Hodgepodge 12/365 - Fitness Tracking (Walking)

A while back I read a summary of an article by Duke University professor Jordan Etkin, "The Hidden Cost of Personal Quantification" in the Journal of Consumer Research. She found that the more information we have on our walking habits—the number of steps taken, calories burned, the minutes we are “active,” etc.—the more it makes walking feel like a chore. And the less fun these things are, the more reason we find to stop doing them. Too often, she found, fitness trackers were not helpers, but hinderers.

I bought my first fitness tracker about five or six years ago. After years of muddling along with little low-tech pedometers that attach at the waist, I finally splurged and got myself a Jawbone UP Band. I bought it, and not its rival the Fitbit, because a Facebook friend had one and seemed pleased with it. That amounted to a personal recommendation. The first UP Band failed after a couple of years (I forget how), and I bought a new one.

Because me, I like fitness trackers. I like to have a goal: 10,000 steps is perfect for everyday purposes. I love to walk anyway, so getting out on a trail is never a chore. And it's nice, at the end of the day, to feel impressed at the many miles I covered. Some days when I've been out doing wilderness rangering or trail work, I reach the high 20,000s, even the 30s. Wow! Good job!

And yes, there are days when, come late evening, I check and see I'm at 9,000-something . . . and I jog up and down the stairs a few dozen times—to meet my goal! Yay! Good job!

A few months ago, my second UP Band failed: this time, it refused to sync reliably with the phone app. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't, sometimes it seemed to give up after only half the day. I tried to solve the problem with the good folks at Jawbone, but alas. I gave up too.

And since then, I've been without a fitness tracker. And
. . . I sorta stopped walking so much. I mean, I walk every day—with the dog. But I've been doing short, cheap walks: just long enough for two or three poops, which amounts to once around the local Frog Pond, a 3/4-mile loop. Whereas with my UP Band, I'd make sure to go three times around, maybe four—and then might do a few stair circuits at the end of the day to meet my goal, if needed.

This week family was visiting, and my sister-in-law had on a Fitbit. I asked about it. She says she loves it. It's got more bells and whistles than the UP Band, but the accompanying app is much less annoying. (The UP app tried to offer words of encouragement, little pep talks, and kept suggesting that I up my goal. Go away, app: I just want to know how many steps I walked.)

And so, of course, that very evening I ordered a Fitbit Alta—the sleekest, simplest model. It came yesterday. Today I took it for a spin. So far, at 6 p.m., I'm up to 7,703 steps. I probably will not make it to 10,000 (that's too many stairs), but I'm pleased to be able to monitor my progress again.

Then again, a nighttime stroll with the dog for one last poop might tip me over the 10K line. It's very tempting.

And because I'm curious about this sort of thing, here are a couple of links: How does my tracker count steps? and How accurate are Fitbit trackers?

Yay for goals! And yay for finding motivation, wherever we can!