May we please have a moment of silence for my dying Fitbit Charge (affiliate link)?

BrokenFitBit
 

It was June of last year that I purchased my Fitbit to track my sleep. I knew that my five hours of sleep per night was no longer cracking it, but without tracking my night-to-night sleep habits I wondered if it really was as bad as it seemed. When I was younger living on minimal sleep was no big deal for me, but last summer I noticed that I always felt sluggish and overall pretty exhausted. I got up at 4:30 AM  three mornings a week to either meet my running friends or teach a bootcamp class. Two of the other mornings I was up by 5 or 5:30 AM and that left only two mornings to “sleep in” until 7 or 7:30 AM. The problem was that in addition to me being an early bird, I’m also a night owl and have trouble getting to bed before 11 PM. 

Enter the Fitbit Charge…

As soon as my Fitbit arrived from Amazon I started focusing on my sleep and made a conscious decision to try to get to bed earlier, run alone later in the day when I felt tired, and stop teaching the 5:30 AM bootcamp. I haven’t reached my goal of seven hours sleep per night, but I’ve been getting consistently between 6:15 and 6:45.

Another positive benefit of wearing my fitness tracker was that I  started challenging myself to meet a goal of 15,000 steps per day which seemed about right to give me a little push on the days I don’t run. When I spend a lot of time doing paperwork or working on blog posts, 15,000 is a hard number to reach and seeing my low numbers is incentive enough to get me out on a walk!

So why did my Fitbit fall apart? Last fall it rained during my legs of Ragnar DC – sometimes even pouring buckets, and if you have a Fitbit, you know that you’re not supposed to wear it in the shower (I was basically running in a shower). Some of the glue holding the backing on my Fitbit started coming loose, but not to the point I couldn’t wear it.

Fast forward to yesterday when my Fitbit all but fell into two pieces as the band pulled almost completely away from the device, something it had gradually been doing little by little over the last few weeks. I finally took the time to order a new one, but in the meantime I don’t want to be without my fun little tracker. When electrical tape wouldn’t hold it together, I added a rubber band and when that failed to work, I wrapped my FitBit and arm with that plastic wrap trainers use to hold ice packs on an injured body part. Yes, basically my Fitbit is an injured body part since for the last year it’s been a part of me 24/7.

FitBitTapedRubberbanded
 

My new Fitbit can’t come quickly enough, but in the meantime I’ll rock this silly plastic-wrapped-around-my-arm look because a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do!

Speaking of not getting enough sleep and working toward increasing those fabulous hours of spending time between the sheets, here’s how my workouts, nutrition, and rest went down this past week…

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Fitness tools beyond the equipment in my gym that I used during the week included: 

 

Cameras used for blog photography include:

 

  • Questions:
  • Do you use a FitBit or other tracker?
  • How addicted are you to technology? 
  • Did you race this weekend? 

 

Have a great week!

Disclaimer:  This post contains affiliate links which means if you click on the blue product link and then make a purchase, I will receive a commission for referring you. You will pay no more or less for the product; however, Amazon will show their gratitude for my referral by paying me.

 

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I’m linking up with Holly at HoHo Runs and Tricia from MissSippiPiddlin for their Weekly Wrap.  Be sure to check out not only the hosts, but the other great bloggers joining in on the fun!

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