I bought my first Fitbit—a Flex—four years ago today, on May 4, 2013. Several months ago I was forced to switch to a new Fitbit because, after all those years of use, the Flex battery was no longer holding a charge for more than an hour. So I now wear a Charge 2, which in addition to counting steps and miles, also keeps track of the number of stairs I’ve climbed, plus my pulse rate.

So after four full years of Fitbit, how’d I do?

I’ve taken a total 15,695,164 steps, broken down as follows—

Year 1:
4,078,838 steps
11,174 daily step average

Year 2:
4,107,515 steps
11,253 daily step average

Year 3:
3,900,704 steps
10,657 daily step average

Year 4:
3,608,107 steps
9,885 daily step average

The reason for the drop-off in year four was due, bizarrely, not to my feet, but to my teeth! I’d had to have several root canals, and was in such intense pain before, during, and after that it hurt whenever I’d walk vigorously. So there were many weeks during which my step count was way down.

Still … even though I’d have preferred to have gotten an additional 115 steps per day during year four so my daily average would hit 10,000, I still ended up walking more than I would have in my time before Fitbit. So—the device is doing its job.

I look forward to seeing what year five has in store for me!

Three years ago, I started using a Fitbit Flex, and on my first and second anniversaries I let you know how I was doing. Now that another anniversary is here—on Star Wars day, as usual—how’d I do during that third year?

Not as well as I’d hoped.

Thanks to a fall I took midway through the year that banged up my left leg plus a bout of severe toothaches late in the year that made it hurt to walk (both of which I’ve recovered from by the way), I only took 3,900,704 steps over the past 12 months, versus 4,078,838 steps the first year and 4,107,515 steps the second.

Still, 12,087,057 steps —which works out to 6,017.93 miles—over 36 months is far better than anything I was doing prior to buying the device.

But I still broke a record thanks to my greatest single day ever—October 17, 2015, on which I took 35,294 steps, walking 17.57 miles through Brooklyn and Manhattan, breaking the first and second-year records of 28,398 steps (14.15 miles) and 35,283 steps (17.56 miles) respectively.

As for step badges, here’s how many I’ve earned in total, plus the breakdown for each year. (more…)

Today’s May 4th, which makes it Star Wars Day, but what’s uppermost in my mind isn’t that—instead I’ve been thinking about how this marks the second anniversary of the day I strapped a Fitbit Flex to my wrist. I’ve worn the exercise tracker continually 24/7 since then, except for when I’ve been recharging or forced to remove the device while passing through airport security.

I took note of where I stood on my one-year Fitbit anniversary, so I’ve been wondering what year two was going to look like. As it turns out, it ended up looking a lot like year one.

The first year, thanks to the gamification of my walking, I took 4,078,838 steps, which came out to 2,030.89 miles.

Now that the second year is over, I see I’m up at a total 8,186,353 steps and 4,076.00 miles. Which means that during year two, I took 4,107,515 steps and walked 2045.11 miles—which is nearly identical to year one!

The difference, however, is in the details. (more…)

I’ve been using a Fitbit since May 4, 2013. That’s right—Star Wars Day. Which seems a perfect day to have introduced a new piece of tech into my life. It’s been a great help in getting me to back away from the keyboard and move, supplementing the plans I’d already made to stay alive as long as possible.

In the 20 months since I strapped a Flex to my wrist, I’ve taken 6,909,017 steps, which works out to having walked 3,440.01 miles. And my feelings toward the product have been mostly positive. But it occurred to me today, as I wrapped a fourth Flex band around my wrist, that there’s one thing I don’t see much of online, even though my friends and I have spoken of it—that those bands wear out far more quickly than we’d expected.

Since the Flex tracks my sleep as well as my activity, I wear it 24/7, only removing it to recharge once every 5-7 days. This means that over the course of these 20 months of use, assuming I recharged at the lower end of the battery life, I would have only slipped the device from one of my wristbands approximately 120 times or so. Split that among the three dead bands, and that works out to only 40 removals and reinsertions each. (Check my math, OK?)

And yet, here’s what the stress of sliding out and then slipping back in those devices has caused those three abandoned wristbands to look like now …

(more…)

I started wearing a Fitbit Flex combination pedometer and sleep tracker one year ago today. In fact, it was probably right around this time on May 4, 2013 that the battery was fully charged and I wrapped it around my left wrist.

Every other pedometer I’d tried had failed me. Either it would fall off my belt and break, or get washed because I forgot to unclip it from my pants, or I’d forget to wear it at all. The Flex can be worn even while showering, which I knew would be a cure for my clumsiness and absentmindedness. Plus it would keep track of how well I slept, and since I’ve always been intrigued by my dream life, that was fascinating.

So how’d I do? (more…)

Which is—I never get enough sleep at them.

I always knew I didn’t sleep well at cons, but when I say “knew,” it was more an anecdotal gut feeling than anything backed up by statistics. But as I look at what my Fitbit Flex reported about the quality of my four night’s sleep during San Diego Comic-Con (which for some reason is reflecting East Coast time, rather than West Coast time), all I could think was, man, you do get lousy sleep at cons.

Of course, my sleep in San Diego may have been poorer than usual, since I was trying to work, work, work as many waking moments as I could, on one day pounding away at my laptop nearly every waking moment from 6:00 a.m. until 10:45 p.m.

Whatever the reason, it’s good to be back in my own bed. Because another day of Comic-Con might have killed me. And you wouldn’t want that, would you?

I bought a Fitbit Flex on Saturday, May 2, and have been wearing it around the clock since then, save for the times I’ve been recharging the device while I worked at my computer. And since then, I’ve met my goal of 10.00 steps/5 miles every day, topped 15,000 daily steps six times, and yesterday even broke through the 25,000-step barrier!

I was in Chicago over the weekend for my latest visit to Next, and spent any time not at the restaurant wandering Chicago’s streets and museums, walking 18,387 steps (9.15 miles) Saturday and 25,134 steps (12.51 miles Sunday).

Here’s the way yesterday’s steps broke down in 5-minute increments.

I was looking forward to getting home and seeing how the Fitbit pie chart broke down my activity for the day, because I’d been scared straight by a study that showed the early deaths awaiting men who sat for more than six hours per day.

I was dismayed to discover—this. (more…)

I picked up a Fitbit Flex over the weekend to track the level of my activity and the quality of my sleep, and have been wearing the device on my wrist 24/7 since around 6:00 p.m. Saturday. The chart below reveals disturbing news about what my Monday was like, even though I logged 10,560 steps.

I was sedentary for 12 hours and six minutes! Since I already know that staying seated during the day is a killer, that’s not good news.

As you can see, the ratio of sedentary to active so far this morning isn’t quite as unbalanced, but I’m sure that by day’s end, it’ll be looking a lot like yesterday.

So what’s a guy with a deskjob to do? Am I doomed?