Fitness Friday : Fitbit Charge HR from Digital Walker PH

Fitness talk on a Friday? I know it's not the most normal thing to do but change is always good and so today, we push aside our usual "Fried Food, Friday" to talk about something else.

Aside from pushing myself to cook more at home, one of my resolutions when I first moved to the Lion City was to get into a fitness routine. It wasn't easy, I have to say. I started really slow and it was only when my sister got engaged and we were months away from her wedding that I found the real motivation to go to the gym regularly and to aim for my weight loss goals. After her wedding, the holiday feasting began and I tell you, the struggle to get back to my 3x a week gym routine was hard and real. Luckily, I will always have Paul and my friend D who will always motivate me to go and work out. Add to the fact that I discovered indoor cycling and I've been so in love with it for more than a year now. That's true love and commitment, you guys. :)

Then early this year, I got an amazing present from the folks from Digital Walker. It's this high tech Fitbit Charge HR (Php. 6,999) that doesn't only count your steps but it reads your heart rate, measures how many floors you've climbed, understands your sleeping pattern and tells you the date and time.



I've been using another fitness tracker for the past few years and what made me switch to this one was the fact that it was created to look and feel like a watch. That means that the strap perfectly wraps around your wrist, it's lightweight and it's easy to remove and put on anytime. The one that I used to have had a harder mold so it can be quite troublesome whenever I'm typing for a long time as it hits my wrists a lot. I would resort to removing it and putting it aside whenever I'm working which basically defeats the purpose as I want one that measures my every move.

The Fitbit Charge HR is like your virtual fitness trainer. I really love it when I get to see my heart rate most especially during cycling class. The goal is to just reach the maximum heart rate that will allow me to burn calories but not to give me a heart attack. This is actually perfect as my instructor would say "make sure you're hitting 70%-80% of your heart rate" and since our not-so-high-tech bikes do not have any heart rate monitor, then I can just lift my wrist to see the display on my watch.

Aside from the heart rate monitor, I like the sleep monitoring function. Believe me, for the longer time, I thought that I was sleeping just fine. It was when I started wearing the Fitbit Charge HR  that it's showing me that throughout my 8 hours of sleep, I am restless half of the time. That's quite alarming, isn't it? It means that I basically just fall into deep sleep for 4 hours. No wonder I'd sometime wake up with a terrible migraine or I'd feel so exhausted even after sleeping. Eventually, I started to take more notice on my sleep and tried several ways to improve it. Sleep is really important and I don't want to make this the reason that will cause me to fall sick later on in life.

Lastly, as the watch is synced with my phone, every time I get a call and my phone is in my bag, my watch would gently vibrate and the name of the caller would come out on the display panel. That is just so cool as this makes sure that I don't get to miss any call ever again. I think I have to give these to "some people" in the family who never answers their phones. ;)

Now, let's look at the Fitbit App which I've installed in my phone. I love the clean and easy to navigate interface. At a glance, I see everything that I want to see. My calories burned, the number of steps taken, the levels of floors I've climbed and more. I can also connect with friends and a few months back, I would run challenges between me and my cousins in the US to see who among us would have the most number of steps over the weekend. Somehow, Ahia J always wins. I have no idea what he's doing over there. :-/

It has been close to a year since I've made the switch to Fitbit Charge HR and I'm really loving it. If there's one thing that I feel should be improved is the battery viewing option. For some reason, I have to open the app to see if my watch is running out of battery or not. Wish there'll be a way to view this on the watch itself to lessen the extra step of opening the app.

Check out Fitbit Charge HR and view the full Fitbit product range in any Digital Walker outlet nationwide. Visit their Facebook page for more information.