UP, UP, UP and away!

April 11th of this year I joined the "UP" community.  Since I had been tracking all my progress in a composition notebook (not using apps like 'My Fitness Pal' or 'Lose It!') I decided it was time I propelled my fitness life into the next century and get myself a fitness device.  Although in their infancy - there is something pretty dang cool about having the 'first' of anything. My guess is that these devices will be all the rage in the next couple years and I will be able to look back and say that I was able to try and test out one of the first ones.  I can imagine some nifty devices in the near future in this world. 

My experience with the UP band.  First and foremost, I am ALWAYS trying to beat my steps.  This is probably my favorite part about the UP band.  I always want to make sure I reach my steps goal and in the beginning - when setting up the band - I actually set my steps goal to 1,500 over the amount you should.  I would say on average I beat my steps goal about 1/2 the days of the week.

What I love most is the 'tid-bits' of the day.  Every day the UP app will give you 1-3 statistics about your progress.  It will tell you how you rate amongst other UP users and how you can improve your stats from the previous week.  My stats usually ALWAYS have to do with sleep deprivation considering my average sleep is far lower than anyone else I know (how I do as many work outs a week is beyond me); however, they give me useful URL's to look at on sleep deprivation and how this could contribute to gaining weight.  These stats also make you feel very good about yourself giving you information like your "Monday Move Recap" where you can see how far you've stepped -
mine was 77,011 steps in the last 7 days covering 37.7 miles!  They let me know I averaged 11,001 steps a day.  Things like this really tend to keep me motivated to move more, park in the farthest space in the parking lot and work harder to get my 'steps goal'.

One of the things I do not utilize the band for is food tracking.  It became difficult for me to go from one routine to another.  For me, if I am going to change to an app to track my food it has to be easy and clean cut.  I wouldn't say the UP band has a bad food tracker but it's not as easy as one would think.  There are a lot of components making it difficult to track everything but I do appreciate the URL scanner - this worked out in my favor quite often.  Now they say the UP band works directly with MyFitnessPal or LoseIt as well as other apps; however I have yet to try this out.

So yea - my favorite part of the UP band is most definitely the steps and sleep....it's been so interesting to have the stats on my fitness and health life.  I would say if you're interested in your own stats and choose to wear a bracelet everyday (albeit fashionable) and have a spare $120 - drop it on this bad boy and add me as a friend.  You can get mad at me for the SUPER lack of sleep like my good friend Jessica Perry does every day :).  I find it interesting that you become part of a little community of people that actually know what it is.  I get people in stores that go "oooh how do you like your UP band" and we strike up conversation.  I've actually met really cool people interested in the same sorts of things while "living UP"