My 3 Day-Old Nike+ FuelBand

Today is my third full day of life with the Nike+ FuelBand, and so I’m ready to give it a more comprehensive review than last time, when I had only been wearing it for one hour.

The first thing that I’ve noticed while wearing the FuelBand, is how little I move when I’m watching TV or sitting at the computer.  This isn’t a confessional, so I don’t need to tell you how much time I spend doing these things normally, but I will tell you that doing these things for ten minutes gets me about 2-3 points.  This thing is a great gauge for inactivity.

On the flip side, the FuelBand also makes me feel way better about myself for doing pretty much anything besides TV/computer.  Vacuuming, going to the bathroom, and eating lunch are all impressive point-getters.  I suddenly feel very proud of myself for doing every-day tasks – the FuelBand is a general ego-booster.  It’s also inspired me to manically flail my left arm (the side I wear the band on) around a lot more than usual.  I’ve heard some people refer to this as “cheating,” but that arm is getting pretty worn out, so I think it’s actually just an amazing workout.

Obviously the best thing about the FuelBand is the interactive aspect of it.  If I could get more fuel points for it, I’d spend all day staring at the pretty colors on the Nike+ page.  Nike knows how to make me feel good too – when I meet my goal, they can’t graphically celebrate enough.  When I don’t, Nike gently lets me down and reminds me to keep trying (I would like to note that I only failed the first day because I didn’t start until 4:30PM… and today, if I don’t get off the computer soon and get 300 more points).

The downside to the FuelBand?  This depends on your expectations.  No, it isn’t waterproof… no, it doesn’t measure your heart rate… no, it doesn’t have a GPS… and no, it doesn’t measure your sleep.  If you expect it to do everything, you’ll probably be disappointed.  If you expect it to give you points when you wave your arm around, and let you compare how much you waved your arm around with other people, then you will not be disappointed.

After three days, I still love my Nike+ FuelBand, and it has been helping a lot in my goal of three hours of exercise a week.  I’ll blog more about how embarrassingly out of shape I have discovered myself to be in my recent workouts, later.  For now, I’m very happy that I and my FuelBand have gotten myself to move around at all.