For one of our fitness challenges at work was to walk 300 miles in 60 days, thus 5 miles a day. This was very extremely challenging. I was on vacation for a week and averaged 14-17 miles a day. Yet, I still barely reached the 300 miles on the last day (12 miles on the last day). I changed my schedule by doing 2-3 miles in an hour during lunch (40 minutes of actual walking).
During this period of time, I lost quite a bit of weight (around 10 pounds in 1 month). Before this I lost maybe 3 pounds over 4 months.
Once the challenge was over, my feet were quite sore so I took a break from the lunch walk, returning to my normal 1-2 hours workout after work. For the next 3 months, I gained 5 pounds. Granted, some of the gained weight was from the increased weight training (instead of pure fat burning or cardio). I do feel stronger and people say that I have trimmed a little (although I still cannot tell if they are just being polite).
I just returned back to walking during lunch since I got the FitBit. I am quite passively competitive. (I also learned someone was quite aggressively competitive but that's another post.) For me it is not all about winning (getting more steps than someone else) but more that I improve faster each week. To beat some of the FitBit friends (although I say it is not about winning, internally I still strive to beat them), I returned to my lunch walk.
In just a week, I have lost 3 pounds (under the minimum weight of my weight swings). After work, I still retain my usual routine but shorter.
I will continue to monitor this pattern but I am a believer that 2 smaller workouts are much more effective than 1 big workout for weight loss.
Update:
8/20 - Updated some grammatical structures.
Friday, July 22, 2016
Saturday, July 9, 2016
Fitbit ChargeHR (two-week impression)
Comfort/Style
I seem to keep changing where I lock the band. Is it natural for my wrist to change sizes? The largest problem is trying to get the watch to sit about an inch under my wrist where it gets the best heart rate accuracy. Otherwise, comfort is fine with the usual discomfort of a watch.Accuracy
Heart Rate does not seem to be very accurate (comparing with treadmill's heart rate) when running. Rest heart rate seems quite reliable. I'm not sure about the average resting heart rate which seems a little low. My current heart rate is around 74 bpm (measured with fingers on the inside part of my wrist with a time watch for a minute), the watch shows 73, but the phone app shows 65 bpm. Maybe writing a blog gives me the increased rate.
Steps are quite accurate. The elevation can be tricked when pumping your arm in the car. I don't care much for distance so I have not been monitoring the accuracy of distance. Since I do a lot of walking in place or treadmill, I do not expect it to be extremely accurate.
Mobile App
Not as impressed as I thought it would be but is functional. My favorite component is the sleep log. It has some bug with finding Facebook friends (Motorola Turbo) even though it is connected and can post achievements to FB.
Web Service
This is much more useful than the mobile app. It provides a much more detailed report of the same status provided on the mobile phone.
Competing/Accomplishments
Adding people to challenges is easy. Seems that steps are the only metrics available to compete against.
Accomplishments are very standard with different metrics to be accomplishments. There are two types, one for one-time single-day goals and the other is one-time lifetime goals.
Asks
It would be nice if Fitbit could track the number of times that I hit certain accomplishments, like 20 days of 10k steps, 5 days of 5k steps, etc. Same with steps.Would be nice if it could be configured to compete with other people with other pedometer devices or step-tracking devices.
Reference
http://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2016/06/fitbit-chargehr-first-impression.htmlhttp://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/HealthyLiving/PhysicalActivity/FitnessBasics/Target-Heart-Rates_UCM_434341_Article.jsp#.V4EbTbgrKUk
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