So over the past couple of years I have found myself having a significant increase in the amount of panic attacks. If you have never had a panic attack, it makes you think that you are having a heart attack. It is not a pleasant experience by any means. Many times I would find myself going to urgent care just to make sure it was not a heart attack. I know that sounds silly. I just needed the reassurance or my panic attack would get worse.
I do not know what possessed me to look at FitBits specifically other than I was trying to come up with ways I could bring myself down from the ceiling. I had started having panic attacks at work to the point of an ambulance was called one of those times. One day I just said heck let's order a real one and see what happens. So the FitBit Charge 6 was on sale on Amazon one day. It just happened to be a payday so I ordered it. The fact that I had to really pay for it (a lot more than a 20 dollar knock off) made me decide to wear it religiously. The only time it is not on my wrist is when I'm in the shower (it is water proof, but I don't want to take many chances) or when it is charging.
I won't really go into all the details on how I use it to bring me down from the ceiling. And I will say that it does not always work for that as it depends on how far gone I am. If I catch a panic attack at the beginning I can use some of the features of it to bring me down. I realize that most people do not use it for that.
I'll be the first to admit that I do not understand all of the features nor do I understand all of the graphs that go with the app.
Let me tell you about some of the features that I do like.
It constantly monitors your heartrate.
It tracks your sleep...... now this feature I like. It will tell me exactly how much I slept. It will even monitor your O2 rate while you are asleep. It tracks stages of sleep as well. I can log into the app and see the stages of sleep. It will give you a rating of how well you slept. The picture posted above has my sleep listed as fair. I can tell you that is because I currently have the crud. I do not sleep well when I have the crud. I know how much I sleep on average as well. During the work week I average 5 to 6 hours of sleep most nights. No wonder I"m always dragging lol
Another feature I like is Google Maps. You connect the Bluetooth on your phone and pair it with the FitBit. There are a couple of different ways to use this. You can be in your car and have the GPS directing you on your phone and it will come through the watch. I have not tried that feature yet. What I have used it for is in the exercise mode it will track how many miles you walk/run/bike. I can connect it to Google Maps and hop on my bike and know a lot of data instantly such as distance, speed, etc. This is good for me because I was looking at Google Maps and trying to do math to figure out my distances. If you know me, you know I do not like to math! Yes, I turned math into a verb.
It does many other things. It can take an EKG, YouTube Music, stopwatch, alarm, track exercises, step counter. receive text messages, do voice calls, and Google Wallet. I'm probably missing something. I have not used all the features as of yet.
So far I only have 3 cons
- It has to be charged. Call me old school, but I liked having an actual battery in a watch. This is just another charging cord to keep up with.
- While it can receive text messages, it will only show a portion of the message if it is a long message.
- It does not have an exercise setting for recumbent exercise bike. It has all these other things, but not that.
From what I have used it for, I really like it. I can use it to tell if I have a good or a bad Monday. The more steps I log on a Monday means a bad day because I'm having to chase people down for timesheets and therefore logging more steps lol.
