The Blog

Written By Maggie Wagner, Marketing Coordinator, IT’S TIME TEXAS

The YOO HD personal fitness tracker.

Up until about 3 weeks ago, I had absolutely zero experience with personal fitness trackers. Then, the kind folks at YOO Fitness generously offered some of their devices to IT’S TIME TEXAS employees. I’ve always been very curious about just how active I am during an average day, and I was eager to start using my tracker right away.

Setup of the YOO HD was a fairly easy process. I just downloaded the YOO app, turned on my phone’s Bluetooth, and (after charging it) synced my YOO device to the app. The YOO HD itself can display the time of day, number of steps taken, miles walked, calories burned, time active, and how close the user is to reaching their daily fitness goal.  On the app, in addition to all of the features displayed on the device, the user can see their overall fitness history, view the number of hours they slept the night before, and set their personal fitness goal.

I started off doing the basic YOO challenge. Each day I needed 10,000 steps, 500 calories burned, 3 miles walked, 60 minutes of activity, and 8 hours of sleep. For the first day using the YOO, I purposely made absolutely no changes to my typical routine so I could get an idea of just how active I normally am, and I was very surprised by the results.

The easiest goal to meet was the 60 minutes of activity a day. Pretty much every second you’re up and on your feet gets counted as “active time”, so that goal was met without making any kind of special effort. It was a bit more difficult to reach the 10,000 steps and 3 miles goals. The first day I used the YOO, I only walked about 6,000 steps and 2.3 miles, far from what I was supposed to be aiming for. While those goals were difficult to meet, what I was most surprised by was the area in which my fitness was apparently most lacking: sleep. That first night, according to my YOO, my Actual Sleep Time was only 3 hours and 12 minutes, not even half of the 8 hour goal.

What was most interesting about the sleep stat was that I had been in bed the night before for at least 8 hours, and probably more. But my YOO told me that, even though I had been in bed and unconscious for that amount of time, only a small portion of that time was actually restful for my body. There were hours of empty time in my sleep schedule where I had definitely been unconscious, but apparently had not actually been sleeping properly.

With my first day’s results recorded, I was determined to make some improvements. I quickly noticed that on weekends, reaching all of my fitness goals was much easier. Before the sunset on both my first Saturday and Sunday with the YOO, a little buzzing from the tracker let me know that my daily goals had already been met. Not being at a desk all day made reaching the step goal much easier, and since steps are connected to distance traveled and calories burned, those goals became much easier to accomplish as well. This led me to the realization that I needed to actively look for ways to walk around more during the week while at work.

I still haven’t quite mastered the art of fitting all of my fitness goals into my workday, but thanks to the YOO, I have a good idea of where to start. Parking a little further away from the building, taking the dog for an extra walk, and printing in smaller batches so I have to make more trips back and forth to the printer are a few ways I’ve been able to sneak some extra steps into my day. If you’re looking for an easy and interesting way to get more fitness in your life, a personal fitness tracker like a YOO might be just right.

YOO Tips:

-Only keep your phone’s Bluetooth on while syncing the YOO device. Leaving the Bluetooth on throughout the day doesn’t really have any benefits, and it can drain your phone’s battery.

-Be sure to personalize your daily fitness goal. The app will start you at a basic level, but to get full use of the app and tracker, you should decide what fitness goal is appropriate for you and set it accordingly.  

-Utilize the alarm feature on the device. You can set the alarm on the app, and when you next sync the YOO device, the alarm will be set on the device as well. I like using the YOO alarm to wake up in the morning because it gently buzzes on my wrist to let me know it’s time to get up, rather than emitting any kind of jarring beeping or dinging.

-Charge the device when you’re least active so your most active times get recorded. Unlike with a phone, charging the YOO while you sleep might not be a great idea since one of the fitness areas the device monitors is amount and quality of sleep. Instead, I usually charge my device when I’m in the shower, or while I’m sitting down to watch a movie. Luckily though, the YOO HD doesn’t have to be charged very often. One charge is meant to last an entire week, and can last for up to 30 days!