One of the many lovely presents I received this year was a little device called a ‘fitbit one‘. It’s an activity and sleep tracker, which works like a futuristic pedometer in a sci-fi novel. It measures your steps, how many flights of stairs you climb, how many miles you walk etc and calculates how many calories you’ve burned (using your age, height and weight). It also tracks your movement in your sleep and rates your ‘sleep efficiency’. You can set a weight-loss or fitness goal and log what you eat to calculate your daily calorie ‘budget’. All very clever…
It’s very unobtrusive as you just clip it onto your clothes and it syncs wirelessly with an app on your phone, or you can go through the data in more detail on the website. I thought I liked it until it told me that my BMI – which has been hovering at the top end of the ‘okay’ range for many months – is now 26. This means I am officially ‘a bit fat’. (The proper term is ‘overweight’ – obese is further up the scale – but I think ‘a bit fat’ has a nice balance of informal friendliness and brutal honesty.) I always say that I don’t diet because I know losing half a stone won’t make me happier or make everything in my life wonderful. This is still true, but it’s also true that losing half a stone will make me healthier…. and will make getting into the jeans Dad bought for me in the US much more likely!
Heart And A Half 