So, back in the summer, Andy’s brother was given one of these fitness bands for his birthday. I used to have a pedometer, but got a bit fed up of the noise, and also it counted steps while I was driving and things, so it was not that accurate.
More recently I read Anna’s review of her vivofit, and started looking into them. There are other bands out there, but the Garmin one appealed as I already have a Garmin GPS, so I could use the Garmin connect software to see all my activity. Plus, I did not want one that vibrated, or beeped or anything like that. Sometimes at work I have to sit still (long assemblies or meetings) so I liked that the Garmin one just had lines on the screen.
I looked a few times on John Lewis (as I had some vouchers) and one day in half term I decided to go ahead and treat myself. I went for the grey, even though I really liked the green as I wanted it to go with everything.
It comes with two straps- I went for the smaller one but on one of the largest settings as I don’t like really tight things.
Apparently you can wear them in the shower and everything, but I have been taking mine off for that.
Setting it up was so simple. I mean, I am a bit of a technophobe still, but I followed the little guide, turned on the bluetooth on my phone, and straight away it was there. You can add your height, weight and birthday and then it apparently works out calories used, but I would take that with a pinch of salt.
I don’t normally have my bluetooth on (it seems to drain the battery on my phone pretty quickly) so I tend to turn it on once in the evening, synch the band (you just press and hold the button until “synch” appears on the screen), add my sleep time and then turn it off again.
The strap seems pretty secure- I read some reviews where people had lost them after a few days, but I think perhaps they had not clipped them in properly. There is a little additional strap that goes around the part where it is fastened, but I wore it for a few days without and it stayed on the whole time.
The screen is pretty clear- again some reviews complained about it not having a lit screen, but I would not be looking at it while running in the dark anyway, so that doesn’t bother me at all. You can flip between the different displays (time, date, steps, steps til you meet your goal, miles or calories)- I tend to leave it on the time screen and wear it instead of my normal watch. But at home I quite like seeing the steps mount up. If you are inactive for a while a red line begins to show along the top of the screen, which gets longer the more you sit still.
Although I don’t think the mileage is very accurate -one day I did an 8 mile run first thing in the morning (listening to a Richard Herring Leicster Square podcast, which is well worth hunting out by the way- the Russel Brand one was hilarious and very disturbing) and it thought I had done 11 miles or something by the time I got home- it will of course track patterns and I can compare if I did more or less steps than the day before. Mondays are now a day spent out of class, mainly in front of a computer, and I walk loads less, but I have been making the effort to have a walk in the evening as I am more conscious of it now. These past few days we have had Ofsted at work and on both of those days I did over 10.000 steps (although I was at work from 6.40am-9pm)- this was more rushing about than usual although I do tend to walk about quite a bit when teaching.
I am really glad I got it anyway- would you be tempted by something like this? Andy has got himself an app on his phone that tracks when he walks, but it would not work for me as we are not allowed phones on us at work, so mine is in my bag in my cupboard all day as I am rushing about everywhere, but if you had your phone in your pocket all the time some sort of fitness app thing would be a lot cheaper than a band.
I shall be very easy to spot in my luminous t-shirt.
