Finding my motivation... with my new Nike Fuelband

So it's been a month of sporadic little runs. And not enough of them. I've had my birthday, and been at a festival, my best friend has returned from Bangkok, and I've been busy at work. This has meant that too much of my time has been spent feeling tired, getting over hangovers, and wanting to go to bed at 9 o'clock in the evening. I feel run down. The Jen who was leaping out of bed at 6am to go running and wolfing down porridge every morning is a distant memory. I am as close to human sloth as I've ever known.
One thing has helped this strange mood I've been in though. I was very spoiled on my birthday and was given a Nike Fuelband. Not only do I look like a cyborg it's definitely helped me keep motivated, especially when feeling as lethargic and horrible as I do at the minute.

For those of you who don't know what Nike Fuelband does - it is an all-day movement monitoring device that you wear on your wrist, it appeals to the OCD side of every health freak out there. It's like a little personal trainer, it celebrates your achieved goals, and helps you turn a simple daily routine into a sport - not just when you're at the gym or in the park. You plug it in and it tells you when you've been lazy and when you haven't. It records your total active time, over a period of days, weeks and months. it's interesting to discover how active you are on a normal day and helps you improve activity in your everyday life.

I thought I'd share with you my tips on how I'm using the Fuelband and how I'm making it work for me. Not only is it helping me run a little more often than I may have done without it, it is helping me improve my daily activity which should improve my fitness overall. I have noticed I have been making more active choices; walking up the escalators, taking the stairs, going for a walk at lunchtime rather than pinning stuff on Pinterest...

If anyone else has a Fuelband let me know and we can "go social" with our FuelCount (wow - cringiest thing I've said all day) and I'm searching for tips on how to get more active when in an office environment, aside from doing lunges at my desk and freaking out my colleagues.

Here are my Top Tips!

1. Don't begin with too high a goal
I set my goal to 3000. This was considered the amount a normal, active person would reach on a normal day, whilst doing gentle exercise. 5000 would be super active (hitting the gym hard, going on a decent run). 1000-2000 would be a normal non-gym day. Of course this is very vague and approximate, I guess the important factor is that the amount of points you reach is relative, i.e. you should be comparing what you reach day-on-day and see how you improve. I found I consistently hit 3000 when not going to the gym - but cycled to work, went for a walk at lunchtime, and didn't just sit rigid at my desk all day. It is great to check the band and see how active you really are. I was worried having an office job that I was largely sedentary, and seeing only 1500 fuel by lunchtime encouraged me to go to the shops at lunchtime, walk home, go to the gym, or go for a run.
It is during periods of free time that we have time to exercise, and the Fuelband makes you realise this. Why not go for an evening stroll after dinner or run a lap of the park instead of plonking yourself on the sofa? It really does make you rethink your activity levels. I found the Fuelband is more helpful for non gym/running activies - when doing sport I am more concerned with the length of time I am running/working out for, and the calories burned and overall intensity rather than the Nike Fuel I have gained - but the Fuelband I find is there for everything else :)

2. Ignore the calorie counter
The calorie counter on the band really doesn't make sense to me. When you first plug the thing in, it asks you for your height and weight, I'm assuming this is so it calculates your BMI. Then throughout the day it gives you a calorie counter. On a day reaching 3000 fuel, it said I had burned around 800 calories. This is an abitrary number, and irrelevant when it does not take into account CALORIES IN. It is not very transparent, Nike doesn't inform you how these calories are calculated, and without actually measuring your heart rate I didn't see much point taking any notice of it. If I wanted to measure calories I'd have to wear a heart monitor, in my opinion.

3. Use it for a a personal leaderboard - consistently, not just for bouts of exercise.
When I uploaded my first week of results, it was cool to see how I had performed over that entire week. It gives you a little bar chart of points each day, and totally appealed to my obsessive compulsive side. I had been at a festival from the Friday to the Sunday and had knocked up a ridiculous amount of fuel - in one day around 9500 fuel, translating to 25,000 steps, 21km walked. It made me feel like intoxicating myself had just as many pros as there were cons health-wise (probably not a good thing?!), but it is amazing to think the actual amount of energy you expend dancing and having fun!!!!

So overall, I think it's a great little gadget that's more for motivation than for accuracy, and motivation is exactly what I need right now.