So I got a Fitbit for Christmas,
And I wanted to write about it because when I first got it, I took hours upon hours looking in the internet for somebody who has had experience with it. Of course what I secretly wanted to find was probably 200+ pound people that now were 120 using it for a couple of months, but we all know this won’t happen even though I feed myself off of these success stories and I never seem to be able to write my own.
I have been obsessed with my weight since I was a teenager, and it is not a nice obsession especially when you hit 40 and you realize that all of your efforts have always been in vain. I have tried so many diets and exercise efforts to try to lose weight but as my grandmother once told me: “don’t ever lose weight, whatever gets lost can be always found, try to get rid of it!” And that’s exactly what I haven’t been able to do. Of course I’ve lost weight and when I think about it, in my lifetime I’ve literally lost my “whole” self twice but every time I’ve gone back to the beginning with some extras too.
To add to my failed diet efforts, ever since I was a child I never liked sports or any type of physical exercise. I don’t know if I can say that is because I suffer asthma and it is really difficult for me to breath while exercising. It makes it so much harder for me to catch my breath and therefore I get tired very easily then I stop doing what I’m doing, the next day I don’t do it anymore and it just becomes a circle that I never get out of.
People tell me that maybe walking would be the perfect exercise for me but my nature has made me really lazy and every movement “costs”me so much. Besides, to be quite honest I just don’t picture myself going around a park 20-30 times looking at the same trees. I think I’d be bored to pieces. Now give me a Shopping Mall maybe that’ll do it! 😀
I just wish one day I will get that feeling to exercise and believe all the perky-permanent-smiled fitness instructors who say: “it was so awesome to sweat and run and feel my muscles hurt” to me is almost like saying ” I love feeling jet lagged, I love feeling tired or I love feeling sad” . I just don’t get it.
This is my first time writing about it so please don’t think I have a success story. I haven’t had one (well at least I haven’t had one like the ones I love, of people who have lost pounds upon pounds of weight)
But my very short success story to share is: (and I won’t say there’s nobody because I’m sure there are, but I belong to the top of the list of people who hate moving) ever since I got my gadget I have been compelled to quantify how much I move and therefore I MOVE!
I was shocked to read that an average American walks 5000 steps a day (of the 10000 recommended) and when I first read it I thought: “well 5000 is not that bad” But I didn’t realize that I am even more sedentary. And on a normal day I walked 2,500 steps!!!!!
So how can I ever accomplish 10,000? I have to say it is not easy, I really have to push myself. But looking at numbers at the end of the day really makes me look forward to it.
But if something has really motivated me it is my “friends”. No, I am not talking about the people I know and hang out with here, because for some odd, maybe subconscious reason, I am constantly surrounded by very skinny people that have never had a problem with their weight, go figure!) My “Fitbit friends” are the people that I randomly chose on the Fitbit website based on a starting date comparable to mine. It is a group of 19 people and granted they don’t even know it, but they are the ones that keep me going. I have set myself the goal to never to be under the top 10 of these 19 people and it is not easy because there’s a lot of power walkers among them. But those keep me motivated by waking up every morning and seeing what position I find myself from 19. It is very interesting because every day I’ll be in a different number since not everybody synchronizes so readily like I do, sometimes I am in a really high position and all of a sudden somebody who really walked a lot but had not synchronized in a couple of days, comes pushing me “down” and taunting my pride so that even my lazy self has to go back up.
Since I live somewhere where it almost rains 360 days of the year I don’t really go out and like aforementioned going around the same trees doesn’t really motivate me, so I’m doing my steps following “walk away the pounds by Leslie Sansone”
I turn the volume down and play music that makes me move a little more. It is still very difficult for me and this is the hour I dread every day but it is the only thing that gets almost 7000 steps in an hour which obviously combined with my normal daily I reach 10,000 and I even started moving a little more on my daily life so basically I am averaging 11 to 12,000 every day which is something I never thought possible. I still have asthma issues and I take my medication sometimes before, sometimes after the workout. But I have never and I am being honest: NEVER kept an exercise routine for 4 weeks and on top be happy and looking forward.
I guess this little gadget is not going to make me lose any weight just by existing but it’s making me move more and every time I move I think it is so much work that I really have to think about what I put in my mouth and then I try to be more rational and make cool comparisons like “OMG I need to workout 37 minutes to burn a snickers bar! Is it worth it?” because as my grandmother also told me (and it is not just saying she really told me these things since she fought my same battle) “sweets and cravings spend a second in your mouth and a lifetime in your thighs😁
Jellybean10k 