Disclosure: I received a Jawbone bracelet to temporarily review as part of the Verizon Wireless Midwest Bloggers program. All experience and opinions are my own. Yours may differ.
I have something to confess: I quit the Gym!! (GASP!) OK are you settled down from that announcement? OK Good. I LOVE the gym, I really do, but with how busy my life gets towards the end of the year I just wasn’t going and I didn’t want to spend all that money on a membership I was using. Since I’m not going to the gym I need something to help keep me in line. Enter the Jawbone UP program!
Jawbone makes this handy dandy arm band that you wear day and night. It only needs to come off to charge and shower. In the morning you press the button and switch the band into daytime mode where it is tracking your activity. At night you press the button and put into into sleep mode where it is tracking your sleep rhythm. Twice a day you plug the arm band into your phone to sync it with the app. This will immediately give you your sleep results and your steps. The app also offers insights that help give you ideas for improvement, offer stats and general encouragement.
I have loved using the Jawbone UP program for the past couple of weeks. It has been really insightful as to the lack of sleep I’m getting (I already new that, but to see the graphs comparing my light sleep versus deep sleep is really interesting). It is also interesting to note how man steps I take in a day. As a blogger I do spend a lot of time at the computer but I have noticed that I want to increase my step count so when I do things like get a drink or brush my teeth I am marching the whole time. That is really good, it adds activity and increases the number of calories I burn in a day. OH and the app also tells you how many calories you are burning by being active, and your total burned. I didn’t realize that just by living I am burning calories, but that I want to help my body out by being more active.
On the app you can also track your daily food. You have to input the food yourself and you can scan labels to help the app get the nutritional information. I wasn’t very good at remember to input food at the appropriate times so I didn’t take full advantage of that feature. You can also input your mood.
The Jawbone arm band is a little pricey at around $129 but it offers a lot of good. By keeping me aware of my activity and my sleep it has really helped me out. I feel more accountable and a desire to improve both! I LOVE it so much and have asked my husband to get me one for Christmas, so here’s hoping! 🙂
