October 2016: My first month with Fitbit

I have now had my Fitbit Flex for a month and am going into my 5th week of fitness tracking.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm in a team doing a step challenge at work so this has given me the incentive to move more and try to achieve that elusive 10,000 steps per day.

What I learned from my first 4 weeks is that I only went over 10,000 steps on 7 days out of the past month.  But on those days I've hit 15,000, or 13,000, or 11,000, whilst most other days I'm usually over 8,000 or 9,000 steps.  So there is still some room for improvement during the final week of the step challenge.  Let's not mention Sundays, shall we?  I'm trying to turn Sunday into a proper day of rest, which it never used to be, so walking and exercise isn't really on the agenda and that has been evidenced in my Sunday step totals.

I have embraced the Fitbit trend though and always look forward to finding out my daily step totals. The sleep log has also proved what I've known for a long time - I'm not getting enough sleep, and the quality of it is not good enough.  That is another area of my life which I need to sort out.  

I have also discovered Fitbit fashion....I initially bought a Fitbit with a black wristband as I thought this would match most of my clothes.  But then I discovered that you could buy replacement bands (below) so it means that I could colour co-ordinate which is quite good fun.

I have since discovered there are lots of different patterned replacement bands around, so I'm sure there will be more of them joining my collection :)

But enough about the looks - what about the results?

Since October started, my main focus has been on building up my general fitness and mobility.  Over the summer, I had no energy to walk anywhere and my mobility was shot to pieces.  During October, when I started moving more - with the added incentive of not wanting to let the team down - I now have more energy, and when recently faced with one of those crucial fitness tests, running for a train, I was actually able to do this, and wasn't too out of breath, whereas a couple of months ago I was in a similar situation and could hardly walk, never mind run!

I knew that October would not be a good month to attempt to lose weight.  I had more social events in one month than I've had all year - and although I'm moving away from the disordered eating of the past few months, I haven't really made good choices this month when it comes to healthy eating.

November is 2 days away, and it is mainly a "blank page".  So my goal for the coming month is to build up my fitness, increase my daily steps, and finally restart exercising the way I used to.  Again I will not be weighing myself but will focus on losing inches.

Progress report to follow 4 weeks from today!