Regulating life with the Fitbit Charge HR

For Christmas of 2016, I got a little gift for myself. A fitness tracker. It wasn't because I believed it would change my habit of getting off the couch more or the fact that I'm not moving enough. I know all these already.

The reason I got the fitness tracker was because it was free. I had collected enough loyalty points to redeem it. And to be honest I have been curious about what all the rage was about. So I traded in my points and redeemed myself a Fitbit Charge HR.

I will have to confess, I wasn't particularly interested in moving more. But I am a data junkie. A data junkie in the sense of hitting those optimal numbers and seeing how to improve myself. Now I have a method of actual quantification that doesn't require manual data keeping or entry (which often boils down to guesswork and half-truth).

Here's a machine that once strapped to my wrist will tell me all the stats I need. My heart rate, my sleep cycle and amount of sleep, the number of steps I took, how hard I actually worked out. It's a marvel in technological innovation for nothing more than a self-glorified self-quantification device. And it was glorious indeed.

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Over the course of the last half year I have learned some interesting things about myself with this Fitbit Charge HR. I wasn't actually as lazy as I thought I was. I required at least 7 hours of sleep to function. And apparently my heart rate spikes when I am under the weather or about to get sick.

This isn't to say that the core function of tracking my fitness was not useful. It was. I have been able to let it automatically track the intensity of my jogging and of my home body-weight workouts. Especially with the latter. I am now able to not just feel the burn but also quantify it with the fact that my heart rate has risen accordingly. Or conversely when I have been too lax with the intensity of my workout and thus need to push it up a notch. There is no hiding anymore.

But for me, the main takeaway from this device was the heart rate monitor. The monitor has been able to log and pick up on situations where I have been stressed or when emotions have been running high. It has been able to pick up on whether I was coming down with a cold. Although unfortunately, the device does not inform of these things ahead of time, it does allow me to check the history or and to check it real time while in the situation with a quick tap on the device. This has allowed me to step back from situations before they escalated and also allowed me to take preventive care prior to getting sick.

The last function that I have been pretty dependent on is the silent vibrating alarm on the Charge HR. It has been a key way for me to wake up in the morning now without waking up theWife or the Little Girl (that may have made her way into our bed). I found the gentle buzzing of my arm has been enough to wake me out of deep sleep without the noise associated with a normal alarm and this has been a plus for everyone.

Overall, the Fitbit Charge HR has been a keeper for me. It may not have revolutionized the way I live life but it did help me regulate it and help me maintain productivity in a core way by keeping a log of and watching over my body.

What about you? How have you been using a fitness tracker in your life? Got any tips to share?

Look out for a post on my review and thoughts of the Misfit Flash for helping to regulate life in the near future.

*feature photo and youtube belongs to Fitbit.com