The Year of Hope

About 25 days ago on July 10^th, I started my 100 Day Challenge along with some good friends who all had amazing intentions.  My goals seemed pretty simple.  Getting back to a healthy weight  and reconnecting with good friends who I’ve lost touch with.  Both my losing touch with good friends and gaining weight are such vicious symptoms of only focusing on my business, almost 24/7!

The first several days went gang-busters.  I started WeightWatchers, had a great work out streak going and was making plans to reconnect left and right.  I even was v-logging or writing about my progress.  Then, I did what I always do.  I worked – a lot.  And I didn’t pay any attention to my eating and I canceled plans with friends.   Working is an easy excuse for me.  I love what I do with a huge passion.

But it’s not healthy and I don’t like the way I feel and things have to change.  I weigh more than I ever have in my life and I really miss having fun just for funs sake and being with good people.  I start every day thinking “this is going to be the day that I only eat 23 points.”  It starts out good, but then either I have a lunch or evening event to go to and let myself get sucked into eating bad food.  If I don’t have any outside events, I’m still not in the clear.  I have an open floor plan office and my  “office” is right next to my kitchen.

These are all just excuses, but I can’t seem to get my eating under control.  So, I’m going to reach out and ask for all of your support.

• When you see my status message about my morning workout, PLEASE cheer me on.  I know it sounds silly, but it does make a HUGE difference.
• Please keep me accountable when you see me out at events or when we are out at lunch and I could be ordering salad and passing on dessert.   I love spending time with you all, but feel like I have to lock myself in my place so that I’m not tempted to eat unhealthy foods when I go out.
• Please share your stories and tell me how you lost weight.  What are your tricks for passing on the fatty food you know you should be staying away from.

And this is what I commit to…

• Sticking to my weightwatcher points – that’s it.  No excuses
• I’ll share my progress weekly, via the weightwatchers scale above.  I’m not proud of it and Can’t believe I weigh this much. I was 110 dripping wet all through high school and college and eating healthy was never a problem.  I totally need to reconnect with this part of who I know I am.
• 3 – 4 days of cardio a week – this is never a problem for me in the summer.  I love getting up early and jogging or bike riding.
• 10,000 steps a day
• I will find a study resource for weight training and stick to it.
• Reconnecting with 100 Day Challenge friends and writing/vlogging every day.  It makes a huge difference.  Posts will include how the day went and what I am thankful for which is a big part of bringing my intentions into existence.
• If I haven’t posted in a few days. Please check in and ask me why.

That’s all for now…..Thanks for listening and for your support!!

Thankful for

I don’t spend a lot of time tooting my own horn or cherishing my accomplishments.  Typically, I’m SUPER critical and always analyzing what I could have done better.  So taking the lead from a few good friends and as part of my daily practice of counting what I’m thankful for every day, I’m going to be thankful for my accomplishments, the people who have helped me along the way and the glory of the hard work that’s gone into it all.  Here’s a list of what I’m thankful for in regards to my accomplishments.

1.  I have my Masters in Direct Marketing from one of the best schools in the country – Northwestern University.  This program was a fantastic playground for the social media space — it taught me how to be strategic and to analyze data.

2.  In just a little over two years, I have taken my business from an idea, to a viable company that is recognized as one of the leaders in the industry.  I’m beyond proud that Crain’s Chicago Business has chosen to support our upcoming Social Media Master’s Summit as a Media sponsor and also delighted to have support from all of my friends and colleagues who are supporting the event by speaking or sponsoring the event.  Being affiliated with great people like Liz Strauss, Kim Moldofsky, Connie Burke, Christopher Barger, Betsy Ownes, Esther Crawford, Barry Krause and companies like Kenmore, General Motors, ConAgra and more is such an honor.

3. Crain’s Chicago Business is sponsoring our upcoming Social Media Master’s Summit — yes, I know, I said it above, but I’m so excited about this that I had to say it again.  :0)

4.  I own an awesome home.  Not only do I own an amazing condo, I got a great deal when I purchased it and would make money if I sold it today.  I’m also very thankful that I will soon be renting it out and taking advantage of low condo prices and interest rates.

5.  My business is successful enough that I can host monthly parties and give 100% of the door to charity. When I first started out, I hosted events where a portion of the door went to charity. I feel a great sense of pride that I can expose my friends and Windy City Social members to great charities and help people along the way.

As one of my practices, I said that every day I would write a list of things I was thankful for.  I decided to list them here — some of you are the reason I am thankful and I also have lots of great news to share.  I’ll try not to spill it all out at once, but here I go….

Re-connecting with friends - it feels so great to start to get together with people who I truly have a connection with and have things to talk about that are broader than who’s doing what and business.  I love going out and networking, but the backstabbing and pettiness has really be difficult lately.   The social media space is a weird space to be in right now.  On one hand, I feel tons of support from great people and in turn am honored to have helped out so many amazing men and women.  So many of us are seeing our hard work pay off and that makes me very happy.

Knowing who my friends aren’t - This may seem like a strange thing to be grateful for, but as much as there are amazing people in the space who I love and admire, there seems to be a little clique of people who have a really high opinion of themselves, that’s not based on fact or accomplishment, but them trying to create a fake buzz.  They also seem to by hyper critical of some people and are very unprofessionally and immaturely vocal about it.  Kind of like a 3rd grade tantrum. Very un-cool.  Truly happy people send out love, positive vibes & assume the best in others. I only have space for happy, positive people in my life.

Creating an amazing event! I have such a passion and love for marketing and am delighted with the amazing line-up I’ve created for my upcoming Social Media Summit.  I’m also blow away at the support from sponsors and so overjoyed that Crain’s is on board as our media sponsor.

On Saturday, July 10th, the day after my b-day, I started the 100 day challenge along with some very amazing women.

Thanks to Lilou, the creator of the 100 day challenge; Carol, founder of Positive Focus; Steffani, amazing Power of Attraction supporter and lover of life and the Michelle’s for coming out last night and helping me celebrate my b-day!! So jazzed up to co-create with them all.

The 100 Day Challenge was created by my friend Lilou as a way for people to manifest their dreams.  Thousands of people all over the world have taken part in the challenge and I was beyond honored to have her as part of my b-day celebration and have her support as I set out on my personal challenge journey.

Here’s my plan for the next 100 days!

Thanks again to Lilou, Carol, Steffani for the motivation, your practices inspired me, so I hope you don’t mind me using some of them.

Intentions
1. Release unhealthy weight, getting back to a healthy body
2. Nourish my spirit through friendship and letting my intuition guide the way

I will accomplish these intentions by:

Nourish My Spirit

1. Meditate every day
2. Make a list of what I am grateful for every day
2. Create the day with my friend Michelle, each of us sharing the amazing things we accomplish that day
3. Let life flow

Getting back to a healthy weight

1. Join Weightwatchers and follow the program successfully
2. Walk 10k steps a day
3. 3 days of cardio a week
4. 2 days of weight training a week
5. Reward myself with stickers on my calendar each time I work out

I plan on having things evolve every 25 days or so, but this is my starter list!!

As I get ready for my Birthday, I’m cleaning house both literally and figuratively.  As I’m working on creating a positive, amazing future, some interesting things happened to me over the past few weeks.

A MATURE CONVERSATION BETWEEN FRIENDS CAN MAKE THE DIFFERENCE

Most recently, I had some very amazing, adult conversations with friends.  The first was feeling left out of the group and was mature enough to try to figure out what she might be doing wrong.    I  give her a tremendous amount of credit for not blaming everyone else and just letting me know how she felt and asking what was going on.  Really it was nothing, and I didn’t even realize she had been feeling left out.  Our conversation resulted in us feeling even closer as friends.

MY FRIEND COMING TO ME FOR ADVICE PROMPTED ME TO DO THE SAME

Well that prompted me to get a hold of a friend that I haven’t seen too much lately.  We’ve been friends for years and she’s the kind of friend whose conversations just click.  We are in the same field and are totally on the same page about a lot of things.  We could talk to for an hour and it would seem like only ten minutes had passed and  even if we don’t talk for a while, when we do finally talk, it seems like it had just been days, not weeks or months had passed by.  I was feeling really bad about that because I really value that friendship and somewhere along the line we had lost touch and talking daily turned into weekly and then monthly.

We were recently email back and forth about one of her friends who was in the hospital – that’s an entirely other blog post.  Because of what happened, it made me realize how lucky I am to be surrounded by so many amazing people and that I’ve been so busy working on my business that I’ve lost touch with a lot of them or only focused on the business part of the relationship

So now it’s my b-day and I sent out an email about getting people together for various b-day fun.  She couldn’t make it but suggested lunch.  That would be cool, but what I really wanted was to hang out at her beach house which I hadn’t been to in ages.  Nothing can beat getting away with friend and relaxing in a beach chair and loosing yourself in a super cheesy novel, eating wayyyy too much and hanging out in front of a bond fire.  I had really missed that time with friends getting away.  So taking the lead from my first friend, I asked my  about the beach house and asked if I hadn’t been invited because of something I did.

I was so happy that she responded right away and said that I had always been so busy and hadn’t been able to come that she fell out of the habit of inviting me.   WOW, did that make me feel great.  And to think I was agonizing over it when a little simple conversation could have cleared it up ages ago.  She proposed a few weeks and big shocker – I kind of do have things going on in the city, but am going to make it a priority to change my plans so I can get a way.  :0)

THE ONLY WAY TO LET SOMEONE KNOW YOU ARE UPSET IS TO ASK!

The third friend had seemed mad about something for a few weeks. I saw a few snide facebook posts, gotten some curt, short emails and felt the cold shoulder when I saw them at events.  This is someone I had been friends with for a really long time, so it bothered me that they were upset.  I called them to see what was up and they were busy and I hadn’t heard from the since.  Long story short, my friend was  upset about something, called and we cleaned it up.  The whole time each really listening to and understanding each other’s point of view.

AND THEN THERE WAS A FEW WEEKS AGO

The past few weeks have had a few challenges.  I was dealing with crappy people and luckily have both of the out of my life.   I’m going to spend about as much time on talking about them as they deserve (very little!)

The first had a party, I responded at the last minute – that’s just how I roll.  I love and appreciate getting invited to events and parties and don’t always remember to respond.  I was particularly excited about this one because it would have been supporting another friend’s business.  I ended up having a call with one of my mentors/board members right before the party and was jazzed about my to-do list and also had issues with my car.  I opted to stay home and work vs. spending two hours on the el/bus to get there and back.   I send an email letting the person know because I didn’t want to interrupt their party.  Did I get a call or email with concern from said hostess?  Nope, an INCREDIBLY rude DM and then she un-followed me.   I also hear she’s been talking about me behind my back.

MESSAGE TO HATER #1  — Get over it, I couldn’t make it to your party.  I didn’t mean to be rude and it had nothing to do with you.

WHEN ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

The second had been who I thought was a good friend for the past few years.  I have helped her tremendously via free tables and exposure at my events, letting her into my events for free, getting her involved with sponsors and talking her up to them, etc.  She did reciprocate by helping me a little, but nothing to the extent of the help I gave her.  That would have been ok, because I like helping people, but when it came time where she could have helped me, she didn’t even think about it.

So when she asked me to hook her up with yet another sponsor, I decided, in the spirit of mature conversation, to tell her that I wasn’t comfortable helping her and a little bit about why.  Did she take the time to find out more about how I felt or how we could work things out?  Of course not, she went on a 3^rd grade tirade about how great she was and how just having her at my events was an honor.  There was much more, but I’m not going to waste time on it.  The rub is that she decided that if I wasn’t going to help her any more than I wasn’t worth being friends with.  We had a very unpleasant conversation and I unfriended her which sparked a VERY immature rant and have a very public tantrum.  I kept quiet about it, but did tell some friends who have been a great support.

MESSAGE TO HATER #2 – We should all be helping each other in this small social media community we live in.    No matter how big you think you are, when you are part of someone’s event, it gives you exposure, and you should be grateful.   There is great value in being humble and appreciating other people.  With all the help I gave you, I never got a thank you or felt any gratitude.  There is space for all of us to be successful and I wish you and everyone else the best in your life.  Move on and leave the stress behind.

AND OF COURSE, I’M NOT SNOW WHITE

I realize that in every situation, that there are two people involved and that each plays a part in what happens.  I wish everyone felt that way – but we can only control ourselves. So here’s what I think I could have done better.

Situation #1 – Responding at the last minute is rude, so is canceling at the last minute.  When there’s someone I really want to see at one of my events and they don’t show up, it totally bums me out.  I need to make more of an effort to really decide what I want to be committed to and then follow through.  If I can’t make it, I’ll follow-up with a phone call. So much is lost in the conversation via email and dm.  I wonder how differently things would have gone if I would have just called.

Situation #2 – Not really sure, I still would draw boundaries, but maybe would have tried to figure out why the person felt so affronted by the conversation that they had to go on the attack and tell me how great they were – I should have realized that this person needed more boosting up that I thought.  The more someone has to TELL you how great they are, the less great they usually are.  If  I was in the situation again, I’d make sure they knew I wasn’t doing this to hurt them, but to make sure the friendship is equal.  My other takeaway from the situation is that maybe some relationships just run their course.  I decided I wasn’t going to give any more and that seemed to be all they wanted out of the relationship.   I also get that this lack of ability to give stems from the fact that they don’t even have enough for themselves.  People can’t be giving if they are struggling to make it.

ONWARD AND UPWARD

To celebrate my b-day tomorrow I am going out with some very special friends for apps, drinks and to start “the 100 day challenge” which is an amazing, life changing program, my friend Lilou started.  We will all be picking a goal and then for 100 days, powerfully making that happen!! Stay tuned as I will be announcing my goal and how you can play along.

Wow, that was a lot for one post, hope you learned a little

HUGS

On Thursday, June 17^th, I had the absolute pleasure of attending one of my favorite events of the year – Crain’s Fast Fifty Breakfast.  A Celebration of entrepreneurs who took the tiger by the tail and made great things happen.   The morning starts with networking, followed by a panel of mavericks who have seen great business success (fyi – WCS Fast Fifty list appearance targeted for 2012 :0) )

At $70, it was a pricey ticket, but well worth it for the inspirational messages from the speakers and the quality of the attendees.

Here are some highlights from the panel

Julie Smolyansky, @juliesmolyansky, CEO of Lifeway Foods blew me away with her background and the story of how she took over her family business in her 20’s when her father suddenly passed away of a heart attack.  She had been involved as Director of Sales and Marketing since 1997, but likely wasn’t expecting to take over the entire company so early in life.  The company stock actually tanked when she took over and turned around as sales increased by $60mm under her watch.

Some great takeaway’s from Julie were

Leverage every situation to your advantage – they did this when the swine flu broke out and yogurts were named as one of the foods that would fight the flu and also again when a competitor stepped out of the liquid yogurt market and Dominick’s needed product.  She even remembered her dad getting a call late in the day, running to the factory to get product and putting it in his car and driving it over himself

How many times have you stayed up late at night, schlepped things across the city, written your own emails, etc…. You can’t be afraid to get down and dirty – and work your tail off when you are building your business.  It’s not easy.  Hopefully you are doing what you love, like I am, but none the less, it’s hard.

You can do good things and still be profitable – AMEN!  I’ve built my business on hosting fundraisers for great local charities – the amount of proceeds donated always varied from 10 – 50%, but there was always nice exposure for the charity.  Tomorrow, June 29^th, I launch a series of monthly events where 100% of the door goes to charity.  The response has been overwhelming – I look forward to helping a new charity and meeting new people every month.

Jason Beans, CEO, Rising Medical Solutions started his company after he experiences frustration with medical bills he accumulated from an accident in college.  He grew his business from a 2 person home based operation to over 200 people.  He took a bad personal situation and leveraged his experience to help other people.

What life experiences could you leverage?  Do you learn from your mistakes?

Here are some of my tweets from the event.  Not sure who said them, but they are all golden nuggets from people who’ve come a long way….

• Even a billion dollar company started w one client.

• Be willing to task a risk in ways that the odds in your favor. Don’t be afraid to fail. great learning experience

• You can do good things and still be profitable. @juliesmolyansky

• Create a place you’d like to come to every day and people will work hard for you

• Helping as many people as you can is the magic formula to being successful

• Every situation is an opportunity to create a service for someone else. This is an amazing time

First of all, thanks to Andrea Metcalf (http://www.andreametcalf.com) for taking the time to train me the other day.   I met Andrea when I took part in her “Naked Fitness Challenge” where I learned a ton about healthy eating and also went from not being able to jog around the block to run/jogging 5 miles and she’s been nice enough to offer to create a training program for me.

Andrea is a fitness expert on the NBC Today Show, readers of the Oprah.com, and weekly NBC and bettertv.com segments.  I feel very lucky to have her as my fitness coach.

I was a little scared to work out since I have problems with my knee and shoulder from a car accident, but I told her about my injuries and she catered the workout around them.   We worked several muscle groups and I felt the amazing burn that was a cross between,” Wow, this feels great” and “What the heck did I get myself into. “  What I loved most about the workout was that got close to my injured areas was strengthening and healing.  Nothing hurt.

As a total added bonus – as if getting back into shape isn’t enough, Andrea gave me samples of some yummy jerky from www.healthysanckin.com.  They have a variety of jerky ranging from beef sirloin with cranberries and blueberries to teriyaki chicken breast with mango and papaya.  I called and ordered a 24 pack to try out all the flavors.  Each stick only has 50 calories and 12 grams of protein.

My muscles feel a little achy today – but in a good way.  We are going to work out again next week and ‘till then, I’m going to work out virtually with Andrea via her “Pain Free Neck and Back” video that I got during my participation in the Naked Fitness program.

Now that I have my cardo in shape, I’m totally into integrating weight training into my weekly work out schedule.

Here’s a link to one of Andrea’s videos on Sexy Legs!!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vNcZu2eFgE&feature=fvw

It’s easy to get fit if you just do a little every day.

Last week, I attended one of my favorite events of the year – Crain’s Fast Fifty Breakfast, a reception and breakfast panel that honors entrepreneurs who have excelled in their fields and created great success for their businesses.

I registered for the event late, per the usual, thanks to Megan from Crain’s Special Event department.  Since I didn’t register via regular channels, I didn’t receive a confirmation before the event and had to count on googling the event to find the location.

After waking up early in the AM, I headed to the Renaissance, thinking it was the location for the 2010 breakfast.  As it turned out, I was looking at old information and the location this year was a few blocks away.  I wasn’t alone – there were two other people at the Renaissance who made the same mistake.

I was a little bummed, because I had rushed to get there, but decided to get on my netbook and try to find the correct location.  One of the other way word people was freaking out and just kept talking about how mad she was about this and that.  A few times, she said she couldn’t believe how calm I was.

The third person who was at the hotel with us ran to the gift shop and looked in the Crain’s, finding the correct location.  We decided to walk over together (it was literally two blocks away.)  The woman who was with us took a cab alone because she was wearing heals.

In our walk over to the correct venue the guy and I totally connected professionally, and in minutes, talked about several ways we could help each other out – so being in the wrong place and making the best of it resulted in a new business relationship.

The complaining woman, on the other hand, really got nothing.  As we were walking in, I saw her complaining to the people at the registration desk.

I just picked-up my name badge, said, “hi” to my contact and found an open spot.  Oh,  I was at the perfect table too – I met two potential business contacts there too!!

So the moral of the story is not to struggle with where you are at, but go with it, get you are there for a reason, make the best of it and let good things happen!

I’ve never been to Jimmy John’s before so I was excited to hear about their “Freaky Good Deal” of a sandwich for $1.00. Subway is my go-to fast sandwich shop since they have several low-fat/calorie sandwiches.

Having never seen any similar advertizing from Jimmy John’s I decided to tweet @jimmyjohns and asked if they had healthy options.  I was impressed by the quick response and even more impressed by the answer…

@jimmyjohns

@windycitysocial I have 5 subs under 4 grams of fat and you can get an Unwich lettuce wrap – check it out at http://bit.ly/Unwich

11:31 AM Jun 10th via web in reply to windycitysocial

There were several pictures of HUGE lines at various Jimmy John’s around the city early on, so I decided to wait till 2:30 p.m. when I headed out to their location on Clark in Andersonville.  The line moved quickly and I waited with anticipation to order my Unwich.  I got an unpleasant surprise when I was told by the cahier that the Unwich was not included in the offer.

I asked to talk with the manager and actually spoke with Jason who said he worked at corporate on promotions.  He took a pretty hard stance on not letting me have an Unwich, ‘till I told him that I didn’t eat bread then he said it would be cool.  I definitely was not happy with this interaction.  You would think that a new customer would be exactly who they are trying to attract with this promotion and the chance to show someone new that you have healthy items, would have been a huge win!

So here’s what I thought

The Unwich was pretty good.  I had the BLT and the lettuce to tomato and bacon ratio was DEFINITELY in the lettuces favor.  Almost too much lettuce.

The promotion – what a cool idea to drive new business than to let people try a sandwich for $1.00.

@jimmyjohns – truly what tipped my decision over the edge was how cool the @jimmyjohns was.  Eating healthy is important to me, so it’s nice to know that Jimmy John’s has healthy options.  I never would have known this since they don’t advertise about healthy choices like Subway does, and they certainly don’t make it very obvious even in store.  I had to really hunt to find the unwich on the signage and the people at the store didn’t event know which options were under 5 grams of fat.

I thought it was jerky that I had to complain to try the Unwich for $1.00.  It was especially frustrating that I told Jason that @jimmyjohns told me about the Unwich and he didn’t care.  I had tweeted about the offer and been re-tweeted about 10 times.  He didn’t seem to care about that either.

Jimmy John’s could also really improve their signage and marketing regarding healthy choices.  I know that I’m not the only one trying to eat better.  Take a look at the Subway signage.  They make it very easy for people to make good choices.

Six weeks ago, I couldn’t event jog a mile.  This past Thursday, I ran 5miles!! Well, I did four sets of jogging 15 minutes and walking 5, so I didn’t RUN the whole time.  I did complete 60 minutes of jogging and 25 minutes of walking.

Besides my determination, love of the lakefront and burning desire to lose 35lbs, I have to give credit to a few very important tools that helped me achieve my goals

1. Cool Running’s Couch to 5 K program. This is a free podcast that you can download onto your ipod – I mentioned it in my April 18^th post as I was just starting the program.

What I love about the podcast: I’m overall very delighted with the program – who doesn’t love jogging to a cheesy, retro beat!?  Having music to jog to makes such a difference and the run/walk method helped me ease back into jogging with overexerting myself and becoming injured (this has happened before.)

What could be better: I did have to make a slight adjustment.  I’m a VERY slow jogger.  I go at about a 13 – 14 minute pace.  I’m ok with that for now.  I’m not really built for speed and I do get my heart rate up to a very good slow burn of 145+.  The podcasts are definitely created for faster joggers.  So I do the warm up and the middle part twice, then to cool down.  It would be cool if they had similar tapes for slower joggers so we didn’t have to listen to the middle portion twice

1. Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS Watch

I’ve had this watch for years and typically use it for hiking out west.  It costs about $350 and you can find out more at www.garmin.com I decided to use it on my runs to track my progress.  The watch tracks distance, pace, time and if you are wearing a Garmin heart strap, calories burned.  It also displays your path, which is ideal for hiking, not necessary for most jogs.  You can enter splits, which is helpful for sprints or multiple jogs.   You can also download information to the computer, but I have yet to figure how to do so.

What I love about the Garmin: Accurately tracking distance is such a huge help with my training.  The data geek in me likes to see the progress.  The pace feature be helpful as I work on increasing my speed.

When I hike, the map feature is totally helpful, especially when trying to backtrack.  The watch also has an elevation feature – definitely not necessary for Chicago, super useful when hiking out west.

What could be better: The watch is very clunky and I tried the heart strap, which had an accurate heart rate reading, but I felt the calories were low. It would also be cool if the watch monitored steps – the I wouldn’t have to wear my Garmin, Polar AND pedometer.

1. Fit Bit! Love, love, LOVE my fit bit! It’s like a pedometer on steroids.  You can see from the pic that it’s a tiny, black clip on device that tracks steps, mileage and calories burned.  You can purchase them at www.fitbit.com for about $100.  I purchased mine on Ebay when they were backordered at the Fitbit website – I paid $175 for mine, and event that was worth it.  All of your information is synced onto your personal fitbit.com webpage.  You just have to have the fitbit usb device plugged into your computer.  If you walk within 15 feet of the device, the info is transmitted to your  web page—sooo cool.

What I love about the fitbit: it’s very convenient to just clip on and go.  It’s also helpful having a visual representation of how many steps I’ve gone each day.  I was so floored to discover that on days when I’m just sitting at my computer I go less than 1,500 steps – floored to the point that it was like a slap in the face.  No wonder I gained 35 lbs!! If the average person should go 10k steps a day and I’m wasn’t event going 2,000 the mystery started to unfold.

Now I make a conscientious effort to walk / jog 45 minutes or more each morning and then in the evening if necessary.  I also try to make time to take public transportation, which increases steps as I get myself to the el / bus

What could be better: I’ve almost lost the fitbit several times while working out.  It would be really helpful if it had some sort of eye hole on the back that I could attach a string through and then tie to a belt loop.  The accuracy on mileage is also off compared to the Garmin, which I’m assuming is more precise because it bases mileage off the gps

1. Polar heart rate monitor:  I’ve been using a Polar heart rate monitor for years! It tracks my heart rate and calories burned while working out.

What I love about my Polar: Tracking my heart rate during workouts has been essential to my weight loss progress.  When I first starting using the polar, I found that I was actually working out too hard!  I learned that by keeping my heart rate in a fat burning zone rather than a cardio zone, I would burn more fat. I also get in a few cardio workouts a week as that helps keep my heart healthy.

What could be better: It drives me BONKERS that you have to send your polar in to get the battery changed. What drives me MORE BONKERS is that I can’t figure out where to send the stinking watch.  I have about three of them because the batter keeps wearing out and I don’t want to be without one, so I get a new one.  My last one lasted less than a year.