More Fitbit: Charts for the Visual Person (like me!)

New Nikes for my birthday! 

I know I can't be the only person who sleeps with their iPhone or smartphone next to them, right?

So this morning as I was waking from a wonderful, long night's sleep (yesterday was extremely busy) I did what I always do--I checked my phone.  This is the part of the modern day's routine, right?  Email...Facebook...my little trivia game that I play...and now my Fitbit stats.

Since I was still laying down, the rotation of the images flipped, and I saw some charts in a whole new way.  They were more detailed.  Aha...

(These remind me of the IQ chart in Forrest Gump.)  Click on them to see the full-sized versions.

And, my favorite, calories burned (Sleeping burns around 400-500 calories.) :

This is how it looks on the computer:

Really not much different.

And, one more that I discovered today, looking at activity.  I entered Sunday morning's yoga wrong, so I deleted it:

I'm still trying to figure out what qualifies as a flight of stairs.  Our flight of stairs is only about 15 steps from top to bottom--sometimes it registers and sometimes it doesn't.  Yesterday I was lugging 5 loads of laundry back and forth, so I think that is what put me over the top.

I must say, that having these visual references is very helpful.  I'm a visual person and these charts (there are lots of different ones you can look at) really give a person an idea of where they are.  As a result, I'm already losing weight faster with the Fitbit because of all this information. Especially calories in vs. calories out.  My little bugaboo that I'm always looking at!

And, something else about the calories in vs. calories out.  Here is where I am right now, 9:40am, after 50 minutes of high intensity aerobics, and a smoothie with 2 bananas, 16 oz of almond milk, and a tbsp of flax seed:

Yikes! Right?  No...   Being in the "Hard" Food Plan, as I have chosen to do, puts me at a -1000 calorie deficit per day.  In other words, after I burn 1000 calories, anything else I burn are my calories to eat.  That is why the dial puts me over right now.  As I get moving with my day and burn more calories, it will start moving to the left.  Like I said yesterday, the goal is to stay in the green area, not to stay under and put your body in starvation mode.  Still, it is encouraging me to eat around 1800 calories a day based on my average activity.

Do what is right for you, but don't starve yourself, because then your body starts to burn the good stuff instead of the bad stuff.

And, in case you're curious, when I started out in the Kinda Hard Food Plan, that put me at -750 calorie deficit.  Based on those number, I'm assuming that the Medium is -500 and the Easy is -250.  Honestly, I don't feel deprived at all, and doing exercise really puts me ahead and makes the plan very doable.

Yesterday, by 4:30, I had already had 2 satisfying meals and was an hour away from dinner.  With some calculating I saw that dinner was still going to put me in the yellow.  I was in the yellow on Sunday and didn't want to do that 2 days in a row.  So I had a snack.  I wasn't hungry, but my body needed more calories.  This is not about deprivation.

OK, just more I wanted to share!  Really, all of these charts, graphs, etc are very user-friendly if you're "semi tech savvy."

Speaking of sharing, here's what the activity tracker on the Fitbit looks like after sweating for an hour:

I'd be curious if it goes any higher.  I've never had more than 9 leaves.  Right now I'm down to 7 because I've been sitting.  Time to start moving again.

UPDATE at 10:47am:

Now we're talkin'!!  But the dial will move left and right throughout the day.  Just stay out of the red!!