Tag Archives: Fitbit

A Day of Nature With a Little Help from the Digital World to Record It

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So here we are in the village of La Jolla, CA, at the La Valencia Hotel. Our hotel is pretty swanky but I really love it because it offers free Wi-Fi for the many devices that I drag everywhere with me.

We stayed here before but this time we requested a full ocean view so I could hear the waves breaking. They tried to slip us a corner view but this New Yorker just kept insisting on the particular spot I knew I wanted. They were actually very accommodating.

This morning we woke up to Jonathan Living Seagull on the balcony of our room. He was a few feet from my bed. Just beyond him you can see the palm trees and then the ocean.

I made a YouTube video of this little creature because the little steps he took on the railing represented what Eliot, Whitney, and I wanted to do for the day–walk. We actually did more than six miles on the boardwalk in Mission Beach alongside the Pacific Ocean. My Fitbit registered 16,000 steps. It was very exhilarating. We could have walked longer but we had errands to take care of.

I am back in our room now watching the waves again. The French doors are open and a nice breeze is blowing through, No snow. No humidity. No worries .

First Users of New Force Fitbit Report Skin Rashes

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Sometimes being first to own something new in the world of technology is not always the smartest move. I learned the hard way that being first to own a new innovative product meant that I had to work through the kinks until the inventors corrected the bugs.

I can’t begin to tell you how many times I had the most frustrating days when the technology that I bought into didn’t work. As silly as it may seem now, I have had more meltdowns then I care to remember when technology stopped me from getting my work done. I suffered through failing email servers, shaky software programs, and malfunctioning copy machines,

Then there were days when even my recreational tech products failed. Mp3’s became muffled, bluetooth ear pieces lost transmission, smartphone apps turned off or they just froze in place. I’ve really tried to have patience but being tolerant isn’t one of my attributes.

I was one of the first users of the Fitbit, a wireless tracker of steps, distance, calories burned, and stairs climbed. It also measures your sleep quality and helps you learn how to sleep better. Since its introduction there have been many new versions with lots of advances. For some reason, I stuck with the original Fitbit.

Now comes word that Fitbit’s newest product, the Force wristband at $129.00, is causing blisters, rashes and itchy dry patches on the wrists of the users. The Wall Street Journal was one of the first to report it.

Fitbit Chief Executive James Park said he believes the skin problems are “allergic contact dermatitis, which can resemble a sunburn or a rash.” He said it also could be allergic reactions to nickel, a component of the steel in the Force. “Our investigation is looking beyond nickel to other potential causes as well.”

The Fitbit has been one of the most successful fitness products on the market. Its name is almost synonymous with “wearable technology.” It’s a shame that this had to happen after so many years of a great track record. Personally, I think fans will be forgiving. They understand the tough road of innovation and are appreciative of the company’s accomplishments. People who love all of the new digital products exercise patience. I have to remember that.

If you want to read the details about the Fitbit rash, click here.

BIT BY BIT I AM GETTING THERE OR HOW A DIGITAL PRODUCT IS HELPING ME TO CONTROL MY SUGAR LEVELS

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I know you are not going to believe this unless you know me well. There are days that I don’t take more than a 1,000 steps. That means all I have done for the day is go to work, sit all day ,come home again and sit all night. Some weekends I do even less. I sit on the couch all day, read, watch TV, talk on the phone and do some computer work. That amounts to a few hundred steps, going to the bathroom and getting up every hour for a snack.

All that ended a few weeks ago when my doctor told me my sugar levels were up. He said he was “concerned.”  If I didn’t knock down the count he was going to have to put me on meds. All of a sudden my entire life flashed in front of me. I had never taken exercise seriously. All that was for people who were vain. It finally occurred to me that there was a cause and effect in my sugar count. If I sat, the number would go up. If I walked the required number of steps a day (10,000 according to most exercise gurus), then my sugars levels would be normal. My physician, Dr. St Claire at Yaffee Rudin Associates, said exercise was far more important than what I was eating. That was the first time I heard that. I confirmed this with a friend of mine, Dr. Howard Stark, a well known gastroenterologist, in Washington D.C., who also informed me that 10,000 steps was necessary for cardiovascular health. If I wanted to lose weight, I should do 12,500 steps. That is the magic number to get rid of those extra pounds.

While all this seems like a simple solution, walking 10,000 or 12,500 footsteps a day is no easy task. In order to accomplish this, you need someone like a life coach reminding you constantly to get up and walk. I was telling my friend Steve Greenberg, the host of The Food Network’s new show, Invention Hunters, (you read about him in a prior post) about my dilemma. I’ve had a lot of pedometers and threw them all out because they were difficult to set and reset. I spent more time trying to reconfigure the pedometer than I did walking.

Steve surprised me with the Fitbit. It is not a pedometer. It is a device that could have only been developed in the digital world. Unlike all of its pedometer predecessors, the Fitbit is a wireless unit that is synched to the Fitbit website, www.fitbit.com  and measures your motion patterns to tell you the calories you’ve burned, steps taken, distance traveled, and sleep quality. The Fitbit uses a MEMS 3-axis accelerometer and a built-in MEMS altimeter that measures your vertical climb up stairs and hills.

What I really like is the automation. I don’t have to do a thing other than walk. The digital unit automatically restarts at midnight. Initially, you are required to register on the Fitbit website which asks some very basic questions. All you have to do after that, is remember to charge the Fitbit by attaching its USB connection to your computer every two weeks. When I get more ambitious, I will use the website to log my food, activity, weight and chat with other users, achieving the full digital experience. Now, when I want to see my results, I press the small lever on the outside of the Fitbit and I get a digital readout of steps taken, miles walked (or partial miles), calories burned, and steps climbed. The Fitbit can easily clip to slacks or can used with a wrist cuff.

Since I’ve been using the Fitbit I’ve been pressing that lever several times a day just to see if it is still working. As much as I am a part of the digital community, I still can’t believe that there is a (wireless) device that is such a miracle worker. I guess that is why I started this blog in the first place. We live in a world where there are so many advantages. If we had the opportunity to tell our parents and grandparents that we are living in a world where such automation and memory is the norm, they would shake their heads in astonishment.

Now that I am a big shot, armed with my little digital friend attached to me, I have to get off my butt and start walking. Maybe, someday there will be a machine that can do that for me as well. All I have to do is stay healthy enough to see it happen. Because it will!