How I keep track of my movement during the day!

There is no question that I am a busy bee. I am so active not just with teaching group fitness classes and my daily exercise, but just being a busy mama! I’ve always been curious as to how many steps I actually get in a day but have never purchased an activity tracker to do so. So when I had the opportunity to check out Garmin’s vívofit 2 activity tracker I was all over it!

I recommend activity trackers for my clients, especially those who are just starting out in their health journey. Basic movement is MAJORLY underestimated in someone’s fitness journey. In fact, I would say that it’s the most important layer. We are created to move, reach, walk, and more. Our society has made it to where it isn’t an easy thing to keep movement in a day. We sit behind desks, phones, and tablets, take the elevator, drive around the parking lot 6 times to get a front row spot, and ask our kids to go grab our laundry, right? Now don’t get me wrong..none of these things in and of itself is bad, but you can see how it is easy to err on the side of being inactive. (Nutrition is the next layer, with exercise being the top level of important!)  A tool such as the Garmin vívofit 2 is the perfect solution to keep an eye on that!

I love that this tracker is fairly basic. Who has time to get complicated? It shows time, calories burned, steps, and distance, monitors sleep, and is heart rate compatible! When you first set it up, it will give you a suggested goal of steps to get in for the day. As you keep wearing it, it will adjust depending on how many steps you get in each day so it pushes you a little. There is a little red bar that will move across the screen to let you know when you’ve been inactive. Each 15 minutes it increases. You have to get up and walk about 200 steps to reset it. In fact, as I write this blog post, I am sitting on a plane to San Diego. It’s not very happy that I haven’t moved! 🙂

One of the things I love about this tracker is that you don’t need to charge it! It has a 1-year battery so this stays on my wrist all day long. I sleep, shower, and work out with it! No need to spend time charging it, which is perfect for someone on the go as much as I am!

I also find the sleep function pretty nifty. Not that I expect it to be 100% accurate, but it tracks how many hours I get at night (which is helpful for me to reference when I’m tired and can’t figure out why!) and also periods of light and heavy sleep.

For those of you who want more options than a black band, there are lots of different colors of bands you can select!

The tracker syncs with an app on your phone or a program you load on your computer called Garmin Connect! It is a program specially made by Garmin to keep all of your data in one place and sync with other popular health apps like MyFitnessPal or Strava. Knowledge is the key to change so being able to track your days is super helpful in creating a baseline and then making changes from there.

Now, it shouldn’t surprise you that I meet and exceed the amount of steps I should have in a day, so I can’t say that it’s making me move more, however, it is making me more aware of periods of inactivity during the day (when I’m writing/blogging etc), which is good for me to get up and move, and I can also see patterns and establish a baseline, which is always helpful with your health.

I am MOST excited about using this during the winter! Even though I get my exercise in almost every day in the winter, I don’t do as much extra movement because I’m not as apt to go outside to walk or I am buried underneath a blanket! 🙂 Inevitably that lack of movement (plus eating more..haha) causes a little weight gain and contributes to a more “blah” mood. I am excited to wear this and be more aware of my movement during the day!

The Garmin vívofit 2 is a great option for an activity tracker! Put this on your Christmas list!

Disclosure: This post was sponsored by Garmin through their partnership with POPSUGAR Select. While I was compensated to write a post about vívofit 2, all opinions are my own.