Being a slave to the Fitbit - and an explanation of what it is for those who've never heard of it.

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It's funny that something can become an important part of your life yet a large part of the population have no idea what it is. Think about MyLot for example; how many of us spend every spare moment on here but our friends and family have no idea what we're doing. Similar to that is the Fitbit. If you've got one, then it's on your mind (and on your wrist) all the time. Many of my colleagues have them and we talk about them a lot but in the so-called 'real world' they are still quite a minority gadget. I wrote yesterday that my Fitbit had told me I'd walked the distance of the London Underground in the 10 weeks since I got it and a couple of people commented that they didn't know what a Fitbit was. So I thought I'd better explain. At its simplest the Fitbit is a step counter but it soon becomes a lot more. There are several different versions and mine is the Fitbit Charger - not the cheapest but far from the most expensive. Some are designed to hang - though I'm not clear what they should hang from - but most are worn on the wrist. The most basic wrist worn ones just count steps whilst mine also tells the time. This was a key issue for me. I didn't want to have to wear a Fitbit and a watch. Mine counts steps and converts them into distance, counts how many floors of stairs I climb, tells me how many calories I've burned and tracks my sleep. It syncs to my Kindle Fire but you can equally set them up to sync to a lot of phones or your laptop. You do need to have some kind of device to sync it to as the wrist monitor only tells you about the current day. Once you've got one of these you'll soon find it becomes a bit of an obsession. You start parking at the far side of the car park to get in a few extra steps, you take the stairs all the time and you find creative ways to take the long route. When I get home in the evening my husband wants to know how many steps I've got and - if as usual I'm not at the target 10000 - we go straight out and walk around the village until the Fitbit buzzes to tell me I've reached the target. 10000 steps for a person with my stride length should be almost exactly 5 miles although Fitbit assumes my stride is slightly shorter than it is so it under reports. It should be possible to fix it but so far I've not worked out how. In the past on a day when I was working from home, it was not unusual for me to go through a whole day and not even leave the house. These days I make at least half the target pretty much every day and 3-4 days a week I beat it. On our holidays we beat it nearly ever day. You can track calories on the app but that's a very time consuming business and I've not done it so far though people who do swear by it. Mine cost just short of £70 from Amazon but I got a great deal on it. Normally they are more. You can get the basic Fitbit flex for around £45 to £50 depending on the colours you choose. If you are a person who is motivated by targets and needs a kick to get out and move more, the Fitbit is fantastic but of course its results are only as good as your determination.