Friday, February 26, 2016

Fitbit

I saw a deal on a refurbished FitBit Charge HR the other day and I couldn't pass it up.  So I have a new toy.

Here is an excellent thorough review from my favorite tech gear reviewer!  So I'm not going to duplicate that.  I'll just offer few observations that I have after only two full days of wear. 

1. Firstly, this has been fun! 
2. I was already step tracking with my phone, but there were times when I'd forget to have it on me, etc.  I find that the FitBit step count is a few hundred higher per day, which totally makes sense.
3. The sleep metrics are kind of cool.  It is nice to wake up in the morning and have my sense of "bad night" or "good night" validated.  I don't know how accurate it is, but it is interesting for sure.
4.  Not knowing how it calculates the RHR is annoying the crap out of me.  Scrolling through my readings over the past 2 days, FitBit is reporting my RHR at 13-14 bpm above my lowest HR, but there is no documentation anywhere on how they arrive at this magical number. (Low HR first night 44, RHR 57, Low HR second night 45, RHR 59)  I can almost buy that my true RHR is higher than my lowest number, since I don't spend a lot of time at that lowest number, but 13-14 bpm higher seems quite a bit higher and I'd feel better about the whole thing if I knew how they got there.  In the meantime, I've made 2 columns on my workout spreadsheet, one for low number and one for RHR as reported by FitBit.  I'll consider them two different datapoints to fill out my picture and we'll go from there.  On a side note, I am very pleased with being below 60.  Very pleased!
5.  This is just a point of interest:  my lowest HR readings are within an hour of falling asleep.  I almost always wake up once in the middle of the night and I get another low reading after I fall back asleep the second time.  I am sure there is a biological reason for this and I find it fascinating.
6.   The calories that FitBit counted for me at rest closely mirror what MyFitnessPal guesstimates for me.  So that is interesting.
7.  This thing is truly easy to use.  Super easy.

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