FITBIT FAKERS

They seem to be all the rage at the moment; FitBits, or activity trackers.

But are they really necessary?

I’ll be honest, I don’t have a fitbit. I do however have a step count / pedometer on my apple watch.

I use it to give me a rough idea of how active I’ve been each day. My personal goal is to hit at least 10,000 steps daily, this is roughly around 5 miles based on average strides.

Anything less than 10,000 steps per day is classed as sedentary.

At the weekend, I don’t pay much attention to my step count, sometimes it may be as little as 3000 steps, or if we walk to the pub, it may be higher!

Do I care?

No not really, because I’m at a point where I’m in tune with my own body, and I know how to maintain, gain or lose weight, without over complicating things.

But what if you’re not in that happy place of understanding your body?

What if you desperately want to lose weight and feel lost as to how to achieve it?

Step in these Fit Bit league tables.

Some of my clients have joined in with these FitBit step count competitions. Whilst I think this could be a great idea to help people feel motivated and become more active, I also wonder if there’s some dishonesty going on……

I’ve heard tales of daily step counts that appear to be ludicrously high, and to be honest if these people we’re achieving that step count daily, they’d need to be walking 15 miles per day, not really possible for a stay at home parent, unless of course they spend literally, the whole day running up and down their staircase.

I’ve heard tales of people fastening their FitBits to their dogs (or cats), strapping to their legs while biking, going roller blading (because it counts the distance as steps), one lady even admitted to me that she puts her FitBit in her bread machine on a ‘dough kneed’ setting, which added an extra 3000 steps a day while she had a bath!

There’s even blogs you can look up on how to manipulate the settings so it records more steps.

All this fakery is missing the point.

When we decide to improve our lifestyle; becoming healthier and being more active, we should be doing so with an intrinsic motivator.

If you’re extrinsically motivated to win a league table with a fake number of steps, then you’re doomed to fail. Just the same as those who cheat on their diets, sneakily eating extra chocolate bars, or tubs of ice cream and lying to themselves and to others about what they've actually consumed. Or metaphorically keeping their heads in the sand.... "it's not tracked in my food diary, therefore it never happened"

Once we’ve told a lie enough times, we’ll start to believe it as a truth. We may even make justifications in our heads to rationale the lie.

But we’re only failing ourselves.

I have no desire to join any competitive step count league table. I don’t need external validation to prove anything.

If I go for a walk, and my step counter doesnt track it, I'm not worried. I know by the way I feel whether I've been active enough.

And that should be the purpose of any tracking device. To stay realistic, concentrating on your own journey and on your own goals.

Have you found an intrinsic motivator? One that will stand the test of time, no matter what everybody else is doing?

Within my Habit Fix Group Coaching we work on finding your intrinsic motivator, because it’s about YOUR journey!

Just £15.99 a month, The Habit Fix is a 12 week stepping stone plan, to improve your relationship with food, becoming fitter, healthier and more active.

It’s all about your personal journey. Not a competition to appear to be better than someone else.

It’s about you.