I’ve recently upgraded my fitness tracker, and now own a Fitbit Alta HR(sponsored link). I’ve previously owned a Charge, and a Charge HR, and this review will mostly focus on the differences between the Alta and the Charge. I reviewed the Fitbit Charge in October 2015.
Improvements
Compared with the Charge, the Alta HR is narrower, and the metal bands either side of the display make it feel more solid. I find that it fits my wrist better and it’s lighter, so it feels more comfortable. I feel happier wearing it when asleep than I did with the Charge models.
Battery life is much improved over the Charge HR, with the Alta HR typically lasting a full week on a full charge. You can also view the current battery status on the device itself, as it’s one of the screens that displays along with your step count, calories burnt, distance travelled etc.
Notifications are expanded beyond phone calls; the Alta HR will also notify you of text messages (and show the sender and first few words), and calendar events if you wish. If you’ve turned on Fitbit’s hourly movement tracking, then if you haven’t done 250 steps in the last hour, you’ll get a nudge at around 10 minutes to the hour to get up and move around.
In my experience, the Alta HR was better at synchronising throughout the day with my phone than the Charge models, which would sometimes go a few hours at a time without a proper synchronisation. This may be a quirk with my phone though.
Disadvantages
If you’re switching from a Charge to an Alta HR, you’ll need to turn off the floor climbing tracking. There’s no altimeter in the Alta HR and so you won’t be able to track how many floors you’ve climbed.
There’s no button on the Alta HR, so you have to wake the display either by raising your arm or double-tapping the screen. Also, the screen doesn’t automatically illuminate when you receive a notification. This probably improves the battery life but makes it a little harder to check your status quickly.
The screen is much bigger, and has a higher pixel density than the Charge. But it’s orientated lengthways, so when reading a message you’ll need to twist your arm. It also means that it’s not wide enough to display more than three digits of your step count, so once you hit 1000 steps, it’ll display ‘1.0k’ and then ’10k’ once you hit 10,000 steps. However, below this, a series of five dots shows whether you’re at 20, 40, 60, 80 or 100% of your daily goal.
Finally, your existing Charge or Charge HR charging cable won’t work with the Alta HR. It has a much improved cable that clips on to the device, but it’s incompatible with other models. You may want to order a spare cable.
Verdict
On the whole, I agree with this Gizmodo review – this is probably the best fitness tracker for most people. £10 more will get you the Charge 2, which overcomes some of the limitations of the Alta HR, but is bigger and probably less comfortable. If you’re the sort of person who wants to record their floor climbs, easily view GPS data, or practice relaxing breathing, go for the Charge 2. If not, then the Alta HR is a very good, comfortable fitness tracker.
We inadvertently chose May 4th as our wedding day. Though neither of us are big Star Wars fans, Christine came down the aisle to a string quartet rendition of the Imperial March.
We’re not planning anything special. We may have a nice meal at home, but we’re both at work as normal. The traditional gift to exchange on your fourth wedding anniversary is ‘fruit’, apparently.
Our four years of marriage have seen quite a lot of change; we used to live in a rented two bedroom flat, with no car and no kids. We now own our own three-bedroom house, I can drive a car, and we have 16 month old child. I’ve also progressed somewhat at work. But we still love each other, and make sure that we have some time to ourselves, even with all of our pressures and responsibilities. Here’s to many more happy years.
I’m currently without my Fitbit, as it seems to have died. It looks like a firmware update failed, leaving it basically bricked. I spent about an hour on Sunday chatting to a very helpful support agent called Ulises, and despite trying several methods to get it to reboot correctly, we weren’t able to.
Thankfully, the kind people at Fitbit offered me either a free replacement, or 30% off a new model. I decided to go for the former; though the new models are better, right now I can’t afford the 70% balance that I’d need to pay. Hopefully it’ll arrive soon.
Frustratingly, I had managed to reach my 10,000 step goal every day for the previous 57 days, up to and including Saturday. This beat a record of 32 days that I set in April last year. Reaching 10,000 steps is relatively easy on weekdays; my commute involves around 45 minutes of walking. But weekends can be a challenge, and keeping it up for so long required some forward planning.
Even though I haven’t been wearing a fitness tracker for the past couple of days, I’m still following similar habits. This includes not standing still if I can avoid it, such as waiting for a train. When at work, I still go to a set of toilets a little further away from my desk, and I try to move around at least once every hour.
Since getting my Fitbit in September 2015, I’ve lost around 9 kilos in weight. That’s almost 20 lb, or nearly 1 1/2 stone, if you use old-fashioned measurements. Whilst I am also eating better, having a Fitbit motivates me to do just a little more exercise every day, and it seems to be making a difference. It’s brought my Body-Mass Index (BMI) down to 23.3, which is well within the ‘healthy’ zone; previously, I was straying into being ‘overweight’. And whilst BMI is a very crude measurement, it’s used as a kind-of ready-reckoner by a lot of health professionals.
I’ll be looking forward to my replacement Fitbit arriving, not at least because I don’t currently have a working watch. Let’s see if I can beat my 57 day record, and manage to walk 10,000 steps for a whole two months.
It’s time for my annual review of the year just gone. 2016 was a year that many will want to forget, thanks to the many celebrities who passed away this year (Victoria Wood arguably being the loss I’m saddest about), and major world events like Brexit and Donald Trump’s election. For us, it was a year of adapting to the major changes that took place in our lives in 2015, and coping with a rather limited income, thanks to Christine’s maternity leave and childcare costs.
Our baby arrived in the world late in December 2015, and was re-admitted to hospital on the 30th December with jaundice. So Christine and I were apart for New Year’s Eve, for only the second time since 2009 when we first met. Indeed, we didn’t have a great January; an undiagnosed tongue-tie meant a struggle to consume enough breast milk, and so we had to top-up feed with formula. Thankfully, the tongue-tie was picked up, the operation was a success, and 12 months on Christine is still breast-feeding in the mornings and evenings.
I was lucky enough to be on paternity leave for the whole of January. People whose partners give birth are allowed two weeks statutory paternity leave at 90% pay, in addition to any other leave entitlements; I topped this up with two weeks annual leave. A fifth week came about as my workplace is closed for Christmas. I’m really glad that I was able to take more time off – having spoken to other new dads who could only take two weeks, they found it not nearly long enough.
We made some progress on the house, with new doors downstairs. All year, we’ve been close to finishing the dining room by putting up coving and new architrave – but nearly a year on, those two jobs are still outstanding.
Later in the month, I went on the first of two visits to London this year, to attend a seminar on Big Data with my expenses paid. I also managed to squeeze in some time with friends whilst there which was nice, especially as I was on my own. And it was my blog’s 14th blogiversary. At the end of the month, we went to Halifax’s Bankfield Museum, to see the launch of a series of paintings by local artist (and friend of a friend) Kate Lycett, featuring various stately homes in Yorkshire that met an untimely end.
Right at the end of January, I had the first of three job interviews this year.
February
February saw me return to work after paternity leave, and on my first day back I was informed that I had got the job. It was a six month secondment working in timetabling at the university – same office, but different team. It was also quite a good pay rise and the extra money really came in useful this year. I hoped that this would become a new career path for me, but it didn’t really work out – I didn’t enjoy the job as much as I had expected, and other factors came into play in the summer.
Valentines Day was spent at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park, near Doncaster. It’s a fantastic open-air zoo, and we’ll definitely go back there again.
I spent an evening at an arts centre in Sale, near Manchester, for a recording of the Guilty Feminist Podcast. It was good fun, although I wish Christine could have come with me as she would’ve enjoyed it too. Alas, we’ve not really been able to get a babysitter and it wouldn’t have been appropriate to bring a baby along. At least Christine got to listen to the show a few weeks later.
We had a few days out in March – the farm at Temple Newsam, York Model Railway Show and Lotherton Hall, where I was able to make use of my new (to me) Canon EFS 55-250mm lens on my SLR camera. It’s great, and has allowed me to take some brilliant photos this year.
We also took our baby to the theatre – an amateur dramatic production of ‘Back to the 80s’. It was a relief to know that we could still go out with a baby in tow.
April
We started April by making a return visit to Hebden Bridge, for the first time since the devastating flooding on Boxing Day 2015. There was also a day out at Springtime Live at the Yorkshire Showground – a smaller scaled version of the Great Yorkshire Show with a focus on activities for kids and families.
A visit to the Trafford Centre (now much easier to get to as we have a car) saw our first visit to Five Guys, which is still relatively new to the UK. They’ve since opened in Bradford and we’ve been 3-4 times now.
May is my birthday month, and was also our third wedding anniversary. At home, we moved forward with a couple of projects – a new boiler, and a downstairs toilet. The new boiler, combined with a Nest thermostat, seems to be saving us money. Which is good, as we’ll still be paying back the cost of the boiler installation (on interest-free credit, thankfully) until May 2018.
Whilst it took me two months to write about it, we had a nice day out at Hollingworth Lake, a reservoir near Rochdale that’s become an inland tourist attraction. At the end of May, we had a day out in Scarborough, including a visit to the Sea Life Centre.
In other politics news, I joined the Labour Party. Historically I’d voted for the Liberal Democrats, but following their collapse in the 2015 general election, I felt it was important to support the left-wing party best-placed to form a government in 2020. So far, the regular emails that I get from my local MP and councillor (both Labour) have been useful but I’ve not yet got further involved.
June was my first Fathers Day, which was nice.
July
I started July with three job interviews scheduled, for four jobs (one was for two posts). Restructuring at work meant that my substantive post was being made redundant, and so I needed to find a new post. My secondment was also about to run out at the same time, and the third interview was to continue this on a fixed-term 9 month contract.
I got offered both jobs in the first interview, but failed the second. I accepted one of the jobs, and declined the third interview, as the job I accepted was a permanent post. Best of all, it was on the same wage as the secondment, so I finished the year with more pay, better job security, and, thanks to several workshops, a massively improved CV. 2016 wasn’t all bad after all.
Having booked a Friday off for something that then got cancelled, Christine and I ended up with a free weekend, and so we booked a last-minute impromptu trip to Liverpool. We took our baby with us, and it proved that we could still spontaneously go away even with a small child in tow. It was our first visit to Liverpool since 2010.
Whilst we were there, Christine started playing Pokémon Go, which hadn’t officially launched in Europe but it was possible to side-load the APK on her Android phone. I started playing when the official launch happened, and we both still play to this day. I’m level 27.
Although we’d been to Springtime Live earlier in the year, we went back to the Yorkshire Showground for the Great Yorkshire Show proper in July. Because we were meeting with friends whilst there, it meant that we didn’t see as much as usual, but it was still a fun day out.
At the end of July, Christine finished her maternity leave and returned to work. Our baby now spends weekday daytimes with a childminder, although until September this would only be four days a week. Christine and I took it in turns to take Wednesdays off, and I had my first full day on my own with our baby. It wasn’t a total success but I managed better on later occasions.
August
I started my new job on the 1st August, processing PhD applications. The first couple of months were basically spent firefighting, as I started at a peak time, but things have settled down somewhat and I’ve been able to make some improvements to processes. I’m enjoying the job; I get to work with some of my old team and lots of new people who I get on with well.
We attended a couple of wedding receptions in 2016, but it wasn’t until August that we went to a full ceremony and reception, for two friends from university. It was up in County Durham, in a really nice part of the world that I’d not previously been to before. And we had a day out in Ripon on the way home which is one of Britain’s ‘Cathedral Cities’ – it’s a small town that has city status by the virtue of having a massive cathedral.
On one of my ‘Daddy Days’, we followed the Hebble Trail from Salterhebble into Halifax. Someday, I’ll actually write up the blog post that I’ve been meaning to write about it.
September
We’d finally ‘finished’ the living room – all the paint is on the walls and we’ve installed the furniture that we want. The living room is also a designated ‘baby safe’ room, so we spent some time erecting a TV stand and fixing the TV to it. Indeed, just about all of the furniture in there is fixed to the wall. Our baby had learned to sit up by July and was crawling by this time, and later in September had learned how to pull themselves up on furniture. Still not able to walk independently yet, but not far off.
Only one major day out in September, which was a visit to Cannon Hall Farm, near Barnsley. It’s a great place for families, with an indoor soft-play area, lots of animals to look at (including meerkats, bizarrely) and activities. Our baby enjoyed it, and we’ll be back sometime. Especially as it was quite cheap.
We also managed a child-free day closer to home. After dropping our baby off at the childminders, we went to see Doctor Strange at the cinema. This was our first cinema visit in almost a year – the last film we’d seen was Spectre, when Christine was still pregnant.
November
America decided to emulate Brexit by electing a man whose surname means ‘fart’ in British English as their next president. I was hoping Hillary would win, and I guess we’ll have to see what happens. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s not still president in four years’ time – whether he resigns due to corruption or boredom, or gets impeached, I don’t know.
Despite not getting as much sleep as usual, I managed to stay reasonably healthy this year, until a bought of gastroenteritis hit me in November. Annoying, I got ill with it again in December, and then had a horrendous cold right through the Christmas period.
As in previous years, we went to the Thought Bubble comic con, this time with our baby in tow. We didn’t have chance to dress up this time though.
December
And so to this month. We haven’t had any days out – it’s winter, and we’ve been spending time doing Christmas shopping. But we did manage another child-free day, this time to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them at the cinema. We spent Christmas itself with my parents in York. Plans for New Year are sketchy, but shouldn’t involve our baby being in hospital this time, hopefully.
A quick blog post to wish you all a Merry Christmas.
We’re in York with my parents for what is our little cherub’s first Christmas. Alas, it’s been overshadowed by illness – all but my dad are all ill with a horrendous cold. As in, the sort of cold that’s serious enough to warrant sick leave from work.
My main presents were a new power drill, and a Google Chromecast, which I’m looking forward to trying out when we get home. Our not-quite-one-year-old got a chair and plenty of toys, and my gifts to Christine were a couple of books.
Wishing you all a Merry Christmas, and an enjoyable festive period.
Back in February I was lamenting my lack of exercise whilst on paternity leave. And following an Easter weekend where I had some particular sedentary days, I decided to set myself a challenge: meet my 10,000 step goal on my FitBit, every day, for 30 days. Day 1 was the 30th March.
I didn’t blog about it at the time as I decided that it would be better just to do it on the quiet, without public pressure. Not meeting my target would let me down, but I’d have also let other people down if they knew. Christine knew – she deserved to know why I’d disappear downstairs from an hour and do housework on an evening – but I didn’t make a big public declaration.
The good news? I managed it. Day 30 was Thursday, and I even managed to make it to 32 days so as to encompass every day in April. Today would be day 33, but it’s nearly 5pm and I’ve barely managed 3000 steps; I think I deserve a rest day.
Hitting my target every day varied in difficulty. On some days, I could reach 10,000 steps with ease. At work, I could reach 8,000 without much extra effort, but found that walking to a toilet further away from my desk, and taking regular breaks to stretch my legs, helped to push things on a bit. This was helped by a recent new feature added to the FitBit app, which encourages you to take at least 250 steps each hour through a series of red dots. So far, my best is being active 13 of the 14 hours that fall between 6am and 8pm – I’ve yet to get all 14, but it’s a good motivator.
I was hoping for some kind of FitBit badge to appear to reward me for doing this, but sadly there isn’t one. Which is a shame. And whilst I don’t plan to challenge myself again any time soon, I hope that this will ensure that I keep up with some good habits to keep my step count up.
Our baby is now 12 weeks old, and has had their first round of vaccinations. These should have been given at 8 weeks, but our town was flooded out at the time of birth, and this included our GP surgery.
The first round is four individual vaccines. One of these, the rotavirus vaccination, is given orally as drops, but the rest are needles. These are the 5-in-1 vaccine (diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio and Hib), Pneumococcal, and the brand new Meningitis B vaccine. Sadly some older children aren’t and there is pressure for it to be made more widely available.
As you’d perhaps expect, our little cherub wasn’t very happy about the needles, although it can’t have been worse than the various blood tests in their first week of life. This was as a result of developing jaundice, which required regular blood tests to monitor. Some pre-emptive Calpol (or rather generic-brand Paracetamol Suspension for Infants – it’s the same thing) hopefully helped. Later on, our baby was a little feverish, but more Calpol helped and has been fine since.
Whilst we didn’t really ‘choose’ to vaccinate our baby, there is no way that we would have opted out of the vaccinations. Christine and I are both in favour of vaccinations and the protections it gives people. I always have the ‘flu jab every year, which I get free because I’m asthmatic, but also because ‘flu is horrendous. Christine gets it free as well, as she is professional healthcare worker.
By ensuring that our baby is vaccinated, we’re not just protecting them, but others as well; not everyone can receive vaccinations, either because they’re too young or have compromised immune systems. Herd immunity is important.
The next round of vaccinations will be in a few weeks, for the 5-in-1 and rotavirus vaccines again, along with Meningitis C. Whilst it won’t be a pleasant experience at the time, it’ll be far better than for them to contract those diseases.
One side effect of being on paternity leave is the lack of exercise. At the back end of September, I bought myself a Fitbit Charge, as a way of motivating myself to do just a little bit more exercise, and whilst at work I’ve been able to hit my 10,000 steps target most of the time. This is because I commute to work by train, and so that involves walking to and from the railway stations at each end of the journey. More than half of the total steps I take each weekday are through commuting.
So, take away the commute, and my step count plummeted. My daily average halved – whilst some days I could manage 6000-7000 steps, there were others when I wouldn’t need to leave the house. In fact, over the five and a half weeks that I was off work, I beat my step goal only four times. These were:
Boxing Day – I took myself off to a local supermarket to get some lunch
22nd January – a trip in to work and an evening out
27th January – travelling down to London
28th January – travelling back from London
As it happens, between those last two days, I clocked up 35,000 steps, and the 27th was actually my most active day since September with over 20,000 steps. This was partly deliberate, as I had some time to kill in Leeds and so went for a walk.
Apart from my trip to London, I didn’t use public transport at all whilst off. Getting a baby in and out of a car is far easier than trying to manhandle a pram onto a bus or train, even if that would make me the ‘family man, manhandling the pram, with paternal pride‘ as per the Divine Comedy song. I’ve even driven to Leeds city centre a few times, which would probably shock the me of a year ago who wanted to drive but would still insist on using public transport where possible. It’s just easier when you have such a small person and all of their paraphernalia.
Now that I’m back at work, my step counts are returning to respectable levels. Since last Monday, I’ve only missed my target twice in eight days, and Saturday (where I had to work for a few hours) saw me overachieve by a few thousand steps. I’m hoping I can carry on meeting my targets from now on.
Last Monday marked my return to work, following five and a half weeks of customary holidays and then paternity leave. I was expecting it to be hellish, as our baby hasn’t been the most consistent sleeper – which is to be expected for someone that age. A week on, and I’m actually coping okay – I’m getting just about enough sleep most nights, albeit in chunks rather than a contiguous block. My performance at work hasn’t been quite as good this week as normal, but I put that down to another major factor which I will talk about soon. Don’t worry, it’s good news.
The week I spent working abroad last year was probably worse than last week in terms of tiredness. Back then, I had several nights with minimal sleep – or none at all in some cases – and very long working days. At least we’re getting some sleep, and I have had regular work days without any late nights or especially early starts. I did have to work for part of the day on Saturday though.
Going back to work has meant that I’ve needed to step back a little from my parenting responsibilities. So that I can get enough sleep for work, I’m not doing any overnight nappy changes. We’ve also stopped doing top-up feeds with formula (which was mainly my responsibility), so our baby is now almost exclusively breast-fed. This was our intention from the start; top-up feeds were only really a stop-gap because our baby wasn’t putting weight on initially. Now, Christine’s able to produce enough milk.
I’m glad that I was able to take off more than the minimum amount of time for paternity leave. Going back after two weeks would have been painful, and would have put more pressure on Christine. Those few extra weeks have made a positive difference and – most of the time – Christine has been coping well whilst I’ve been at work. Unfortunately, I only have a couple of weeks’ holiday allowance left, to last me until the end of July, so apart from some accumulated time of in lieu of overtime, I’m not going to be able to spend much more time at home during the week before Christine returns to work in the summer.
Christine spent the new year apart for only the second time since we met. Unfortunately, our little poppet had to go back into hospital on Wednesday, and so Christine stayed on the children’s ward overnight. They should be coming back home again today hopefully.
Visit London and Bristol – we managed London in October, but Bristol eluded us this year.
Not bad, on the whole. I’m hoping that I’ll have time over the next four weeks to go to the gym during the daytime whilst I’m on paternity leave, when it’s a bit quieter, and be able to make it a habit again. We could also do with an overseas holiday, although our baby will need a passport first. We can’t order one until we register her birth, which we haven’t been able to do as the local register office has been closed over the Christmas period. We have an appointment booked for next week though.
Another thing Christine and I both need to do is clear our credit card debts, which together amount to a four figure sum. Once clear, we can start rebuilding our savings. Christine also needs to re-start her driving lessons, which she paused when she got too pregnant, and pass her theory and practical driving tests.
And we need to continue to work on our new house. There’s still quite a bit of painting to do downstairs, for which we’ve already bought the paint for but haven’t had the time to actually apply it to the walls. And we still have a lot of unpacking to do. Once we’ve saved up enough money, we’ll then look into turning our spare downstairs room into a cloakroom with a toilet and basin, and consider re-wiring the upstairs of the house.
But the main thing we want to do is spend us much time we can with our new baby.
