If you don't have one and want some easy motivation for keeping track of your healthy habits, GET ONE!
I recently purchased a Jawbone UP24. While my friends have the Nike Fuelband or FitBit, I decided on the Jawbone for 2 reasons. One, it is much cheaper than the other two popular bands (I got mine on Groupon for $62 and they are also on Amazon for between $48 for the UP and $79 for the UP24). The Fuelband and FitBit run for $100 and up. The second reason for getting the Jawbone was because it syncs to my Strava app. If you aren't familiar with Strava, it is a fitness tracker app for cycling, walking and running. I enjoy cycling and want to make sure that activity is tracked accurately. Some cyclists wrap the other bands around their shoe. Some just manually enter the activity and how hard they perceived they went. Neither is a perfect option. When the app syncs to Strava, it can tell my distance and speed. Using the calculation for my weight, it should be able to get a fairly accurate account of how many calories I've burned. (*Note: as I'm a fair weather rider and I live in Oregon, I have not yet been on my bike in the 2 weeks I've had the UP24).
A quick run down of an activity tracker's abilities. The primary things it tracks is activity, food and sleep. You have to manually enter your food, but it has many choices to pick from, including foods from restaurants. For activity and sleep, it tracks automatically. However, you can put in a workout so the app knows you were doing more than walking and updates your calories burned. What I like about having this app is that I can look at my calories burned vs how much I have eaten and see the difference. As I am in the weight loss phase, I am shooting for a significant deficit.
The thing about the activity trackers is that you can really become obsessed with hitting your goals for the day. I had a busy morning today with few steps and only tend to average about 3,000 steps at work, so I know that I'll be doing some activity when I get home to get to that magic 10,000 steps. If I can't get outside, I walk around the living room, jog in place or do an exercise video. Those bump up the steps pretty well and I feel great at the end of the day having achieved a small, but significant goal.
Sometimes you just need motivation to get up and do activity. Sometimes you just need a reality check to see that you really don't move as much as you think you do. When I bought this, my reason was the latter, but as I started using it, I found that it really gives me that motivation to just MOVE.
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