FitBit

So here I am with more time to kill. For several years now, I've been kind of a sedentary person. I moved in to technology, and while I love my work, it's caused me to pack on the pounds while spending my day at a desk staring at a computer screen. In fact, the last time I regularly got up from my desk to walk around was before I quite smoking several years ago. Since then, I seem to be unable to give myself an excuse to get up and walk around throughout the day.
Off and on I've tried controlling my diet which is very healthy, but I just really enjoy eating, and I've been on an on again off again workout schedule. I tend to fluctuate between about 195 and 215 pounds, and I'd kinda like that to stop. The issue is that when I'm working out I'm starving, and tend to over compensate for increased calorie burn. The few times I've tried dieting I end up starving myself because I have no real concept of what I actually need to take in to sustain myself. Recently my wife and I went out and spent about $100 each on FitBit devices. It's a little thumb drive sized device that uses motion sensors to track movement, upload that data to a web site, and based on various personal criteria, it tracks calorie burn. You can also manually modify activities to get more accurate readings, for example, if you do a 40 minute cardio workout you'll track steps and calorie burn as if you had been walking for 40 minutes. Edit that activity to be a cardio workout, and you'll have a fairly accurate reading of your actual activity. We did a little research before buying, and we've found that most people report this thing having similar accuracy to the Body Bugg, but for a much lower price, and access to the data without requiring a paid Web site subscription.
So, why is this information useful? During our research we kept coming across people who, over and over again, would say that these kinds of things are for micro-managers. They don't provide data that's useful for the average person, and on and on. My experience over the last week is that this is simply not true. On the one hand, if you're a fit, active person, you don't have weight or activity problems, and you're happy where you are, this may be true. It's probably information that is more interesting than useful to you. For someone like me, however, who eats healthy, works out but has a profession that keeps me fairly sedentary, and my efforts produce little to no results, this thing is awesome. Yes, there is the pain of having to track calories I eat. It sucks, but once you get a few foods and meals in there, you just have to say I ate it again. Yes, you do occasionally have to update your activity from just walking around for 40 minutes to working out for 40 minutes, but that's really no big deal. The magic is in the data that you are collecting throughout the day. The bottom line is that to successfully lose weight, you have to simply make sure you're burning more calories than you consume. That's it. This little device gives you an accurate enough view of your caloric intake vs. caloric burn that you can easily sit down, look at two graphs, and see why you're still sitting on a fat ass vs. a thin one. It's where most calorie tracking programs fail. They only tell you what you're eating. That is virtually meaningless data if you have no idea what you're burning.
So, how has my first week been? I weighed in at 210 on Sunday. I weight in today, Thursday, at 205. I went in to this with the attitude that I will eat what ever the hell I want, and as much as I want as long as I log it in the system. I've compared that with my calorie burn, enhanced by regular workouts. Seems to be working pretty well so far.
The weekend is coming up, so we'll see how that goes. Weekends are when I really like to pack in the food.