Fitness, Fitbits and Friends

Since managing to get my hands on a fitbit back in the Black Friday sales, I've been fairly complacant with my activity and logging around 7000 steps a day. Now considering my job involves not moving glued to a screen all day - its not a bad figure at all but I've decided that I need to lose a little weight so need to improve it.

What I have found however is motivation to do so is pretty hard. It's easy for a few days but as the months roll in, it gets lost in the pile of things to do but not really a priority. Fitbit actually offers you almost a digital personal trainer to motivate you but I am skeptical as to how well it would work because if it were that simple, I'd be rich from helping a prince become reunited with his lost funds because of their persistence.

So introducing Paul, one of my co-workers. He's been using his Fitbit to compete with one of his friends and to be honest - putting my efforts at fitness to shame. 

So why has he put in so much extra effort? It's a competition. He wants to "wipe the floor" with others and so more exercise than them which is a great motivator. So much so he has been asking for a while to add me as a "friend" to his fitbit profile so he can see my progress. I reluctantly allowed him full access hoping the shame of not doing enough will motivate me to get more active.

It's worked. So far for the past month, I've increased my activity to around 11,000 steps a day and even 16,000 sometimes just to move up the leaderboard.

As for a full review of the Fitbit Flex, there are enough out there but as a brief one. Overpriced at £80, if you find it for £40, buy it. Great battery life