Fitness, that is

I have a FitBit Blaze. I wanted it for my recovery process when I was first getting active after from my stroke. I wanted to be able to track my walks and activity and ensure that I was increasing my activity daily and weekly. It was the perfect tool for me while I was recovering.

Re-evaluating my relationship with my tracker

I purposely left my Blaze at home during our Oregon adventures. Turns out, I was still active even without my tracker on my arm – shocking, I know! But, I was totally bummed not knowing how many flights of stairs we went up and down and how many calories I burned during move-in day and how far my walks and hikes in Bend were. There was a part of me that thought that all that activity “just didn’t count” because I would never see it on my Fitbit dashboard.

Fitness Tracking 2.0

I started re-thinking how I use this tool for my health. I know it does more than track my steps, exercise and calories burned. So, I did a little reading on how to move beyond the basics of tracking X# of steps/day and my workout sessions.

VOILÀ!

Between this little bit of research and what I learned about myself from food journaling the past 6 weeks I set new goals for my health and fitness. These are the goals that will guide my days as we rocket towards winter and the holidays.

Fall/Winter Goals

• Get outside at least 3 times a week – hiking, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, snowboarding. This also means I need to be creative and flexible depending on how wet the weather is in town
• 3 indoor workouts/week – cross training and yoga
• Revamp my plant-based recipes for cooler months
• Use my Blaze to track my heart rate and work on cardio improvements
• Continue to journal

To support my new goals and motivation I updated my Blaze, phone and app. Once updated, I customized my exercises to what I actually do. I also finally figured out how to get the GPS to work so I can track my walks and hikes. I will track my heart rate and set goals related to that – I need to do a little more research on what those numbers mean.  It IS amazing what a tool can do for me if I learn how to use it properly!