(Psst...Fitbit, Inc. Rocks)

(Don't tell anybody, but they gave me a new Fitbit for free because I have been so nice to them.)

(NB: This is not their usual policy. And I was totally prepared to buy a new one--I ordered it, appending a pitiful message about how much I missed it and needed it right away, and they e-mailed me a nice note that they had cancelled the order and were sending me one post-haste in return for valuable information about how I lost it and how I used it so that they could improve their product.)

(I just had to tell somebody how wonderful they are. I did ask them if they preferred me not to mention the replacement publicly--not that this blog is all that public--and I did not hear back. The ONLY time they have not been responsive. But I just have to say, don't expect free replacements in the event of loss...though if you do buy one you can expect a great product and sterling customer service!)

And BTW, the Fatbet is going swimmingly. For everybody but me, that is...I seemed to be stalled out at about minus three pounds. Still have some time though...

I seem to be bogged down in ellipses today...

Upcoming: I knocked off Goal 78 (Go clothes shopping with someone knowledgeable and come back with at least two good outfits) and exceeded my goal to an amazing extent. More on this later. ScottieDog keeps trying to take pictures of my new outfits, but we are really not good fashion photographers. For one thing, he's so tall and all the pictures he takes are from above which make me look like I'm about four feet tall and as wide. We'll get that figured out sooner or later...

... ...

BLEccchh!

"I'm so sorry, Grandmother!"

Week of utter disaster (in three parts).

1. Massachusetts discovers its inner idiot.

2. The Supreme Court issues the worst decision in the history of the court.

(I went to a lot of trouble to write the following for a post elsewhere, so I'm pasting it in various places.)

[getting up on my soapbox]

From the WSJ: "the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision supporting free political speech."

Here's the problem (aside from the issue of whether corporations are people): they keep conflating money with speech. Everybody already has free speech in this country. It isn't as though a corporation can't issue as many press releases as they want in support of whatever they want, or an individual can't get up on a soapbox in the town square or write a letter to the editor or sign a petition without fear of persecution.

What is at issue here is that money is not speech. It is power. Those who have more money have more power. If you conflate that with speech, then those who have more money have more free speech? What kind of democracy is that?

Speech will no longer be "free." You'll have to pay through the nose to keep up with what the corporations are doing.

AND...

3. I lost my Fitbit. I was babysitting the adorable Baby Jack (see above), and he kicked it out of my pocket, or kicked it loose enough to fall out when I went home, and I feel bereft and abandoned. We can't find it anywhere. I put in a Lost and Found inquiry to the MTA, but it takes ten days at least to find out anything. So I just bought a new Fitbit--I figured somebody somewhere could use the extra if it turned up--but that won't get here until the middle of February.

BUMMER.

But at least there's a sweet picture of Baby Jack.

In Love with my Fitbit!

Well, hey, everyone!

I have been super busy with holidays and packing on some poundage, but all to the good since I've just gone on another FatBet today!

I'm so pleased to be starting at exactly 140. That's counting the holiday poundage, but before that I was maintaining my last weight (after the last FatBet) pretty darn well. This time we have four people! $400 is on the line, and ten pounds is the goal. If I get to 130 I will be thrilled, since that's Goal 45.

But about my Fitbit...*sigh* It's the greatest. We are never apart! We even sleep together. I found out on the Fitbit community site that people are naming their trackers! Well, they're so cute--but somehow I'm not catching on; "Fitbit" seems like a good enough name to me.

Check out my sleep charts for today! I got a 100% efficiency on my nap!! I really zonked out. (You can't see the time in this shot, but it was 32 minutes.) My first 100%! And last night I got 90%. That's pretty good--usually I get in the low 80s. (Sorry about the low picture quality; I had to shoot the screen with my iPhone. I couldn't do a screen grab.)



Yesterday I got all 10,000 steps in and my activity score was up in the 800s (1000 is the goal). That was undoubtedly because I was babysitting Baby Jack!!! And I know you're dying to see a picture, so here you go:

(Well, okay, it's three pictures, but it's not like you can have too many.)



I got to feed him peas and rice cereal!! Every time I gave him the peas, he went "mmmmm!" God, I love being a grandmother.

Fitbit! Better than FatBet?

So far, the answer to that question would have to be yes. The FatBet was truly motivating, and I spent some quality time with my friends who were in it with me. I don't really miss the social interaction, because everybody wants to look at my Fitbit Tracker and ask me questions! There is also a function on the website interface where you can invite friends and compare scores. I'm going to see if I can goad some people into joining me there. It's so motivating, you don't really need to plunk down the money for a FatBet. You don't even necessarily have to buy a tracker (it's $99 plus shipping), you can enter your stats and food and activities.

But the tracker is SOOOO CUUUUTE. And so fun! I'm so glad mine finally shipped. And I'm glad that they refused to send it out until they had worked out all (or hopefully most) of the kinks.

You can see how little it is--just two inches long. They keep calling it "thumb-sized" but really it's smaller. At least smaller than my thumb, and my hands aren't that big.

Below is what the readout looks like. (Sorry it's fuzzy, but it's so tiny you have to get really close. I can however read the numbers without my glasses.) You press a little button and it shows you how many steps you've taken that day. (My goal is 10,000.) You press it again, and it shows how many miles you've gone. Another click and it shows the calories you've burned. One more click and you get a little blue flower that grows as you get closer to your goal! (Shoot, I should have taken a picture of that.)

A really cool feature of the tracker is that you can put it into sleep mode and wear it to bed. There's a silky-soft cuff that you put on, and it has a little pocket for the tracker. It records your movement during the night, and can give you a pretty good picture of how well (or not) you're sleeping. Last night I got a score of 89%. I'm not sure how good that is. I was awake from 3:00 to 4:00. This morning I checked the interface online and got a very interesting chart that showed my sleep pattern during the night.

I like the Fitbit interface too. Entering your food for the day is a lot easier than using the Weight Watchers interface! And it has all kinds of little charts that automatically generate and tell you how you're doing.

The Fitbit support people are superlative. I had a glitch downloading the software--just a strange fluke that they had never heard of before--but the support people responded very quickly, and I was up and running in no time. Yesterday I even complained to them about a grammatical error. Today I got an email saying, "Thank you for noticing this and we will contact the website administrator about it." :-) [UPDATE: They actually corrected the error!!! OMG.]

So we'll see how this goes...I'll be posting more about it as I follow the program. (And I lost a half a pound already.)