Shaping up

closeHey, just so you know ... this post is now about 15 years and 5 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

Ever since getting the Wii Fit back in May and having the balance board pronounce me “overweight” I’ve been more focused on my personal fitness: I’ve been watching what I eat, eating less, and exercising more.

When my eyes were opened by the Wii balance board, my BMI was 26 and I weighed 200lbs. Earlier this month, after working hard for the past 5 months, I finally got my BMI back into the “normal” range (below 25), am down to about 182lbs and am still working on losing more. If nothing else, Wii Fit has given me an easy, fun way to track my daily exercise and keep me motivated. I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve wanted to eat something and then thought “man, the Wii is going to yell at me if I do this.” 😉

Yesterday I placed a pre-order for the $99 Fitbit that is coming out in the late-December/early-January timeframe. I had heard Leo Laporte and Jason Calacanis discussing this new company on a recent episode of TWiT and seemed to vaguely remember hearing/reading about it shortly after the company announced its product at the TechCrunch50 conference earlier in September. I have a thing for gadgets, and since the Wii Fit started me on this path of weight loss and general fitness (and has kept my interest so far) I figured this little gadget might help keep me going.

It’s basically a souped up pedometer that you can wear unobtrusively on your person. It tracks your steps and calculates how far you’ve walked and how many calories you’ve burned … nothing new there. Here’re the cool parts. You can also wear it at night and it will track your sleeping habits: when you fall asleep, how long you stay in deep sleep, how often you wake up, etc. It’s also wireless so you can sync the data it collects back to your PC (and from there to your account on the Fitbit website), and has a rechargeable battery which you charge via the included docking station.

Sounds cool, right? I can’t wait to try it out, but until it arrives early next year I’ll have to stick with my Wii Fit/Dance Dance Revolution exercise plan. 🙂

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