My latest obsession: the UP24 band

It’s no secret that I’m a foot solider in this beautiful city of San Francisco. I walk to work. I walk to the gym. I walk everywhere. A couple of weeks ago I decided to calculate the distance I walked in one week, and it was more than a marathon (that’s right, 27.5 miles in one week just going to the gym and to work). Well, since then, I’ve taken things one step further to get a realistic measurement of all my movement each day.

But first, here’s how it all came about …

Last Monday was my “halfy birthday,” which is a special day that only Dave and my Mom celebrate with me, marking the six-month point until my next birthday. As a child, because I had a birthday just two days before Christmas, my parents let me have a mid-summer celebration so I had something to look forward to and could space out my holidays.

The first time my halfy birthday came around when Dave and I were dating cemented what I already knew: he was totally the one for me. We had only been together for about five months, and when I went to his place after work, he had made a funfetti cake and put up a birthday banner. The tradition of him doing a little something on that day has continued.

This year, not only did I come home from a 12-hour day of work to find a delicious Whole Foods dinner of cedar-plank salmon, mixed nut and kale salad and two mini carrot cake and cheesecake treats. But I also received an awesome and useful gift –the Jawbone UP24 band.

I’ve been wearing the UP band for a full week. I keep it on all day long, throughout my workouts and even when I sleep. The only time I remove it is when I shower, because it’s only water resistant. And it matches well with my work outfits, since I wear all black while training at Equinox.

The band only needs to charge once a week, and you do that by plugging it into a USB adapter, which connects to your computer.

Now to the best part: All of the tracking is done on your iPhone via the UP app. The app sends you updates when you reach certain milestones and keeps real-time stats on your activity.

On the left in purple, is how I did to meet my goal of sleeping seven hours-a-night. On the right in orange, is how I did to meet my goal of walking 10,000 steps-a-day.

You can also log your food intake and note how you’re feeling in the UP app, but I haven’t dug into those features yet.

Because I walk everywhere, my job is very physical, and I work out a lot, I have no problem reaching the recommended 10,000 steps/5 mile mark per day. In fact, I’ve nearly doubled it at times. One day I walked more than eight miles. It’s so fun to track, and I’ve officially become obsessed with my new toy.

If you’re concerned about being sedentary, you should really consider wearing a tracker like this because it’s very motivating. You can set it to send you an alert if you’ve been inactive for too long, which could be a good reminder to get up from your desk or the couch and walk around a bit. I know I’m only scratching the surface of the functionality too, so I hope to start tracking even more details soon.

Now it’s time to go log some steps.

Questions of the day

Do you wear an activity tracker? If so, which one?

How much do you think you walk in a day? Have you heard of the halfy birthday?