Do you have one of these step-counters?
Do you enjoy it?
My mom is in town
so I borrowed her Fitbit for a day
of my normal outdoor activities
just to see what kind of results I'd get.
The data surprised me!
[ ♪ theme music ♪ ]
I got your shoe!
Are you going to put your shoe back on?
I’m Koaw and this is Koaw Nature’s Casual Outdoors Weekly
where we go over nature activities
for you to try out
‘cause I just want y’all to be healthy, happy,
and learn things about nature.
And this week it’s all about testing out
those step counting, heart monitoring,
burning-calorie tracking watches!
The one I borrowed is a Fitbit
but there are many brands out there
from Misfit to Samsung Gear Fit,
to Apple Watch to Garmin to etc.
This would be my first time wearing a device like this.
And I tried jewelry when I was younger
but I found that I am too often climbing trees,
or smashing into rocks,
or snagging into things
when roaming whatever habitats that I’m in
to even keep my watches and jewelry
in working form or just not losing them.
Secondly,
I just don’t find them to be that fashionable.
But that doesn’t mean I have good fashion sense!
Just look at me. I’m often wearing plaid!
Sometimes I go uber redneck
and wear camo with plaid!
And I don’t buy my clothes with holes in them
but I will wear them
until they are so holey
that someone comes up to me and says,
“Koaw, I’ve seen way too much of your underwear lately.”
Thanks to all of my ex-girlfriends
for trying to make me more fashion savvy.
It might happen one day.
Maybe…
But I find the data collection possibilities
of these watches to be fascinating!
I’m a nerd! I love data!
I even use Excel
to keep track of my friends and family’s Catan records!
So I really wanted to see
what a normal Saturday for me
entailed as far as steps
and heartrate and all of that.
So I slapped on the Fitbit at midnight
and slept for around six and a half hours.
I must have had a good dream there
because my heartrate jumped.
I got my morning coffee fix
and headed over to the Walker Nature Center
for a bird walk hosted by
the Northern Virginia Audubon Society
in tandem with the Green Muslims.
We walked, we saw 26* species of birds
and there were 3,164 steps recorded
in that 2h45m timeframe
with a heartrate maxed at 120 bpm.
Back home
I was on babysitting duty
with my nieces and nephew.
Kids can be an amazing workout tool
if you do it right!
We headed to a couple of parks
and a pond for 45 minutes
and that recorded 3,210 steps.
Which was more steps than the bird walk
in two hours less of time.
We fueled up, played a bit,
and headed out to the woods later
for a two hour walk.
We found cool stuff
and learned neat things about our nearby wildlife.
The Fitbit recorded almost 7,000 steps
in that timeframe.
Yet curiously my heartrate
for the entire day
was still highest at 120 bpm
when I was on the nice relaxing bird walk.
And in the woods
I had to carry a 33lb
two-year-old on my back for a lot of it.
I got my swole on
around 4:45 to 5:30,
finishing with a light run
on a forested path.
Then we see that my heart rate
did jump up to a high of 169.
There were 4,711 steps
counted in that period.
And right where it says I have no steps—
I did not die.
That’s when the Colorado Avalanche
dropped the puck.
That’s one of the few reasons
I stop moving around.
I can’t show you the game
‘cause of copyright laws
but my father, who’s in Illinois,
watches the game same time with me
as I’m in Virginia
and every time the Avalanche score
we each do exercises.
That’s what these jumps are in the data
for the three goals the Avs scored.
I do 20 push-ups per goal
and either 10 pull-ups or 10 dips.
So thus far this season
I’ve done 1,620 push-ups
and 810 pull-ups/dips.
So yeah, go Avs! Keep scoring!
Overall I did about 10 miles
with 23,588 steps
and shattered my mom’s best record.
That’s just how I live my life—I move a lot.
And my mom really doesn’t do that badly,
as the average American
moves about 5,000 steps a day.
And I think for any of us, when we get outside,
this tool is valuable
because we can see what we do in a day
and we can try to improve upon that.
I really enjoyed the fact
that I could log into my mother’s Fitbit account
and see the data of my day.
That is so cool!
And I was trying to find some studies out there
that suggested these fitness devices
—when people wear them—
it convinces them to get outside and exercise more.
But I just couldn’t find any strong studies.
And the good studies I found didn’t
really suggest that at all.
But we should keep in mind
that a lot of those studies
were done on devices of old technology.
These are getting a lot better.
The battery life lasts a lot longer.
They’re more accurate.
And they can do so much more.
So really it’s a psychological game
that these developers and the consumers
have to play with each other
so both parties get better rewards.
So if you wear a Fitbit
or a similar device,
I want to hear your thoughts on it
and if you think it’s helped you out.
For me,
I got to say that it did add some excitement
to my outdoors adventures
‘cause I could sit there and be like,
“Oh, we’ve done this many steps so far!
My heartrate is this.”
I love the data part of it.
But I’m just not sure this is a fit for me
because I know if I wore this a week
it would be broken or lost,
probably at the bottom of a river somewhere.
But now I do have my mom’s Fitbit account!
So I can log in and be like:
Huh, you’ve only done 3,000 steps.
Get her on the phone.
Hey ma!
Yeah, you need to go outside right now.
Go garage saling or something. Okay.
I adopted a cockroach nymph
from the woods
because I couldn’t ID the species
and I want to know what species it is.
So I’m going to raise it ‘til it is an adult.
So meet Stinky,
as my nieces named it.
Spread some knowledge. Be Nature-heroic.
I hope to see you next week.