In last few years, there has been a lot of awareness on health and especially on well being. Not that we as Indians were not aware, being active was a part of our culture. Historically, we have been pretty outgoing and entrepreneurial by nature. As a society, we have always been an agrarian society, it hasn’t changed as of date. Agriculture has started contributing lesser to our GDP, still employs the largest number of people (and that discussion is for some other time)
Our new found awareness on well being chiefly stems out of the new found unavoidable urbane upwardly lifestyle that we have mostly been forced upon. Extended work hours, staying away from ‘Gen – 1’ family, poor sleep quality, cramped little spaces, single-minded focus on proving oneself at business is killing us.
In this mass hysteria, health and fitness bands come as an awesome awareness and preventive tools for lifestyle management.
And hardly surprising is the fact that they are available at a huge spread of price points starting from 1500 to 25000 INR. The idea behind this write is to not compare or benchmark these bands but to specifically talk about Fitbit and the impact it had one me over 1.5 yrs of usage and this after initial scepticism (I have always been a firm believer in know thy body and know thy mind, because no one knows it better than thy).
All the devices offer you a range of stats from step counts, to the heartbeat, your sleep time, and silent alarms. Absolutely no difference except for the number of steps that they count (that typically depends on the algo in use). Where Fitbit scores against all these is deriving personalised, meaningful insights from these pieces of data and generating actionable steps for the user.
The kind of insights it generates is terrific, truly smart! You genuinely get the feeling of someone really caring about your health and wellbeing. The insights range from being psychological to physiological.
I could broadly categorise themselves into 3 broad kinds!
Kind1: Be kind to yourself Find out your moments of peace, relaxation, and grab wink.
Kind2: Pat on the back, Postive Reinforcements.
These reinforcements are not only limited to sleep (though I started with sleep because that’s what we are most deprived of these days).
I love the way these reinforcements come through even with steps, all those small daily accruals come together to blow up into a meaningful personal achievement. Trust me, you will actually be very proud of those!
Kind3: Gentle Reminder, bordering mild reprimand. mend your ways, trouble around the corner
Other features that I regularly use are the silent alarms, Cardio fitness score, and guided breathing sessions.
Silent vibrating alarms on your wrists are extremely gentle and powerful. They just cannot be ignored and have multiple advantages – you don’t ever have to wake up to that metallic, non-stop, head wrenching alarm from your phone. You would rather only stay half asleep for the fear of that nasty alarm going off! 🙂
I also love the way it generates your VOx levels (broadly put it is the efficiency of O2 burn during a physical activity ) and hence the cardio fitness score. I have seen mine improving across a period of time with loads of long distance running.
Guided Breathing sessions are another add-on to make you exercise on the move, or give you moments of calm and peace through the day ‘on demand’. These are 2 -5 minutes of quantized breathing sessions to bring instant calm.
Finally, to the naysayers
I have seen a lot of comments with people claiming that Fitbit miscounted steps, gave wrong heartbeats, blah, blah, and, blah.
Is Fitbit accurate – Hell no, by no means. Is it directionally correct – A perfect yes. None debating that.
Can Fitbit be trusted – directionally yes, but it’s not a substitute for any medical consultations or devices.
Is Fitbit perfect – You got to be joking, no way! Perfect, far from it and I agree. Despite being an advocate, I will be blunt and say that it’s not a perfect device at all. (It’s the earliest cyborg – next generations will be much smarter and nimbler. I see next gen revolution shifting from pockets (smartphones) to wrists (smart wearables)).
So it’s neither accurate nor perfect, It is an encouraging and positive reinforcements device to keep reminding of your health goals, celebrates your intimate steps achievements moments and makes sure you know on how important you are for yourself – take care!
Leave a Reply