My disconnected vacation

Although the destination we’d chosen for our late-August vacation is renowned for its water park, indoor-outdoor aquarium, tropical beaches, and world-class restaurants, my attitude heading into it was that for me, vacation would be a success if I had plenty of time to read and go for walks.

I definitely got my wish – and then some. With the kids happy to avail themselves of all the sun-and-sea recreation free of parental oversight, I had all the time I wanted to sit poolside and read. And I had time for walking, too. Along with a 4-mile run early every morning, while the rest of my family slept, I fit in a late-afternoon walk on the beach every day, sometimes on dry sand, sometimes in the shallowest waves, with the warm water bathing my feet as I made my way first up the island’s extensive shoreline and then back down.

Untethering from email and Facebook was a big deal; not having Internet for filing any articles or doing any work at all while away was an even bigger deal; but I was resigned to both before we left. Internet fees and roaming charges at our destination were just too expensive for us to consider getting on line at all, and I was both apprehensive and curious as to what a fully disconnected vacation would feel like.

But it turned out I was even more disconnected than I anticipated. Upon boarding our flight to the Bahamas, Rick and I both set our phones to airplane mode, but I still planned to keep my phone close at hand so that I could listen to podcasts I’d downloaded before we left, take pictures with my phone’s camera, and time my runs and walks. So I was unprepared for my phone to stop working altogether on the third day of the trip. No more podcasts or photos or stopwatch or alarm clock or any other phone functions I’d come to depend on.

And then the following day, mysteriously enough, my Fitbit stopped working. No more timing my workouts with that, or logging my steps or miles. Suddenly I was far more disconnected than I’d imagined being.

Which meant I had to get by without my usual electronic dependencies. Without my phone’s clock function or the stopwatch on my Fitbit, I had to time runs and walks with my watch, like I used to do back in the 90’s. I had to trust myself that 45 minutes or whatever time I’d set as my goal was a decent workout, even without being able to see just how many steps or miles that entailed. Without access to the podcasts stored in my phone, I turned instead to my 12-year-old for help with audio entertainment to keep me engaged during my run; she lent me her iPod, on which she’d stored the audiobook version of a middle grade novel by a favorite author of hers, and while I ran, I listened not to my favorite NPR podcasts but to the story of a sweet but frustrated 12-year-old trying to get along with her disorganized family.

Though it was disappointing to return home with what felt like a fistful of broken appliances, and losing all the photos that I’d taken early in the trip with my phone was certainly unfortunate, it was good for me to be forced to be so disconnected. It turns out exercise feels good even when you don’t have an official readout of your step count at the end. It turns out middle grade fiction is pretty well-crafted these days. It turns out I can wake up at a decent time merely by relying on my natural biorhythms and not the chirp of my iPhone at a pre-set time.

Most importantly, I did lots of reading and took lots of walks. That, after all, is what I had hoped to do. And all four of us had a great time together. The day after we got home, I was able to get my phone repaired and replace the Fitbit. Being disconnected is a good experience, at least for the course of a weeklong vacation. In a way, I’m glad it happened. It was a great vacation, glitches not withstanding. In fact, maybe the glitches made it an even better vacation.

Don't belittle us Fitbitters

My husband had a medical appointment on the fourth floor of a building I’d never visited before, and the receptionist suggested I wait for him at the café one flight up. I followed her directions to the elevator, and when I got there, found myself thinking, “Most buildings have a staircase right near the elevator; I should find it and walk.” Not surprisingly, the staircase was easy to find, and once I was in the stairwell, I had another thought. “If there’s a fifth floor, there’s probably a sixth floor. Maybe a seventh and eighth floor. Let’s go see.”

So I started walking upstairs. It turned out the building was nine stories tall.

Not so long ago, this would have seemed like a rather frivolous use of time to me. But now I’m a Fitbit user, or Fitbitter, as I prefer to say, and no amount of physical activity is too frivolous to pursue.

Other Fitbitters understand exactly what I mean. By way of explanation for those not yet familiar with this new piece of gadgetry, a Fitbit is a small device that you can wear either as a pendant or as a bracelet. As you go about your day, it measures your steps, miles covered on foot, minutes of high aerobic activity, stairs climbed, and calories burned. And we Fitbitters find ourselves doing the nuttiest things to boost those simple numbers.

Some of this information – the metrics surrounding physical activity – is not new to me. As a long-time runner, I’m quite accustomed to measuring mileage. And as a daily “streak” runner, I’m accustomed to counting days of my streak as well.

But Fitbit is different because you don’t set it just for exercise. There’s no on/off function to denote when a particular activity begins and ends. It measures literally every step you take during every 24-hour period. If I’m up at 3 a.m. to use the bathroom, it registers the 18 steps from bed to the bathroom and back. At work, if I walk from my desk to the photocopier, Fitbit credits me with the steps. If I walk upstairs to get something, forget what I’m there for, walk back downstairs, remember what I wanted, walk upstairs again, retrieve the item, and return downstairs, Fitbit counts every step and each staircase as well.

And this is what makes us Fitbit users a little crazy. Whereas once we might have tried to economize on, say, trips from aisle to aisle in the supermarket, now every time we double back for an overlooked item gives us a few more steps. No parking spaces near the door? No problem – the extra walking means extra steps! One Fitbit user complained that her newfound obsession had the unintended consequence of making her teenage sons even lazier: now they know they don’t need to get up and fetch their own glass of water, because she’ll do it just a score a few more steps.

Back in my 20s when I began my pursuit of fitness, much was made of the fact that the human body has to spend at least 20 minutes in the target zone of 70% above resting heart rate before any fat is burned. Therefore, to be productive, we insisted back then, aerobic activity has to go on for at least 20 minutes.

This vague grasp of exercise physiology resulted in my unwittingly internalizing the thought that by extension, activity that goes on for less than 20 minutes is useless. If I couldn’t fit in a run or even a walk that lasted at least 20 minutes, I wouldn’t bother to run or walk at all.

And while the exercise physiology hasn’t changed – it does still take 20 minutes in the target aerobic heart rate zone for the body to burn fat rather than muscle – the Fitbit makes even the shortest journey on foot count for something. Last week, I arrived at work ten minutes early, so I took a ten-minute walk, knowing it would earn me a few hundred more steps on the daily meter. Not long ago, I wouldn’t have considered a ten-minute walk worth changing my shoes for.

But the appeal is philosophical as well as practical. The message of the Fitbit is that every little bit counts. Maybe you can’t do a five-mile run, but you can still get a few hundred steps in by taking a ten-minute walk. That’s a message about exercise, sure, but I would argue it’s also a message about life.

Good deeds, courageous acts, and noble gestures can’t be measured by a digital timer on your wrist the way steps can. But the Fitbit reminds me daily that doing just a little bit, whether it’s steps or something more altruistic, is better than nothing. Do what you can, even if you can’t do all you might wish. A little bit can still help. Anything is more than nothing. And far beyond calories burned or fitness goals achieved, that’s a lesson well worth learning.