#notreallyareview

It has worked.  I have finished week 8 and I am still going. But I think it is because I am too scared to defy the Fitbit.

It is brilliant for motivation.  It helps me understand that I have been a lazy cow all day and I should get up and do something.  It is giving me a schedule to live my life by.  But, it is also a bully.

It buzzes at me – every hour.  Those flashing figures accuse me of inactivity.  0/250 steps for this hour, and the next. 0 mins of activity.  And that trip to the toilet didn’t magically bring my step count up to my target.  

And that is just the watch itself. It is accompanied by this swish science-fiction like dashboard on my computer (couldn’t get it load on my phone).  This is an even bigger tyrant because now it looks at me dismally when I don’t get enough sleep, or reminds me of my failures at keeping my calorie count to something acceptable in glorious, hateful pink.

Yes, it celebrates my successes – with fireworks, and stars. And I was so proud when I got the Skyscraper badge (100 floors in one day – I climbed a local hill).  But it also highlights the failures.  It is amazing how disappointed a small piece of electronics can look.

Sometimes I try to defy it. There are days when I leave it on my chest of drawers, telling it that I don’t care -  that I will sit around as much as I like and eat as much as I like (this happens at least once a week – I might have been moving in the right direction but, like I have said before, it is still a real struggle).  

However, it always draws me back in, penitent and regretful, every time.

I find myself endlessly walking up and down the corridor in my flat because I am short of 1000 steps. I am obsessively counting out the calories so my green bar doesn’t turn into a pink bar.  I am going to bed earlier so I can get my star for sleeping.

The truth is I have become a slave.  A slave to a small piece of black plastic round my wrist.