Fitbit

7 Days Of Jervis Bay

4 Comments Posted on October 2, 2017October 1, 2017 by Snoskred

Day 1 – a group of tourists take a selfie on the beach while the dolphin boat heads out.

I have lived near Jervis Bay for over 10 years now. You would expect that the stunning effect would eventually wear off. I’m here to tell you, it does not. There are days when the beauty stops me in my tracks and I cannot help but stare.

Day 2 – swimmers are surprised by a pod of dolphins on their way to meet the Dolphin Boat.

There are days when I reach my “goal” of however many KM that I set myself, and decide to just keep going instead. However the past 2 days I have not been able to get to the bay due to a long weekend and I knew this would happen so I made sure to add on an extra 5km to my 10km walk on Friday. Traffic was bad on Friday. I got stuck at one notorious intersection for over 20 minutes.

Long weekends are great times to do a lot of work at home when you live in a holiday destination but you have to plan ahead, make sure you have everything you need well before the weekend, and choose your moments – and places – if you do need to get out and get something as a surprise. Between 5-8pm on Saturday and Sunday are generally good times to go places as long as you are not wanting to eat out in a restaurant.

Day 3 – The dolphin boats await their passengers.

I have been trying to get to the walking tracks at least 6 out of 7 days for the past 3 weeks. The weather has been excellent. I would actually prefer it to rain because we really need it. If it did rain, I would still go for my walk. Thunderstorms and lightning, not so much.

Day 4 – Kayakers head out into the bay.

Lately my photos have not been doing any justice to what I am seeing with my eyes. It might be time to replace this camera. Here you see 7 photos from my most recent 7 days at the bay. Most of the photos should enlarge if clicked on, except for day 6.

Day 5 – Rays of sunlight break through the clouds.

It is school holidays here. I don’t mind the extra people about. It is so lovely to see more people enjoying the bay. Everyone I pass says hello. I do mind them being endlessly inconsiderate of others walking the path – and alternately being completely unaware of anyone around them which means I tend to scare them when I walk or run past them – littering – and somewhat memorably last week someone set fire to the toilet paper in our public toilets.

Day 6 – I made a lizard friend.

I do think sometimes I could use a bike bell to let people know I am approaching, but I wonder exactly where I would put it. Both my wrists are spoken for – one with my fitness watch, the other with my camera cord. Maybe I should wear a bell around my neck, like a cat or dog.

Day 7 – Shark Net beach is usually very calm, perfect for swimming.

I also do mind when they cannot allow the beauty of the bay to distract them from their problems and issues. I overhear things. Who cares about work, you are not there right now, you are here in the bay, enjoy it!

Sure, none of the overheard things are “No Mummy, PLEASE, NOT the mineral water, Mummy!” which was our most remembered overheard snippet of conversation ever, in a supermarket in Adelaide and we have been laughing about that ever since. We have no idea what Mummy does with the mineral water but we have imagined many things. More than likely the child wanted Coca Cola instead.

What is your most remembered overheard snippet of conversation?

exercise, Fitbit, Jervis Bay

Challenge Me, Fitbit?

6 Comments Posted on May 2, 2016April 26, 2016 by Snoskred

Recently Fitbit did an update and added a new box to the dashboard. The concept of this box is to try and get 250 steps an hour. I thought this was a great goal for me!

You can customise this to suit yourself, as well. I especially like it at night time as a reminder to get up and move because once I have done my exercise for the day and made dinner I can often “forget” to do anything more. I customised mine to involve 12 hours a day, and I set alarms for 45 minutes past the hour. When that alarm goes off, I get up!

250 steps is around 200 metres on my treadmill. This takes me about 2-3 minutes.

Fitbit

The Five Week Challenge – Week 2

4 Comments Posted on April 27, 2016April 25, 2016 by Snoskred

Another fitness week! This is more for my own records and to put all of this together in one place, so you can feel free to just skip past this post.

Friday April 15th –

Todays workout was in two parts and was different to the normal. I did 1k treadmill, 10 mins elliptical, 1k treadmill, 10 mins elliptical, then 1k treadmill. There were also some floor exercises for abs. YAY. Above is part 1.

This is my personal best for a 1km since getting back into exercising. 8:06 – sorry my treadmill quite uncooperative, with the photography! Above you see todays first km..

And here is part 2. 552 calories burned total.

Saturday April 16th –

Todays 6.5km walk brought to you by the Volkswagen Polo, plus Psycho Killer by Talking Heads which was the last song that played in the car before we got out, and thus, played in my head the entire 77 or so minutes.

Plus, I took a couple of pics, for you. Cloudy day, warm-ish, excellent for walking. YAY CLOUDS!

Sunday April 17th –

Todays workout brought to you by The Village People, specifically U can’t stop the music – Queen, specifically Don’t stop me now – plus my chicken Rosie who decided this music meant she should make a run for it into an offlimits area! This was a super tough workout involving circuits between the elliptical and the treadmill.

Monday April 18th –

Todays “rest day” slow walk brought to you by episodes 18 and 19 of The Good Wife which I am hate watching now, and Skye from Tinykittens, I am watching and waiting for her kittens to arrive. I got on again for another 16 minutes later, just to get some extra steps in and watch the last of episode 19.

Tuesday April 19th –

I don’t know why my iPhone hates me. Every time I think I will walk a little slower, it plays yet another tune of awesomeness that makes me speed up or even run. And today it made me have a personal best ever time! 7.45 for the first 1k, and then this great time for the 5k.

Wednesday April 20th –

Todays workout brought to you by umpteen annoying boy children at the pool, plus 5 annoying girls. I set a goal of burning 800 calories aqua jogging, and I very nearly did a u-turn in the carpark when I saw this busload of boy children being lectured by one of the adults. But then I thought, piffle, ain’t gonna let no noisy kids stand in the way of my exercise! :) YAY WINNING. There is two tracks – the above one for the jogging and one to follow for the cool down —

Thursday April 21st –

Todays workout brought to you by new water shoes! Yay 713 calories burned total. I’m showing you a different screen today.

Another highly active week. Weigh in at the end of this week was 83.2.

Week 1 is here.

2016 Goal, exercise, Fitbit

The Five Week Challenge – Week 1

6 Comments Posted on April 20, 2016April 18, 2016 by Snoskred

I’m involved with a fitness group on Facebook – long story best told another time. Recently the gauntlet was thrown down for a five week challenge – a freeform, choose your own challenge type of deal. After consulting my doctor, I picked –

500 calories burned or 5km walked

I thought I would do a weekly check in here on the blog, though we’re in week two of the challenge already now. So here are the things I did in week one, along with my comments! :)

Friday April 8th –

Tomorrow is already tomorrow, in Australia! Todays 5km on the treadmill. I will usually take a shot of the treadmill, or a screenshot of the Cardio Spark stuff from the pool, but I had done this before I knew about the challenge. Time was 52:54 – the extra time is water breaks while I pause the treadmill. I can’t drink and walk, lol. Todays walk was an interpretative dance set to episode 11 of Billions.

Saturday April 9th –

Here is my today walk. This is the first time we’ve been out to walk at Husky/Vincentia since February or so, was so nice! I SEEN dolphins, a beach mouse, beach birds, cyclists, children eating cheesecake, and a skateboarder gondolier!

Sunday April 10th –

Today’s “rest day” was brought to you by the season premiere of Deadliest Catch. As I wanted to go a bit slower for the rest day, I did some testing of my treadmill and discovered that the numbers do relate to km/hr. EG 4km/hr = 4.0, 5km/hr=5.0, 6km/hr=6.0

Monday April 11th –

Todays workout brought to you by Wahlburgers, TICDA and Sephyroth sending me a message that said “6k 59:55” plus, too legit to quit.

Tuesday April 12th –

Todays workout brought to you by – ep12 of Billions which is a show you should be watching if you are not already – Nutri Ninja which made a most awesome post workout shake YAY – and you all here, who make me want to push myself and documentation accordingly!

Wednesday April 13th –

Todays workout brought to you by – Deadliest Catch s12ep3 – Neelix over at Tinykittens who birthed some kittens today yay! – and the letter E, for exhausted. I really pushed – possibly slightly too far today. Tomorrow – Aqua Aerobics and I plan to burn 600 calories in the pool to allow for a slightly calorific dinner tomorrow.

Thursday April 14th –

Above you see the Cardio Spark track for Aqua Aerobics.

Above you see the Cardio Spark track for Aqua jogging. What I was doing was, running up and back the pool (50M total length of running) to get my heart rate up to 160 or so, then walking to cool it back down, then running again, etc.

Above you see the Cardio Spark tracks once Fitbit pulls them into itself. There was also a warmup while I waited for Aqua class to start, I burned 50 calories there, YAY.

Todays work out brought to you by swimming through a flabby armed spanking machine AKA Aqua Aerobics, school holidays where the kids have forgotten the pool exists THANK YOU JEEBUS, and Honey and Mustard Chicken which I wanted to make sure I had burned those calories before I even cook it, lol. 812 calories burned!

At the end of the week, we got a Fitbit Aria scale, and it gave me a number I had not seen thus far. 84kg. That is 11.2 lost since 1 January. Happy moments!

See you next week, for week 2! ;)

exercise, Fitbit

Fitbit – Part One

8 Comments Posted on January 29, 2016January 28, 2016 by Snoskred

Remember earlier this year when I posted about my main goal for 2016? I said I would write about the Fitbit once I had it a little longer. Today it is exactly one month since I got this nifty device and I am loving it.

There are a lot of different aspects to the Fitbit, so I am not even going to try and cover them all in the one post. I’ll start off by telling you a little bit about what the Fitbit is, then I will talk about some of the ways that the Fitbit has inspired me to get moving again, and then tell you what I love and do not love about it.

What Is Fitbit?

Fitbit is an activity tracking device. You wear it on your wrist. Depending on which model you choose, it can track other things as well. I wanted to keep an eye on my heart rate especially when exercising, so I chose the Fitbit Charge HR. It cost $124 to purchase in the Boxing Day sales.

Fitbit reports the data it gathers back to your smartphone and/or your computer. You have a dashboard, which contains many different fields, and you can move the fields around to get it looking how you want.

The wrist device itself has a very small LED display which you can tap to switch between the time, steps so far, heart rate, KMs for the day, and calories burned. You can set it so that a flick of your wrist shows you the current time. I deeply love that feature!

Fitbit Makes Me –

Park that bit further away.

When you know you have a daily goal of 10,000 steps, you begin to find opportunities to add them in to your day. There is this local meat place which has a carpark of evilness, so now I park in a street away from the carpark and walk there instead. I discovered that I MUCH prefer this to driving in and trying to find a park and negotiating every other person in the tiny and badly designed carpark.

Get on the treadmill.

I’ve had this treadmill sitting here next to me for over a year now. There were times when I was very disciplined and would get on it every day, and there were times when I ignored it totally. Now I am on it most days, even if only for 15 minutes to get those last few missing steps.

Get out and about.

I’d much rather walk out at Huskisson and Vincentia than on the treadmill. Since the start of 2016, I have managed to get down there on average twice a week, sometimes 3-4 times.

Be Less Rigid

In 2015, I would only get on the treadmill first thing in the morning, before my shower. This meant if I did not feel like exercise then, it would get skipped. Now, with Fitbit, I have all day to get my steps in. If I do not feel like it first thing in the morning, I’ll take a shower, do what I feel like, and get on the treadmill in the afternoon, then take a second shower if I need it. I’ve even exercised as late as 9:30 or 10pm, if I needed more steps.

What I Love About Fitbit –

Convenience –

It is so simple! Wearing this one item on my wrist gives me SO much information about myself and my health, from heart rate at different times of the day right up to how well I slept.

Reminder –

Fitbit is there on my wrist 24/7 reminding me to make better choices – whether it be move more or eat less.

Tap To Know –

Three quick taps at any time of day gets me my current heart rate. This is useful mid-treadmill when I want to see if I am pushing too hard.

Great Workout Tracking

Look at all the info Fitbit collected on my walk today!

Above is heart rate and which zones you are in during your work out. The very low dips – the first one is where I stretch after doing my slow warm up 2 mins, then there are 2 drink breaks in there.

Above shows calorie burn, and the impact of his exercise on my day.

Resting Heart Rate

Fitbit tracks my resting heart rate. You can see it has dropped significantly since I started my journey to fitness on 29 December. You can also see it went back up a little – I had a cold which I was fighting at that time.

What I Don’t Love About Fitbit –

Fitbit Can’t Go Swimming

I have always loved the pool – swimming and aqua aerobics are my first two choices of exercise, even above walking and kayaking. However Fitbit is unable to join me there – which means all the information I rely on when I exercise, like heart rate and calories burned is also unavailable to me.

Fitbit Needs Regular Cleaning

Not that cleaning is a problem for this germophobe, but whenever I do it clean it – usually once a day, twice if necessary – I worry that I might accidentally murder it. Fitbit is splash proof but not water proof.

Fitbit Needs To Be Placed Correctly

In order to measure your heart rate, Fitbit has to be in the right place. Sometimes I have had trouble putting it in the right place or I have bumped it slightly and there goes my heart rate measurements, sometimes for hours because I did not know it wasn’t measuring it. I wish it would beep or flash when it wasn’t picking up my heart rate so I could adjust it.

Fitbit Took Some Getting Used To

I found sleeping with it on extremely weird to begin with. However, I stuck with it and I got used to it, and I consider the data gained VERY useful – I’ll talk more about the data in another post.

Overall –

I love my Fitbit, and I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to get moving. Just remember what I said about lessons learned in my Main Goal post.

exercise, Fitbit, health, Making Choices

500 calories burned *or* 5km walked