong I love a clean slate so to speak. But truthfully it's not as if your body resets to factory mode on the strike of midnight come NYE, to be healthy you have to work at it. Not a fad or an half hearted attempt to have a dry month only to last until the weekend. No wonder most people fall at the first hurdle! With me I'm an all or nothing girl, so when it comes to making healthy choices it's hard to reach the perfect middle ground.
Where I lack motivation is:
Sleep – I think it's enough but it's definitely not enough.
Healthy food – Sporadic. Either a health fest with eat clean tendencies or you can find me in Dorito heaven.
Exercise – Running around after a four year old counts as this right?!
Fluids – Water? erm what's that again...oh you mean coffee yes?
So when I was asked to test out the Fitbit Charge, a wireless activity wristband, I didn't know what to expect or how it would impact my day to day lifestyle. Well it has, so much that I think I'm a little bit in love with it, in fact it's like having a personal trainer on your wrist!
The Fitbit Charge is sleek in design, lightweight and splash proof, and basically looks like you're wearing a really cool watch. It's super easy to set up with a free downloadable app for your phone or computer where you enter your details such as: Gender, weight, height, date of birth and you're all set.
It's that easy. You literally wear it all day and night and use your bluetooth to sync the info to your app. So I've been using my iPhone to chart my progress and achieve the daily milestones: walk 10K steps a day, 30 minutes of active minutes, plenty of water etc. as recommended by the government for a healthy lifestyle.
The Fitbit Charge will log your steps automatically as well as stairs climbed, calories burned, distance in km walked, active minutes, calories eaten, water consumed and it also logs your sleep and for me this is a biggie. It tells you how many hours you slept and during that how many minutes were restless and any periods you were awake. So all that sleep I thought I was getting, erm not so much.
When I first started inputting how much water I was intaking I was horrified to realise that it equalled 200ml, that's a cups worth. So all that lack of energy, feeling groggy and headaches was down to dehydration. Even though I feel like I'm drinking a ridiculous amount of water I'm still only filling up on 1100ml a day, just over halfway to my daily recommended target.
Having something which easily allows you to see your daily activities and celebrates your milestones certainly changes your way of thinking about your health plus you can share your results on your social platforms too. If your arms are full of shopping/ a hundred and one things there is even caller ID synced with your phone. One glance and you know whether it's worth dropping all those bags for.
I love the Fitbit Charge and if you want to hear me chat about it some more and other wearable fitness technology then
I will be live tonight at 19:00 hours GMT on a google hangout hosted by Faya from Fitness on Toast for Argos with me, David from
MensRunning and Liina from
Mind Over Matter. You can use the
link to tune in and find out which Fit Tech is best for you, otherwise you can find more information about wearable technology at
Argos
*This post is in association with Argos.
