Rural Routes – Struck down by Fitbit

By Christalee Froese

While my Mother’s Day gift was exactly what I wanted, I’ve now changed my mind.
One week after getting a ‘Fitbit’ to track my exercise and eating, I’m thinking I’d like a box of chocolates instead.
It seemed like the perfect present at the time. How could you possibly go wrong with an ingenious little device that not only tracks number of steps per day, but also instantaneously tabulates your minutes of sleep per night, your heart rate every second and your food intake per meal.
I thought counting calories would be an excellent idea for me. After all, I was pretty sure I was burning more than I was eating, until that nasty little Fitbit came along.
Fitting comfortably on my wrist, I quickly grew accustomed to my constant companion who told me how much water I drank, how many steps I climbed and how fast I had completed my 5K run.
The only problem with the Fitbit was what it was telling me.
On day one I came out 751 calories in the red.
‘I must not have set the ingenious little gadget correctly?’ I immediately thought.
On day two, I came out 542 calories over the recommended daily intake.
‘This thing can’t be right,’ I said to myself while shaking the Fitbit violently.
I rebooted and reset, only to discover that on day three, I was 612 calories over my daily limit.
‘This is an evil device and I want it out of my house,’ my inner voice screamed after reading day three’s comprehensive series of facts, figures and charts that showed I had eaten 50 per cent more fat than I needed.
While I thought the Fitbit would reinforce my sincere belief that I was relatively healthy, all it did was burst my ‘bacon-is-a-protein’ bubble!
I liked being in denial about what I ate, how much of it I consumed and how much fat it was slathered in. I liked considering poppyseed cake a grain, cream cheese a protein and whipping cream a nice light sauce. I had myself fully convinced that if I followed a pound of bacon with a steaming cup of tea and lemon that the fat would be melted by the heat and the calories would be cleansed away by the lemon.
I also had myself convinced that I could eat anything I wanted, as long as it was followed by a run (or a cup of lemon tea). I was pretty sure that a 20-minute jog fully negated all effects of a slab of lasagna, a can of coke and the head of a chocolate Easter bunny. I also thought 20 sit-ups followed by 20 push-ups was enough to counteract all the effects of a large bag of Zesty Cheese Doritos (only 1,323 calories and 75 grams of fat according to Fitbrat).
This new fandangled Fitbit is destroying all of my healthy living fantasies, as well as my self-esteem. Just yesterday it told me that the 806 calories I consumed in the form of my own birthday cake would take 14 kilometres of jogging to burn or approximately 15,122 steps!
In response to my Fitbit’s outrageous calculations I say, ‘get yourself back to the store before I change your name to Fitbrat and beat you with a baguette (slathered in real butter – that’s 403 calories or 7,561 steps)!’
I really thought I wanted a Fitbit.
I’ve changed my mind!
Email Christalee Froese at Lcfroese@sasktel.net or visit 21days2joy.wordpress.com.

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