One week with a Jawbone Up

Initially I'd written a number of posts set to auto publish one after another to chronicle some aspects of this last week. Now I'm changing that plan a up a bit. I'm still going to post all of the goods, I'm just going to throw them all into this one uber long post instead of six individual ones.

So just what the hell is all of this about? It's about my one week living with a Jawbone Up.



Day 0 - Monday, 3/18
This afternoon I bought a Jawbone Up. I've been thinking about for a couple of months. Before Further Confusion this year I tried to buy an Up at Best Buy to better track my activity during the convention for...you know, Science(tm) but failed at that, they didn't have one in my size in the color I wanted. If I'm gonna drop a bill and a half I'm gonna get it in the color I want!

So now I'm the owner/wearer of a black JawBone Up.

At least until Monday next Tuesday, when all of this publishes automagically, I'll be tracking the fun things Jawbone claims it can track along with some notes about wearing it if I have any.

Day 1 - Tuesday, 3/19
This week is all about collecting baseline data and I can already see that being a frustrating thing; I desperately want to walk a mile or three to show I'm super awesome badass. Having this silly thing wrapped around my wrist and plugging data into the Up app tends to make you feel like you've got to move a mounting to prove you're...I dunno...cool, maybe? I can't do that. I have to remind myself to keep to my usual level of activity and food intake.

With that in mind, I've set the Up app with target of 7500 steps (it recommends 10K but I'm not even going to hit 5K steps/day in my baseline) and a sleep target of 6.5 hours.

Day 2 - Wednesday, 3/20
When I set my sleep target at 6.5 hours per night I thought I was being pretty reasonable. I'm happy to report that last night I nailed a solid 107% of of the target and feel farking fantastic for it.

The band is still a little awkward to wear but that's just because I'm not used to wearing things this big and clunky on my wrist 24/7 any more. Maybe if I were still a watch wearer this wouldn't be so bad but I don't wear watches any more. I'm sure I'll get used to it soon enough.

Day 3 - Thursday, 3/21
I'm trying very hard not to react to the information I'm gathering but its very difficult not to. Once I hit ~1400cal on the food log I looked at the bag of popcorn I was about to nuke for a very long minute before putting it back. It was kind of a moral question in relation to the notion of gathering a baseline, whether or not I should let this one data point alter my personal consumption or just eat the popcorn like I wanted to. I put the popcorn back and shamefully admit that breach of the protocol I'd set myself this week...though I'm not ashamed that I put the popcorn back.

There's something you have to understand about me and popcorn...It's the only thing on this planet that I call a comfort food. I have really, really fond memories of evening spent with my parents and sisters watching TV, munching popcorn, occasionally throwing a kernel or two the dogs who were also chilling out near us.

Day 4 - Friday, 3/22
A bit of a small rant here...

In sixth grade a friend told me that to lose weight I needed to stop drinking water and drink only milk. Seriously. Sixth grade. Even I knew that he was full of shit, told him exactly that too. Could be part of why we didn't remain friends too much longer than the sixth grade. That sort of underlines a point, whenever I've been open about my trying to drop pounds I've gotten all manner of strange advice from family, friends, and complete strangers--pretty much all of it anecdotal, illogical, and even bad. It gets tedious after a while.

No lie, this is part of why I'm logging this week with delayed publication.

What I'm doing isn't particularly special, magical, or amazing. At the core it's pretty basic data logging and not much worth the effort babbling about or calling attention to every single day.

Day 5 - Saturday, 3/23
I really don't have too many thoughts to share for today other than the activity numbers lie. I was actually pretty active...just active standing in one place working on a motor. Not exactly strenuous work but work nonetheless. In other words, I wasn't a sofa spud this weekend, despite what claims with its filthy lies.

Day 6 - Sunday, 3/24
More of the same from Saturday. Finding that it's hard to remember to enter my food intake on the weekends. Easy during the week when I'm at the office, it's just right there. At home when wrenching? Not so much. I end up having to spend time at the end of the day tallying up what I've been eating.

Day 7 - Monday, 3/25
Not too much to say about this whole thing today, no real thoughts or observations.  I've now got a week's worth of baseline data about my activity.  Now that I have information I can make changes and make meaningful observations about their effects.