In January, Carly from The College Prepster blogged about the Jawbone UP band. After reading her review, I knew I just had to have one - and I have absolutely fallen in love with it.
As I am sure is true of a lot of Americans, I unfortunately lead a sedentary life. Toward the end of 2012, I found myself not sleeping well, and even when I did, I felt extremely sluggish. I was cranky, unmotivated, and just lethargic. Something had to be wrong.
I had fallen into a slump - I felt I didn't have time to hit the gym (although now I firmly believe that everyone has time to be active and get enough sleep 98% of the time), I was drinking too much coffee as a product of my tiredness (which also contributed to bad sleep the next night, creating a bad cycle), and I wasn't eating healthily at all. All around, I was not acting myself. Normally I love to exercise, be outdoors, and eat super healthy meals. So when Carly mentioned that the UP band tracks your sleep, exercise, and food all by wearing a band daily and plugging it into your phone twice a day, I ran to the nearest Apple store and purchased one.
The UP band information was eye-opening. I realized that on average I took about 2,000 to 4,000 steps per day, when ideally you should be taking closer to 10,000. I was intaking WAY too many carbohydrates (literally 200% of what I was supposed to be intaking), about 1/2 of the fiber I needed, and 2x the amount of sodium I needed (and I actively avoid sodium in my diet). And the most important information - I was not entering into a whole lot of deep sleep (a post by the JawboneAlex Jawbone Administrator explains in this forum explains how deep sleep contributes to you being rejuvenated -- from what I understand, deep sleep is where the majority of your body's resetting and daily repair work gets done). Bingo, that's why I was feeling so weird.
Manually putting in my food daily can be kind of time consuming, but the feedback you get is totally worth it. The UP app actually has a lot of food's nutritional information built into it -- such as it knows all the nutritional information Starbucks, and it has a barcode scanner so any time you eat something with a barcode, just scan it in, and the nutritional information is automatically uploaded to your food for the day. I don't use the food meter as much as I should anymore because I end up making a lot of my own food rather than buying prepackaged stuff. But I really should pick it back up to make sure I'm getting the proper nutrient balance.
The app also uploads a great little wise tidbit when you plug your band in that day! And usually they were pretty on point for what was going on with me!
{I never drink enough water, and being hydrated
makes a HUGE difference for me I found out in
being alert - it works almost as good as coffee I think!}
{I need to weight train more}
If you disagree with any of the portions or daily suggestions (say you think you actually need more than the default setting of Protein), then you can go into the settings and turn the goal amount of everything to your desired metric.
I am completely obsessed with my UP band. I wear it everywhere to everything, and I am devastated when I forget to wear it for fear of not counting my steps and therefore not knowing if I'm getting enough exercise that day. Word to the wise though, your steps may not get counted if you're holding your wrist steady for some reason (such as carrying a box up stairs) which is unfortunate :( But overall, I love the UP band, and I love how much information it gives me daily! The UP band also has more features (like buzzing to let you know that you have been inactive for too long (you decide how long is too long), and it has smart alarms that wake you up in the right time of your sleep cycle, and there is a specific workout mode that tracks how hard you're working out) -- to check it out, visit the UP band website.
