Why You Should Wear a Fitbit Zip

Most people are in agreement that exercise is good for us.  However, the amount of exercise required for optimal health is still being debated.

Most of us have probably also heard that "you can't out exercise your diet" and for the most part this is true.  We can only exercise just so much in one day, yet we can eat and have access to virtually unlimited amounts of food.

Although I am not citing them here, there have been numerous studies and anecdotal reports of people consistently exercising and not losing any weight.  You could say there are two primary reasons why these people are not losing weight.

1) Either they are eating too much food, knowingly or unknowingly (see estimating calories) or 2) they are lacking non-programmed movement throughout their days or the third and most likely possibility is a combination of both.

It is completely possible for an individual to exercise every day and not lose weight, even when eating the correctly prescribed amount of food.  This is not due to a defect in his/her metabolism, rather it more than likely reflects the total accumulation (or lack thereof) of physical activity or movement throughout one's day.

So many of our jobs today require us to sit for the vast majority of our days.  Even if you exercise for an hour of your day, you are still sitting or lying down the other 23 hours of the day.

Health professionals have hyperbolized that "sitting is the new smoking" and there is some evidence for this claim.  I would, however, caution against fully accepting this comparison because these days, everything is the "new smoking" but I digress.

The point is that we do spend far too much of our days sitting (just like me while I am writing this).  To help monitor and track the amount of time we spend sitting I recommend wearing a Fitbit Zip.  I have created a video (shown below) that outlines some of the key features of the Fitbit Zip, why I recommend using one, and how to set up the Fitbit and make use of the data it provides you.

On any given day, you really have absolutely no idea how active or sedentary you were (trust me, I know).  If you're not losing weight and really want to, you may want to blame your lack of weight loss on a slow metabolism, exercise making you hungry, or a variety of other factors.  That is more than okay to do, provided you know 1) exactly how much you are eating and 2) exactly how much you are moving, whether it be programmed exercise (i.e. going to the gym) and/or physical activity/movement (i.e. taking the stairs) during the day.

The Fitbit isn't perfect.  It doesn't always pick up on every type of movement or activity.  I may lift weights or perform upper body exercises where I don't receive "step credit" on my Fitbit.  However, it does give me a general idea of how much I moved throughout the day and that's valuable information.

In science, we control every variable except for one and we see how that one variable changes.  I want to help you control every variable but one and see how it changes.  Whether this one variable is your weight or your health, the Fitbit Zip helps us to control all the variables.  Get your Fitbit Zip today and see how it changes your variable of choice!