One of the questions I get asked a lot when discussing my fitness routine is a question of motivation. People want to know how it is I get up early five days a week to go to the gym and not give in to the urge to go back to sleep. I think they’re expecting some very elaborate answer, so I often get a blank stare when I reply with “I owe a lot to Chip.” At that point I have to explain that Chip is the name I gave my FitBit One fitness tracker. I ended up giving it a name because anything that can get me off the couch and keep me on a regular exercise schedule deserves respect . . . and a name.
So Chip is a pretty amazing piece of technology. It tracks steps, mileage, flights of stairs, calories burned, and will even record your sleep patterns. You can set your own goals for how many steps and/or flights of stairs you want to take on any given day, and it is all tracked on your FitBit web account. This makes tracking exercise ridiculously easy, and when it’s easy, I’m more likely to keep going.
But it’s more than just convenience. Chip plays on my obsessive streak. Just two days after purchasing Chip my internal dialogue started saying things like “You did three miles yesterday. I’ll bet you can do four today!” or “You’ve got nine flights of stairs in, you might as well make it ten!” or “You’ve got less than 500 steps to reach your daily 10K goal. Why don’t you get up and walk around the living room for those last 500?” I can never quite let it go when I’m THAT close to reaching my goal, or close to breaking a past daily step record. I have to reach that goal or it kind of drives me nuts.
Of course Chip is not my only source of motivation. There’s the joy of getting into smaller size clothing or that feeling of accomplishment I get when I’ve run a faster mile, but on a lot of days it really is Chip that drives me forward. Seeing those numbers on a daily basis inspires me to challenge myself and do better.
(If you want to know more about the FitBit, visit their website here.)
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