I always try to keep active, but sometimes I just can’t fit in exercise. I either just don’t feel like it or, as of recently, I had surgery and was not permitted to exercise. I am not even sure if my body would have been up for it. We all have those days. What I found to be an even harder task was to get back into the swing of things. For me, getting started is harder than being consistent and maintaining any type of activity level. This is where my Fitbit has helped me tremendously.

Just having the Fitbit on my wrist makes me more aware of my movements and how active I have been for the day. It even breaks down the activity into each hour. Plus, different versions of the Fitbit show several different things you can monitor.

Sleep Monitoring

This is beneficial for your health because without sleep there is no way for your body to recover. You can see how many hours you slept and whether your sleep was restless or productive. It will show you on a graph the time periods when you were restless or if you had a good REM sleep cycle. You can also set a timer to let you know when it is time to go to sleep and an alarm to buzz to wake you up. There is also a setting where you can give yourself a specific goal for the number of hours you would like to strive to get each night. The graph allows you to view each individual night of sleep and also look at your sleep pattern for a week or a month. This will help you to figure out why you were tired for a specific day. There are also little notifications that you can receive to help you improve your sleep schedule and prepare better for bedtime.

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Water Intake

This feature allows you to track how much water you are drinking in a day. You can also view your water intake for the entire week or month. There are different options for the amount, and it allows you to type in your own amount. You can make a goal for your daily water intake, and, just like with the sleep feature, you can view on a graph how much water you drink daily, weekly, and monthly.

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Heart Rate

This feature allows you to see what your heart rate is during resting periods, during exercise, and when you sleep. It also gives you guidelines as to where your heart rate needs to be to burn fat and calories.

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Steps and Stairs

This is the feature of the Fitbit that I love the most! It shows you how many steps you take in a day and how many sets of stairs you climbed in a day. You can set a goal of the number of steps you want to accomplish in a day and how many sets of stairs you want accomplish in a day. The average person takes about 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day, so you can base your own personal goal off of that number. The number of stairs and steps is also tracked for the week and month as well as the day. You can challenge your friends to a step off and see who has the most steps. This can help make your physical activity more fun by getting your friends involved.

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Food Log

The food log allows you to track your foods and counts calories for you. It also tells you how many calories you are able to consume in a day. If you enter a food into the log it will tell you how many calories you have left for the day and you can plan accordingly. It also subtracts calories when you add exercises into your app and subtracts calories based on how many steps you have taken.

Exercise Log

This allows you to track the type of exercise you do. You can set a number of days as your goal each week. It allows you to track swimming, running, lifting weights, and yoga, and there are exercises that the app will give you to choose from. You will never run out of ideas on what to do for your activity for the day.

Coaching

This is another get feature of the Fitbit! You can receive notifications that will inspire you to keep going, to stay motivated, and just great tips for nutrition and exercise. These tips will help you with your overall health. If you do not want to receive the coaching tips you can just shut off the notifications.

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The dashboard is very easy to navigate, and the app gives you somewhere to log everything you need in one place. For me, the Fitbit is a great reminder to keep me healthy.