May The (FitBit) Force Be With You

(This is not paid or sponsored by any of the brands represented. All opinions are my own.)

Just like everyone else and their mother, I've been wanting an activity monitor for quite some time now. I've worked out 3-4 times/week for quite some time now (not counting the past 2 months) and I've always wondered what exactly am I doing for myself. How far am I running? How fast do I get there? How many calories do I burn? Etc...

Plus, I wanted to feel like the rest of the cool kids and be able to post pics of my workouts on Instagram.

Since I never felt like forking up the money on myself, I decided Christmas was the perfect time to ask for it and lets just say Beau came through in the clutch.

At first, I wanted the Nike Fuelband A) because I love anything Nike and B) for the simple fact that it synced to my iPhone. There are also quite a few color options, which is always nice. It tracks steps, the intensity of your workout and time. Fair enough.What more could you want? Right?

Then I noticed a few of my girlfriends had the Polar Monitor, as does everyone else on Instagram these days, so then, I thought that was the one I wanted. I liked that it tracked heart rate, distance and calories burned. Ahhh...calories! Yes! But...you have to wear this weird strap thing around your torso for it to track everything and I wanted something that was comfortable enough for me to wear all day long, not just when I was working out.

I just felt like I needed something more.

Thennnn I really started to do some research...why do I need distance? I'm not a runner. Sure...I run. But I would never in a million years consider myself to be a runner. I don't care how far I run. Or how fast I get there. I simply run because I know I need to get my heart rate up before I do strength training. It's not that I hate running, I just don't enjoy it. Give me a set of free weights, a yoga mat and a bench and I'm happier than a bird with a french fry.

To give you an example of my routine workouts...I do 10-15 minutes of high intensity cardio (usually running from my house to my gym) followed by circuit strength training and an ab workout. I usually do arms/abs one day followed by legs/butt/abs the next and then repeat, working in some dual exercises that workout my core, back and shoulders, too. I try to fit in anywhere from 6-8 different workouts for arms/legs, and do anywhere from 300-600 different ab exercises.

An example legs/butt day looks like: leg press, calf raises, leg extension, leg curls, lunges (forward and backward), squats, bench step ups. Repeat 3 times, doing 100-150 different crunches in between each round. Sometimes I throw in parts of the Brazilian Booty Lift for good measure and because it hurts. so. good.

Once I realized I didn't really care about how far I was running before each workout, though it was kind of nice "to know", I knew the main thing I was looking for in an activity monitor was calories burned.

It was then that I found the FitBit Force: a small black band that tracks all your activity all day long...without being an awkward band you wear under your bra...or wherever that thing goes.

Let's make this simple. The FitBit Force tracks:

• Calories burned 
• Steps 
• Distance
• Active minutes
• Flights of stairs climbed
• Time

And with the corresponding iPhone app, it tracks:

• Calories consumption (food log)
• Sleep (time awake, time restless)
• Pounds to go to meet your goal weight (that you set)
• Water consumption

Yep. There's all my business. Right up there.

Oh! And since it has a display screen, unlike the FitBit Flex (though the Flex is awesome, too), it's also a watch. I've needed a workout watch for quite some time now so there's that, too.

But wait! There's more.

There's an entire FitBit website, the tracks everything for you also, emails you a weekly update of your progress and lets you connect with friends who have FitBits, too!

Ok and if you're not sold yet...it even has a silent alarm. Yes. You set the alarm on your phone, and when it's time for it to go off, rather than annoying the crap out of your significant other at 5am every morning (#guilty), it vibrates on your arm without making a noise.

Ok fine. One more thing. There's this scale. And it recognizes your feet from the first time you step foot on it (pun intended) and automatically logs your current weight and body fat percentage to your FitBit profile. So it's a weight loss (or gain?) tracker. Perhaps I'm easily amazed but I've never been so in love with a stinkin' scale.

Or activity tracker.

Don't get me wrong...I have absolutely nothing against the Fuelband or the Polar monitors, they just don't track what I need them to track and I honestly feel like the FitBit Force is a combination of all the activity monitors combined. It tracks everything. And then some...

Do you wear an activity monitor? Which one do you have?!