My Fitbit Flex Experience! Wait, Fitbit What?

New year, new goals of course! I don't know why, but suddenly I'm obsessed with fitness. Yes, I'm all into squats, lunges and burpees. So 'to be more active' is my cliché goal for 2014.

Squat for the ass you’ve always wanted!

Squats

Lunges

Burpees

Training and working out is a bit rare in my family. So my parents are definitely supporting me. They gave me a perfect Christmas present, namely the Fitbit Flex! My new favourite gadget. 

The Fitbit What? I’ll explain:

Fitbit’s Flex is a great fitness tracker, an all-in-one activity monitor , which contains of two parts:

• The Flex itself - a small rectangular device that can be charged using the USB dock
• A rubber wristband that can monitor your daily activity.
• Also included is a dongle which allows users to sync Flex –wirelessly- with their computer.

It is entirely water resistant.  Flex’s wristband is available in different colors: black, blue, green and pink. I have the black one because it has to match to my clothes, right girls? 

The product pack includes two different band sizes – a large and small one.

Your activity can be viewed in detail using either Fitbit’s Web dashboard or its application. The app is available in the app store and Google Play. They both - dashboard and app - offer in-depth information, textually or graphically.  

Burn calories, burn!!!

Over the course of the day, Flex can track and record 

• the amount of steps someone takes
• the total distance traveled
• the number of “active minutes"
• the calories burned.

Your Fitbit account will be updated the next time Flex connects through either the wireless dongle or its application.

You can also use Flex to record your food and water intake, your weight and your sleep. You can even start an individualized “food plan”. But I’ll pass this one, I love food too much to start a food plan.

You can check your goals by simply tapping the wristband twice: five white LED lights will flash, indicating the percentage of your daily goal that’s so far been achieved – the dots representing 20 percent increments. This is awesome because you can check on your progress without having to launch the app.

  

My Experience

The device is my constant companion, my new best friend for about a month now. I feel informed about my activity levels and I’m very motivated to get moving and achieving my goals. It is fun because you can set daily goals for each aspect. The default goals which Fitbit offers are 10,000 steps, five miles, 2,852 calories, and 30 active minutes. You had to see my face when I had more then 10 000 steps a day for the first time!  

I find myself frequently tapping, just to see the pretty glowing dots appear and get an update. That simple action kept me more motivated to increase my activity, without even needing to open the app. So you can say that Flex has encouraged me to be (even) more active. 

Another reason why Fitbit keeps me motivated, is because you can earn badges! And now we are talking about marketing. Integrating the gamification aspect makes it more popular. We all, especially Gen Y, want to be the very best in everything. 

Even Pokémon said it: "I will be the very best, like no one ever was. Gotta catch 'em all! Every challenge along the way". 

Unlocking badges gives us the great feeling of success. By connecting your Facebook account and finding other Fitbit users (which is possible), you can compete with your friends. The company knew that integrating this feature, would be a clever thing to do. Because why do you think Foursquare or Nike+ are such popular apps? We want to compete and succeed, we want to be harder, better, faster, stronger! What we want, is INSTANT GRATIFICATION! And that is the main principle. 

Fitbit understands... 

It’s non-intrusive and easy to use. The battery life is good. I just have to charge my tracker once a week, which is great.

If I had one complaint, it is that the wrist band is difficult to fasten! 

SO I'M VERY GLAD I HAVE A FITBIT FLEX! Even going to my school, Ehsal - Digital Marketing in Brussels, is fun now cause every step counts! 

What do you think about these and other fitness trackers?

Source: appadvice: Take control of your lifestyle with the wearable fitbit flex

Author 
Brett Dufort - Application Inspiration
Student Digital Marketing at Ehsal Management school - ehsaldmc

• be.linkedin.com/in/brettdufort/