Anyone who actually pays attention to their fitness knows that being fit involves three major factors: getting enough sleep, exercising your body and eating right. While many fitness trackers on the market today track one or two of those three factors, few track all three. For Christmas I received a Jawbone UP24 Fitness Tracker and was very skeptical about it at first. After I’d learned how to use it and learned what other fitness apps work with it, I became pretty impressed. The UP24 tracks not only how much sleep you get, but the quality of that sleep. The UP24 tracks not only the workouts that you enter into it, but how many steps per day you take and how many calories you burn, even at rest. Finally, the UP24 tracks not only how much food you take in each day but the quality and nutritional value of that food. Let’s take a look…
The main screen of the UP24 app give you feedback on the three main fitness factors for the day, a fitness tip or challenge (more on that in a minute), the ability to enter your weight, a link for direct info from your UP24 wristband and a menu for other functions. The three main fitness factors are depicted, left to right: Sleep, steps and food. When you first set up the UP24 app up, you program in how much sleep per night you feel is optimal for you. While most (if not all) doctors recommend eight hours per night, most of us know ourselves better and recognize that eight is an average not necessarily applicable to ourselves. For instance, my optimal per night sleep is about six and a half hours. More than seven and I feel lethargic all day. Less than six hours and I’m one grumpy individual. So, when I set my UP24 app up (it feels weird saying that), I set it for seven hours of sleep per night. In the image shown, the sleep displayed (left column, purple in color) is seven hours and eighteen minutes of total sleep, or 104% of the goal. The center orange column shows how many steps I’ve taken in relationship to the 10,000 steps per day goal that I programmed in when I first set up the app. For those of you who think I’m bragging by posting a screen shot that shows me at 159% of my step goal, let me say this: 15,000 steps is easy. On an average day without any dedicated exercise time I average about 8,000 steps. In any given day, the average person walks about 100 steps per minute anytime they are walking anywhere. So if you take a 20 minute walk, that’s 2,000 steps.
The right hand green column shows your food score and how many calories you have left to eat that day (or if you’re over like this one shows) based on your weight loss (or gain) goals that you entered when you set up the app. It can also be displayed as green, yellow or red based on the quality of food you take in. It’s motivation to eat cleaner so that column stays green.
Each column can be touched to get you more information about the given fitness factor. For instance, if you touch the sleep column you get a screen that shows you your sleep cycle throughout the time you were asleep. The dark blue taller peaks show the times you were in deep sleep. The lighter blue half height columns show when you were in light sleep. The orange quarter columns show periods of time when you were awake. There are always at least two orange columns: one at the beginning and one at the end. They reflect the period of time you set the UP for sleep mode but then took time to fall asleep and when you woke up but took a minute or two to set the UP for awake mode. Total sleep is shown in hours and minutes and the center circle has your percentage of sleep in ratio to your target goal (that 104%). Other sleep related information is also shown. How much time you spent in sound sleep (deep sleep) versus how much time you spent in light sleep. How long it took you to fall asleep and how long you were in bed. It also shows how many times you woke up during your sleep cycle and how long you were awake for. The 40 minutes shown in the image reflects the 11 minutes it took me to fall asleep, however long I was awake in the middle of the night and the minutes it took me to wake up and set the UP for awake mode.
On the main screen, if you touch the orange steps column, you get a screen that shows you more information about your activity level. It shows you the times, start and finish each day that you were active in between. It also shows you how much time you spent being active. In this case it shows two hours and 25 minutes. While that seems very little out of a day when I was awake for about 17 hours, I work at a desk job and therefore am still most of the day. Add in the amount of time spent sitting in a chair at the kitchen table and time on the sofa watching TV and, all of a sudden, that 2.5 hours seems a little more reasonable. It also shows my longest active period of time as one hour and two minutes. That’s likely time I spent on my treadmill. Below that is shown the longest time that I was idle. At one hour and eighteen minutes, that’s not too bad. It means that I USUALLY was up and moving at least once per hour on average. On the right side it shows how many calories in the day I burned total. Beneath that is shown how many calories were burned while I was active versus the calories my body burned while I was at rest. It’s important to know how many calories your body burns each day even if you aren’t active at all. That number of calories your body burns just staying alive each day is known as your Basic Metabolic Rate or BMR. We’ll come back to calorie tracking and weight gain or loss, but without knowing your BMR, you’re just guessing at what you should or shouldn’t be taking in as far as calorie counts each day to meet your goals. For reference, the times for sunrise and sunset are shown across the graph at the top. That graph also shows when you took your most steps. For example, on this particular day I was on my treadmill right after I got up and late in the evening before I planted myself on the sofa.
If, on the main screen, you touch the green food column you get this screen – which is actually going to be shown as two images. The first shows you how many calories you’ve eaten versus how many calories you’ve burned. (Yes, this day I was WAY over – and damn it was good!) It also shows you your food score and whether your nutritional intake for the day was green, yellow or red. How many calories you have left to eat or how many you are over is also shown above the graph shown what you’ve taken in over what your estimated burn is. Across the top it shows when you ate what meals. In this case breakfast (red), mid-morning snack (green), lunch (red), an afternoon snack (red) and dinner (red) are shown. At the bottom of this first food related image you can see how the UP24 app provides information on the nutritional value of what you’ve eaten. Under the heading of “All You Can Eat” it has Fiber an Unsaturated Fat accompanied by how much of each you’ve eaten that day. In the next image you can see the whole of the food rating information available. Under “Don’t Overdo it” you get Other Carbs and Protein (Yeah, I ate a LOT of Other Carbs that day). Under the “Pass On These” heading is Sugar, Saturated Fat, Sodium (ugly day for sodium) and Cholesterol (that was pretty good though).
Now, a word about synced apps before I finish talking about the UP24. While the UP24 app will let you enter workouts and food you eat, I’ve long used MyFitnessPal.com as my exercise and nutrition diary. The UP24 syncs pretty well with several fitness related apps, MyFitnessPal (MFP) among them. Since I was already comfortable using MFP, I kept using it and just synced the UP24 with MFP. I also use MapMyFitness to track my walks and runs outside. It’s another app that UP24 will sync with and take information from.
The end result (for me) is that I wear my Up24 wristband to track my steps and my sleep, but for food intake and logging exercise (workouts and indoor exercise) I use MFP. For tracing outdoor walks or runs, I use MapMyFitness. I have noticed minor discrepancies in the calories allotted by MFP versus UP24 – and in that, the UP24 is more conservative. I believe it’s just a matter of the algorithm they use. It may also be a side effect that I track my progress in weight loss through MFP so MFP may have a more accurate count of calories I burn performing a given activity.
Now, back to the UP24. The app also allows you to join a team and have team members. In my case, my wife got an UP24 several months back so when I discovered that having a team was possible I invited her to join mine. She accepted and the result is that I see her sleep and step progress each day. Is that helpful? Yes, it can be depending on your team mates. If I’m behind on my steps she can say something to help motivate me and get me through to reach my step goal. I can do the same for her. As a husband, I can’t tell you how helpful it is to see my wife’s sleep time and pattern. It’s like having a weather warning about a pending thunderstorm if I see she didn’t get enough sleep or if her sleep cycle was really rough. I can step lightly and speak softly and do okay. What other app does that?
So, if you’re paying attention to your fitness, check it out. The app is a free download but only does you any good if you buy the wrist band. They cost about $120 at most major sporting goods retailers. If you get one, wear it, use it. It lasts about a week on a single charge and charges fully from dead in about an hour (or less). If you try it out, let me know what you think.
Stay safe!
