Fitbits new Alta HR activity tracker

I've been a Fitbit user for years. I have an original flex and I can honestly say that considering its primary job is as a pedometer, I tend to use it very differently than its original intent. Its primary purpose in my case is as a silent alarm clock. I don't want to wake my family up with my phone or an alarm clock at way-too-early o'clock, so this little vibrating band has been a godsend. The thing is, other than that purpose, it's really the software and not the hardware that I use this for.

Sure the sleep monitor is kind of cool, but to be honestly I tend to find it out of whack. I tend to switch between totally active sleeper (think running in my sleep) to log to laying there without moving for hours while suffering from an absolute random bout of insomnia. Sometimes Fitbit picks this up, sometimes not, and honestly I can't say that I've looked at my sleep metrics much after the first couple of weeks.

I will say that the guilt trip I get from not wearing it for a couple of days or for spending a few days totally sedentary while working seems to be pretty good, especially with the weekly report. It does give me a little push to try and be active for the next week. Being able to look back and actually see which days I was active and which I wasn't is good. So is keeping track of my weight and other measurements.

The thing is... most of what I use this for is not the hardware... and there is good reason for that. The location on my wrist tends to interfere with lifting gloves or straps. I have had it get caught on the lip of my chalk bag and either drop into my chalk bag or tumble 40 feet almost hitting my belayer in the face.

Fundamentally thats the problem with my Fitbit flex though, its really good at measuring a couple of things and mostly for running, and not quite so good at measuring the activities that I do. Now to be fair I have no idea how you would measure reps on a leg press with a wrist worn device. Or how the same wrist worn device could ever hope to tell how my clean my movement was while I was climbing (though some kind of altimeter in there would be kinda neat to tell how far I had moved up and down over the course of a day).

Some of this looks to at least be changing with the Alta. Being able to track my heart rate is far more useful to me than number of steps. It will give me some visibility into when I'm ACTUALLY working out hard and when I'm giving it a half assed effort. I may get some metrics into how hard a route or boulder problem actually was for me.

The band design actually looks like it may be helpful too. Having a latching band versus the one on the flex should solve my catch and drop problem, I also may be able to wear it a little higher up on wrist to deal with lifting straps. Plus I still get all the awesome things I use my current Fitbit for.

I guess what I'm saying is, come on April, and just go ahead and take my money now!

The Importance of Keeping a Log

There are times when working out can feel like a really big drag. That you aren't getting anywhere and that you have been doing this FOREVER with no results. The truth his you probably have been making progress, but you might not notice. This phenomenon happens all the time to people with kids (also pets, if you've had them since they were very young). You see your child (or pet) every day, and you don't really notice that they're getting bigger, and then all of a sudden they no longer fit where they used to, and you have the magic epiphany of: OMG he/she is getting so big! In fact this same phenomenon is often times why we don't notice that we are gaining weight until all of sudden that pair of jeans that we've had forever are "suddenly" way to snug! It's because of this phenomena that is absolutely vital that you keep track of your progress (or lack thereof).

By jotting it down, you can actually see that you are indeed making progress, and that changes to your body are actually happening! Sure they may not be as fast as you like, but progress is progress, and that's the goal. It's a motivator, it keeps you from giving up when you feel like this whole thing isn't worth it. It simultaneously gives you data to make other changes to perhaps push yourself through a plateau!

Plateau busting can be one of the most frustrating aspect of Muscle Building or Weight Loss. You get to a point where it just doesn't seem that you are getting anywhere. It can go on for days, weeks, even months! Keeping a log allows you to see things that may be causing your plateau. You can look back to when you stopped making gains or losses and see what perhaps might be causing that. Maybe you stopped doing an exercise. Maybe you started doing a little less or more time on the elliptical. Maybe you started eating a different kind of protein bar as a mid afternoon snack.

Being able to take in this data, and synthesize it into useful information to help you get to your goals is the name of the game! Big companies use this all the time, they call it analytics! But in order to analyze why things may not be working as well as you'd like you need to keep your data somewhere, and you need to keep it in a consistent manner. You don't have to use anything fancy I used a Mead Composition Book for years! You can get a 5 Pack of them here from Amazon for about $9.

So keep a log, take as many measurement as consistently as you feel doing. Using data to drive your goals is the optimum way of achieving them.

Break down your bigger goals

If you want to lose weight one of the best ways to help is to break down your bigger goals into smaller ones. Losing, for example, twenty pounds is a big challenge! After all, in a healthy world you only really want to drop 1 to 3 pounds a week. That means twenty pounds should take about 10 weeks.

10 weeks is a long term goal. It sounds so achievable at the beginning. That 10 weeks seems so far away that you are very likely to "take it easy" because you "have plenty of time!" Four weeks later, when you have been very lax on yourself and if you are lucky you may have dropped a couple of pounds. But now you have 6 weeks to lose 18 pounds! That's on the upper end of healthy and now it's a very hard to achieve goal!

So how should you break this down. Well it depends on you. I've found four week intervals to work the best. Four weeks is just long enough to give myself a little leeway for lapses in my goal, while simultaneously giving me the kick in the pants that I "ONLY" have a few weeks left! In addition it allows you to use another mind trick: the "I can do it for X" mind trick, because after all it's only a month, you can be super strict for a month!

By the time the end of that month rolls around hopefully you will be so well on your way to your big goal that you will just let it keep going! After all you already showed that you can be super strict for a month, and it wasn't so bad! So break up your big goals into incremental smaller ones. Gauge where you are when you get to that smaller one and adjust accordingly. Losing weight and keeping it off is a bunch of incremental changes over time! Going for the big bang is dooming you to failure before you even start.

Mind Trick: I can do it for "X"

I REALLY used to dislike cardio. I mean I had a serious disdain for the whole activity, the intense sweat, the shortness of breath, the constant monotony of being on a machine. I tried to take it outside, and run, but I was big, the concrete pavement hurt my knees and I live in the Atlanta Metro area. The Atlanta Metro area has some SERIOUS air quality issues. Running outside at the wrong time made me feel like I had been sucking on a tail pipe. So I stuck to indoor equipment. The thing is most of the time I was ready to give up after about five minutes. That's when I discovered this little gem of a mind trick.

I realized that every time I got on a piece of cardio equipment (usually a treadmill), I'd get to about 3 minutes and 30 seconds and want to get off. My head would be hurting, my knees began to whine, I was out of breath, the sweat started pouring from my brow, and my heart felt like it was going to explode out of my chest. In my head the cursing would begin. I would just tough it out, call myself a wuss. You know the typical macho crap that you see on all those workout posters. When I reached about 7 minutes miraculously my head would be clear, my knees didn't hurt, my heart and breath evened out and the sweat only bothered me a little.

Now usually I'd only last another 7 minutes from that point and then cool down (I was almost 300 pounds at the time...), but I figured out something. If I could get past the initial 5-6 minutes I could do my cardio! I further went down the road of, its only 5 minutes! That's not so much! Anyone can do 5 minutes that's not so bad!

Fast forward 10 years (or so) and I still use this trick today! I've run a half marathon using this trick. In fact I used it this morning! I was 45 minutes and 6 miles in to a run on the treadmill. I didn't want to do anymore. I was tired, and I could already taste my after workout refuel. But I said to myself, come on Alex, just do five more minutes. It's five minutes, that's not too much longer! I ended up doing that a few more times pushing myself to 9.5 miles over and hour and ten minutes! Maybe that's not super quick, but believe me its one of my better times!

The best part about the trick is that it doesn't just work for exercise it works for your diet too! I did a juice fast a year or so ago. I used the same trick with the mindset of "It's only a week. I can do this for a week! It's not that long!", and you know what? It wasn't! I ended up doing it for two! So if you're dragging don't feel like exercising or sticking to your diet, just break it down to a tiny time frame. It will make it seem much more reachable and much less harsh.

Use Little Tricks to Push You

I use an app on my phone called Fitocracy (Fitocracy on iTunes / Fitocracy on Android ) to keep track of my workouts. It's not the best tool for this function but it does have on interesting feature that I love. They use the concept of points to rank your workout. After you achieve a certain number of points you "level up".

If you have ever played a video games with levels then you know just how addictive it can be to "level up". I played EverQuest (You know, before World of Warcraft even existed!) for years, and the time trap you would find yourself in was just trying to get to the next level, or to get the next piece of gear.

So why does this help with your workout? Let me give you an example. I was exhausted this morning. The day hadn't started right, I didn't have headphones, and it took me longer to get to the gym than expected. I plowed through a pretty decent workout, but I was going to skip my after weights run. So i entered what I'd done into Fitocracy, and lo and behold I'm 94 points short of a level.

I looked at it for a second and said well fuck, I guess I'll get that tomorrow. I walked ten feet, and said to myself damn it! Its 94 points! I can get that with one more hard set of exercise. So I turned my ass around and worked a little bit more. It was a little trick, but it caused me to push myself just a little further and get me closer to my goal just when I needed the inspiration the most. If I'd worked myself hard enough I would have been satisfied, but I hadn't, so I wasn't and that little 94 point reminder gave me the push I needed today.

Finding Motivation

I wake up at 5:30 AM every weekday morning to get my ass to the gym. I REALLY DO NOT LIKE GETTING UP IN THE MORNING. This is usually compounded by the fact that I have a toddler who I'm convinced could keep himself awake for a week straight if we didn't force him to lay down in a dark room, and by my teenager (I mean he's a teen... need I say more?). It really isn't uncommon for me to finally hit the bed at 11:00 PM, and sometimes even later.

So every morning when that fucking alarm clock goes off (and I do hate that fucking alarm clock), I immediately start dealing with my brain saying "what the fuck?" That's right, the first thing in the morning I have to deal with is my inner monologue coaxing me back to sweet slumber. And the first thing I have to do is to tell that inner voice to go to hell. You know what? It's really fucking hard. Every. Single. Day.

I wish I could say I always come out victorious in that battle, but the reality is I lose sometimes. That's OK, as long as I don't let it happen to often. The thing is, in order to truly beat that inner voice, the one that tells you that you can't do something, you have to find some reason to latch on to that says you can. I know, it sounds completely cliche, but its the truth.

Steve Jobs said (and I'm paraphrasing, but I included the video below) that in order to achieve amazing things as an entrepreneur you have to have passion. Passion for what you do, passion for what you are trying to create. The reason you need that passion is that being an entrepreneur is hard! You have to be a little crazy to be successful, because otherwise you would just give up!

The reality is that finding your motivation to be healthy, and make lifestyle changes is a personal thing. You have to make the time to find it for you. You have to believe it, totally and entirely, because in reality that's the thing that will get you to achieve your goals. That's the thing that drives you to get out of bed at 5:30 AM and hit the gym. That's what makes you say no to the birthday cake being passed around the office. Willpower alone just isn't going to cut it.

[I decided to embed the Steve Jobs YouTube Video]