Since I began running, yoga, and blogging, people pretty much only get me presents that are within that general sphere of gifts. I love it.
I adore being a girl and I truly love girly things, but becoming an active person makes me feel pretty Sasha-Fierce. The people that love me know this and support this growing trend.
One of my gifts this year was the Nike Fuel band. I actually bought this for my dad for Hannukah this year and he was pumped about it. At 54 the guy runs a minimum of three miles a day with weights attached to his body and goes on 20+ mile long bike rides on the regular. Yeah, he’s one of those people. Who would have thought I would slowly become my father- chest hair blazing and all. Kidding about that. I hope.
When I first got the band I was immediately drawn to the clean packaging similar to how Apple packages their products. I also found it fun to set up because it required that you fill in questions about yourself, and who doesn’t love talking about themselves. It also required you to set up your own goals based on your current fitness level as well as your height and weight. I even named my fuel band.
Fuel Band Name: Butt Kicker
So what is the fuel band? The fuel band is a bracelet (gotta keep it girly, ladies!) you wear on your wrist that tracks your movement and activity levels. You can keep it on all day and it will track steps taken, calories, and how active you are. Nike gives a preview here: Fuel Preview.
As soon as I got it I put it on around 10 p.m., there was not much activity to be had, but what I did find was that I was extra motivated to do well throughout the week with my fuel band on my wrist. When I set it up I created my goal of obtaining “3,000 fuel points” which was suggested to me as an active person.
This is my first week in review. What I found was that as the day progressed, if I noticed I was getting close to my goal but I wasn’t there yet I pushed myself whether it was walking slightly farther in a parking lot or doing jumping jacks at 11 p.m. to reach my goal. I regularly was reaching my goal, particularly through running. One 3 mile run could get me over 1,000 points. Here is what a close up looks like for a few different days:
On this day I only ran. This was yesterday. It was snowy out so I sat around all day, then got my act together and did four miles. Other than running, I was inactive all day. It isn’t even taking into account my multiple trips to the fridge which I believe counts for something.
This day in showing a day I went to yoga in the morning. You can see that yoga counts less than running. Sometimes I find that yoga works you out in such a different way that it should absolutely count, but the band can’t read the activity level and as a result it counts for less than it should. 
This day is showing a day I did not go to the gym at all, instead I went into the city. I walked from Penn station to a friends house roughly 20 minutes away. I power walked because it was freezing out. My friends and I then walked further uptown. At the end of the day I walked back to Penn. The times my activity levels were down I was filling my face with some fantastic NYC eats.
What I found interesting was a day without the gym but with going to the mall or Manhattan got me more points than a day I ran and did a yoga class. It focused more on movement throughout the day. I found this frustrating because the fuel band does not take yoga into account and it’s a huge part of my regimen. I have to admit though, I love playing with it and it’s fun to plug into the computer at the end of the day and see everything mapped out. It begins to track your progress over time, when you work out best, the time of the day, your overall weekly averages, monthly averages it even suggests goals for you and then sets them. You can also add friends and create challenges for yourself. The fuel band also syncs up with the Nike Running app which I have on my Nano. The fuel band cannot track distance which is another weakness for the runner, but as I said, it’s a fun toy. I would suggest it if you don’t care too much about the numbers. If you do care, this is not the gear for you.
Anyone else using the fuel?! What do you think of it?
Do you use something else that you would suggest to a yogi/runner?
52 Miles per Month 
This is a neat accessory to keep track of your daily activity =) I also love to do yoga and would be bummed out that it didn’t track it as much as running, even though I am super sweaty after a yoga video! It still is a handy gadget and I hope you continue sharing your activity stats =) Thanks for the review!!
Have a great day, hun!
❤
Christina
Now you have to do hot yoga 🙂
I haven’t tried the Fuel band, but I did have a Jawbone Up, which I would NOT recommend. I thought it would be cool because it would track my activity, plus it was water resistant (meaning I didn’t need to take it off to shower) and tracked sleep. Well, after about a month it crapped the bed. I got a replacement under warranty. That one didn’t even last a week. I said to hell with it and returned it for a refund. I’m still waiting to hear about the end all, be all of wearable activity trackers but so many of them have pros and cons it doesn’t seem that there is a clear winner.
Ugh, that’s a bummer. I just don’t think they’ve figured out the technology on this one, but they’re so desperate to put things out for the holidays. Fitness is also the new craze so everyone wants these things. I guess you have to take the data with a grain of salt and just know what you did and enjoy seeing the progress (or lack of!) that it shows.
I have a Fitbit flex which is similar to the fuelband. It doesn’t work on a points system, but tracks steps, calories and active minutes as well as sleep. I think they are all pretty similar but from your review I guess one thing the flex would have over the fuelband is that I can manually enter activities (I do it for Spin) and it adds that to my active minutes. I think it even gives me the equivalent steps 🙂
That’s a huge weakness for me! It seems so simple to add in a setting where you can auto adjust your workouts. This is a problem with the nike running app as well. It also doesn’t track on treadmills so it isn’t worth it to me when I’m running indoors and missing out on major runs.
I would love an app or wrist thingy that has the ability to combine all of the apps I use… Is that too much to ask for?!
I use BodyMedia… it tracks multiple things so any change in body temperature is counted, not just steps. I have not tried it for yoga or pilates, but it worked awesome when I did Barre classes, which is mostly static movement. Might be worth a shot? I’ll try to do a test once I get settled next week.
Ooooo! That’s interesting- I’ve never heard of that one! Definitely give it a review for me! From my understanding the vinyasa yoga class that I go to has the similar static movement that barre does.