Wellness Wednesday – Grief and Identity

Posted on December 19, 2018 by Thistle

Most people have heard of the five stages of grief, and by now many people know that these stages aren’t exclusive, linear, or clear-cut. I, for example, never really do much with the bargaining stage, but bounce between denial and anger for ages before slipping into depression and then back for another wrestling match between denial and anger. It takes me forever to get to the acceptance stage, probably because my complex-PTSD makes it difficult for me to trust that the cause of grief is over and I’m safe to let my guard down.

Three years ago, I was dealing with heavy deferred grief from the extremely horribly year my family spent in Boston. I kept pushing myself to try to move forward, but I still had so much work to do processing my grief. Then one day while I was working with my tarot cards, I drew the Five of Cups and something became clear to me. The Five of Cups is a card of nostalgia. The past is gone, and you can look back either with fondness or with longing. What this card told me is that it was okay to look backwards and grieve as long as I needed to, but I couldn’t move forward until I was ready to let go of that past.

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I left denial and anger behind a long time ago, but I’ve clung to depression and sadness because acceptance is too frightening. To accept is to open myself to the possibility that I was too hasty to do so, and then get hurt again. In this particular situation, I know this is a PTSD trust issue. And I’m tired of myself at this point. I’m tired of clinging out of fear. I’m finally in a place where I can say enough is enough, I’m okay, I can let go. (A thing, I admit, that is far easier to say than do.)

I’ve started looking forward to 2019. I like to make goals, but my goals over the last few years have been plenty-yet-aimless. Each goal may have an individual aim, but my goals in general have not been leading me anywhere. This is because I personally have felt anchorless. I’ve had no direction, no purpose, no interests, no identity, and no desires beyond survival. I let go of nearly everything I cared about in Boston, and the things I kept have mostly been kept out of habit. Instead, I’ve spent a lot of these years filling my time with Other Stuff, not necessarily things that make up who I am. I’ve not done a good job re-finding my self and my center. It’s time for that to change now.

I remember a time when I was absolutely the person I was, if that makes sense. I had definite interests, opinions, and a way of life. I was very sure about my place in the world and where I wanted to go, even if I didn’t always stay on the path as often as one might have hoped. Nearly all of that is gone, however. Dreams, hopes, plans – the path in general is just gone. Today, there’s next to nothing left of the person that existed five years ago, and this new person is a framework waiting for input. This particular fact has daunted me, angered me, and distressed me over the last few years, but I’ve begun to see it as exciting. I now have the power to shape the person I’m going to be.

Which brings me back to my aim in 2019. I want to have purpose again. I want to have dreams that are more than just copies of old dreams, or wishing to be back where I was. I want to sort out my desires in life and for my future, discover interests, find hobbies and passions, and discard the things that are no longer serving me. This is what I’ve been exploring over the last month: accepting the past and moving forward, and deciding who I want to be in the future. To look at it the way I look at an overblown, wordy first novel draft: It’s time to edit, to cut out all the filler and pare down to essentials, to remove the padding and add purpose/direction to each line in order to allow the true, full story to come through. Back in 2010, I wrote this on  my blog and I think the metaphor works just as well for my current situation:

A story will grow on its own as you write, but if you don’t have a skeleton, you’ll be throwing words on without a backbone to structure them and they’ll end up oozing all over the place.

Goals and direction will provide the skeleton. It’s up to me to clean up the oozing mess of the last few years and then rebuild until I am a whole, complete person again. Some things are pretty obvious: I want to be healthy, fit, strong, and athletic, and I want my external self to reflect my internal self so that I’m comfortable in my own skin. I want to be financially secure and stable, and eventually comfortable. I want to feel safe and loved in my own home. I want to feel capable of success and of getting things done. Less obvious: I need to find out if my lifelong identity as a writer still holds true today. I also need to decide what I want to do with my future in a few years when my kids are all away at college and it’s time to move into the next phase of my life. That’s all pretty vague for now, but it’s the baseline for planning and a new start that I can look forward to instead of dread.

Posted in Personal, Wellness | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Skyward, by Brandon Sanderson

Posted on December 18, 2018 by Thistle

All her life, Spensa has been branded a coward’s daughter. Her father was a space-fighter, and in a critical moment, fled from battle and was shot down by his own team. Spensa is determined to prove that she’s not a coward, and if possible, to clear her father’s name in the process. The high commanders don’t want her anywhere near a spaceship, claiming that she will inevitably follow in her father’s footsteps. But Spensa resists, and pushes, and gets far more than she bargained for.

Confession: I didn’t think I was going to like this book. Actually, I didn’t think I was going to read past the first couple chapters of this book. Despite the author being my favorite. Reasons:

  1. I don’t generally like science fiction.
  2. I prefer Sanderson’s adult fiction to his younger stuff.
  3. I prefer Sanderson’s Cosmere-based works rather than ones not set in the Cosmere.
  4. I listened to a video of Sanderson reading the first chapter aloud a year ago, and I didn’t like that chapter at all.

Once again, though, Sanderson pulled off the impossible and made me love a book that had all the above going against it. If it were any other author, I never would have bothered to read past that first disliked chapter. But Sanderson, y’all. The man is brilliant. And this book was awesome fun.

True, I didn’t like it as much as I do his adult or Cosmere novels. But in a time when most books don’t hold my attention for a second, the fact that this one kept me speeding through it says something. I really enjoyed the story. I loved the sentient spaceship and the slug that can imitate human voices with vibrations (Doomslug!!). I loved Spensa’s fellow cadets in flight school, and was sad whenever I had to watch Bad Things happen to them. I even eventually came to love Spensa, after she grew up quite a bit (she annoyed the hell out of me in the beginning). There was really only one thing that bothered me (other than early Spensa), and I can’t really discuss it without going into spoilers. (Has to do with Spensa’s dad.) It’s something I’d expect from a YA novel, though. Just wished it could have been a bit deeper/more realistic.

Speaking of depth, though: While Skyward didn’t have the layers that you find in adult Sanderson novels, there was still a lot stuffed in here – what it means to be brave and/or a coward; life living in a parent’s shadow; class stratification; authoritarianism; the culture of violence so prevalent in humans; etc. But honestly, it was also just a really fun, well-paced, suspenseful action book with funny (human and non-human) characters and a lot of heart. I highly anticipate the next volume!

Posted in 2018, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Elf 5K

Posted on December 17, 2018 by Thistle

It finally happened! Stephanie and I signed up for a 5K every month from September to December, and this is the first one that we both attended and was a full 5K! Also, it was the most awesome of all the 5Ks (though perhaps not quite as awesome as the .5k, because come on). This particular walk benefited the Children’s Research Institute, which helps children with neurological and physical special needs. In fact, one of the best things about this event was that in addition to having a 1K and 5K, they had adaptive versions of both races so that people with various needs could more easily participate.

(our traditional pre-race selfie)

The event took place right next to Morgan’s Wonderland, an amusement park that is built to accommodate children with many kinds of needs, from swings that can hold wheelchairs to quiet sensory processing buildings. Despite Wonderland being very close to where I live, I’ve never been, and part of our route walked us through the park (which was closed, so we didn’t interrupt any park-goers!). It was such an amazing place! I will let the link above do most of the talking, but generally I loved everything about the park. I got this shot of it from afar while we walked around the park lake into an area away from where the noise and crowds would be on an open day. All the artwork and design and empowerment everywhere was awesome.

The event hosts were awesome too. Complete contrast to our last 5K that was pretty much packed away and gone before any of the walkers finished. We had people cheering for us until the very last person crossed the finish line. There was a man dressed as a transformer out there for the kids, and H-E-Buddy came as well. There were two Santas, both male and female (and no, she wasn’t Mrs Claus). The sponsors had donuts and breakfast tacos and coffee and fruit for all the participants, and had a zumba dance party going on as well. There were about 250 participants altogether, so it was still a very small group, but it was a large enough group that it was easy to get pumped up and enjoy the festivities. The perfect amount of crowd for these kinds of things – not so small that there’s no one to really run it, and not so large that you get sensory overload!

Stephanie and I completed our 5K much faster than normal, about a 17:30-min/mi pace. We were walking so fast initially to get some distance between us and a woman with bells on her shoes (many people were dressed as elves, as this WAS an Elf 5K!) and then we just kept on going. It’s definitely the fastest 5K I’ve done in awhile – 54:07 – it was even a couple seconds faster than the one I walked/ran back in September (Brave Pajama 5K). (To be fair my GPS said that that one was 3.2 miles though, so maybe I was just a teensy bit faster when I walked/ran – let’s just go with that and save my ego a bit, ha!) After we finished, we hung around the festivities for a bit and then went to Dunkin for iced coffee.

Altogether, it was an awesome 5K and a great cause and one we both think would be a good one for the future. We won’t be continuing monthly 5Ks in the new year – personally, I just can’t afford it while we’re trying to recover from our financial nightmare – but we’re going to try to do a few that are important to us throughout the year. This will probably be one of them.

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Sunday Coffee – MRI and Sleep Rx

Posted on December 16, 2018 by Thistle

A couple health updates today. First, that brain MRI. Apparently the substitute doctor I saw had written up the order but never submitted it. So my doctor submitted it. Within two days, the MRI was approved by my insurance, and I scheduled it for this past Tuesday. The evening before, I got the insurance approval notice and realized these MRIs would involve injections/IVs, and that’s when I started freaking out. Stick a cage over my head and shove me into a tube, no problem, but once you start trying to stick me with needles…sigh. So I expressed my fear to the nurses the next day, and they said they’d have the radiologist check if they needed contrast images after the first round. I made sure to stay extra still for the half hour that I was in the tube in case that helped. And after a short wait, they confirmed that they didn’t need the second set. No needles, yay!

The first results came online the next day. From what I can tell, no tumors or weird growths on my brain. Yay! It notes mild paranasal mucosal thickening with no fluid, whatever that means. I guess I’ll find out during my follow up visit on Tuesday. I’m a bit annoyed that it said I requested no contrast (I just told them I was scared and asked them not to put the IV in my hand!!), but whatever. No other results have popped up on my account since then. I’ll update this post on Tuesday after I’ve gotten the full results from my doctor.

ETA: Nothing. Not even a sinus infection. Back to the drawing board, starting with a three-week intensive antibiotic course. Sigh. Glad there are no tumors though!

We’ve also been working with sleep meds. At first my doctor tried me on Silenor, which is technically an antidepressant. It’s the only prescription Rx sleep med that isn’t habit-forming and it’s specifically helpful in staying asleep, which is my trouble. My sister had good luck with Silenor for awhile, so I thought I’d try it first. Unfortunately, I had a bad reaction – severe headaches and blurred vision, which indicates a skyrocketing of blood pressure. I got off of it immediately and was told that if that happened again I needed to go straight to the ER. Yikes!

We tried Lunesta next, and let me just say that those first few glorious days of sleep felt miraculous. I don’t care that the medicine changes my dreaming patterns. It just felt so good to really sleep, and to fall back to sleep easily when I inevitably woke up in the night. It’s been ten nights now, and most have been awesome, with two exceptions. Once I woke up for several hours in the night but eventually got back to a short amount of more sleep. Once I woke up at 4:30 after only six hours of sleep and couldn’t fall back asleep. These are both normal for my insomnia and I’m not sure why the Lunesta wasn’t entirely effective those nights. Still, an 80% success rate in the first ten days shows promise. Now to see how it goes over a longer period of time. I still wish we could have found the cause of the insomnia and gotten rid of it without need of potentially-habit-forming-sleep-meds, but it is what it is. At least I seem to be sleeping now!

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The Kiss Quotient, by Helen Hoang

Posted on December 14, 2018 by Thistle

Stella’s world is all about math, economics, and her work. She doesn’t have a lot of dating experience, and her mother is pressuring her. So she decides to go about dating and sex the way she approaches everything: logically and practically. She hires an escort, Michael, who is running away from his past and insecurity, to teach her how to be with a man properly. Things don’t go exactly as either of them planned.

Hey! Guess what? I read a book! A real-life actual book! It’s been quite awhile, eh? And this was definitely the book I needed right now. Lighthearted but not fluff, romantic and sexy and sweet, feel-good ending and all. I loved it.

I’m not sure why I don’t read more romance novels. Probably because there are so many cringe-worthy ones out there. I don’t like personality-less characters, or books with nothing to the story except the getting-together, or writing that veers off into awkward dirty talk for the sex parts completely incongruous with the rest of the story. I like romances that have a full story in addition to the getting-together parts, and sex scenes written fluidly into the story so they don’t pull me out of the book and make me want to roll my eyes, and strong characters with whole personalities. I’m very, very ignorant about authors in this particular genre, and while I’ve found a small few that I like, I just don’t know where to begin looking. Grabbing books randomly off library shelves tends to get me no where. But hey, if there’s anyone out there who’s a newbie in this genre like me, this one is a good one.

(Note that there will be mild spoilers in the following paragraph. They shouldn’t affect the reading experience, but please skip ahead if you really dislike spoilers.)

This is also a very interesting book because Stella is high-functioning autistic. I admit, at first I worried that this was going to fall into an unrealistic trope of “man saves autistic woman and changes/heals her,” so I skipped back to the author’s note. Hoang herself is high-functioning autistic, and she wrote from her own perspective in creating Stella and her world. She also noted that of course Stella’s experience is not the only way people with autism experience the world. With all that in mind, I was able to continue reading reassured, and I loved that throughout the book, Stella isn’t “healed.” She learns a lot about self-acceptance and self-confidence, particularly after things go wrong and she’s forced to depend on herself again. That part made the book really phenomenal for me. The very moment Stella decides that she doesn’t need to be fixed, especially not because of a man, made me cheer aloud.

(end spoilers)

Hoang has another book coming out next year that focuses on another autistic character who is mentioned but barely seen in this one. I’m really looking forward to it. In her author’s note, she says that before this book, she’d been mimicking other author’s styles, but with this one, she became absolutely herself. I’ve never read her other books, but the latter part really comes through. Stella is a great character to read, particularly for someone like me who has had very little experience with people who have autism (high-functioning or otherwise). And as always, I have to make note of it when an author really gets me interested in a subject that I pursue after finishing the novel. I have Aspergirls – a book she specifically mentions as discussing the differences in the ways men and women exhibit autistic traits – on hold from the library already. That is always a sign of an excellent story in my book. This may be a lighthearted romance novel, but as I said above, it wasn’t fluff. It was a full-bodied experience, and I loved every second of it.

Posted in 2018, Adult, Prose | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Wellness Wednesday – Making sense of discrepancies

Posted on December 12, 2018 by Thistle

Last week, I began listening to a Great Courses lecture series regarding body composition. The lecturer made a statement that I’ve heard a lot – that if you’re eating well and moving well, body composition will change, and that if body composition isn’t changing, then you’re doing something wrong. Oh my god I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to hear this stuff because it’s not nearly that easy. My frustration led to several days worth of math, research, statistics, and data comparison from the last year. I wanted to know what was so different about this spring, when I seemed to be doing everything the same but actually started losing weight. Math and data calm me, and I went through a rollercoaster of ah-ha moments followed by wait-never-mind moments before I finally reached a state of clarity.

I won’t bore everyone with the math. Let me just give you the basic things I looked at. I took the 64 days in a row that I tracked my calories last spring and started adding things up, using all four of the trackers pictured above (My Fitness Pal, Sparkpeople, Fitbit, and Lose It). Note that this was back when I had my Fitbit One, which was far more accurate calorie-wise than my later Fitbit. Then I took the 65 days in a row that I tracked my calories a year ago, to compare the two sets of very similar data. Here was the really frustrating thing: In spring 2018, Fitbit, Spark, and MFP* all predicted that I would lose 7.3-7.5 lbs. My loss in that time was 7.4 lbs. Spot on, right? (Notably, Lose It was way off at 11.1 lbs.) But in the fall of 2017, Fitbit, Spark, and MFP* all predicted I would lose 5-6 lbs, and I had no change in weight at all. Numerically, these two time periods were nearly identical. The average amount I ate and exercised daily were only different between the two periods by about 35 calories. Mathematically, this tells me that calories-in-vs-calories-out means alone nothing for my body**. Other factors must be involved.

Because I’m tenacious – and because the discrepancy irritated me to no end – I decided to look at every other factor that I could think of (and measure) to compare these two time periods. Something must have been different between them! Here’s what I came up with (feel free to skip to the summary at the end). Note that when I say “2017” and “2018” I’m talking about the specific tracking period and not the entire year. Continue reading →

Posted in Wellness | Tagged , | 12 Comments

Back to the Classics 2019

Posted on December 10, 2018 by Thistle

It’s been ages since I participated in any kind of reading challenge. It’s also been ages since I was reading classics regularly. This latter fact, I want to rectify, and it seems like Karen’s Back to the Classics challenge would be a good way to help me along.

There are a couple works that I know I want to read for the challenge. Earth by Emil Zola is one. It has been sitting on my shelves for too long, and I love both the author and the translator! Another is Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen. I love Ibsen, and this particular play came to my attention when it prefaced each chapter in Lethal White. I also have a few classics that I haven’t read in ages that I’d like to revisit. I’m not sure if rereads count for the challenge, but possibilities include:

  • Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy (last read in 2010)
  • White Fang – Jack London (last read when I was around 12 years old, and an abridged copy at that)
  • Phantom of the Opera – Gaston Leroux (last read in 2008)
  • Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier (last read in 2009)
  • To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee (last read sometime in the 90s and I don’t remember it at all)
  • A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole (read in college but don’t remember it at all)

Other possibilities: perhaps I’ll read something by Anthony Trollope finally, or one of Hardy’s novels that I haven’t yet read, or In Cold Blood by Capote, or something by Baldwin finally, or more by Zora Neale Hurston. I’m not sure. Karen has all sorts of possible categories on the sign-up page for the classics challenge (link above). I’m sure I’ll find something. One of the reasons I’ve stayed away from classics for so long is that for more than a decade they were just about the only thing I read, and I read hundreds of them, exhausting my TBR classics list! I have to hunt out new ones to read, find some less-famous works. So we’ll see. I’m excited to see what comes of all this.

***

Books read, by category:

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged , | 12 Comments

Sunday Coffee – Well ebay sucks now…

Posted on December 9, 2018 by Thistle

It’s been maybe 5-6 years since I’ve used ebay, and even then, I’d hardly used it since the mid-2000s. I decided to dig up my account, though, to sell off some stuff. I had about 40 items to sell and I figured ebay would be the easiest way to do it. Um, no.

First off, let me just say that I’m glad they limited me to ten items to sell this month, otherwise I would’ve been REALLY screwed. I had to get used to their new format, which was far more tedious and time-consuming than the old format, but I managed. I posted my ten items, six of which sold. Now here’s where I learned about how ebay really changed.

1) Ebay chose my postage amounts for me and wouldn’t let me change to other shipping methods, and I ended up paying twice as much shipping as I received on four out of six auctions.

2) Ebay automatically relisted my four auctions that didn’t sell despite me telling them I didn’t want them to, and charged me a relisting fee for each.

3) Ebay has changed the way they charge fees. Instead of charging a small percentage of the final auction cost – something that would have been 2-3% at the tiny amounts I was selling for – they now charge 10% of the entire total INCLUDING SHIPPING!

These three things, minus paypal fees and insertion fees for all ten auctions, mean that I’m taking home LESS THAN 50% OF WHAT MY ITEMS SOLD FOR. In one instance, a low-selling item that was listed way too low for shipping, I actually paid several dollars MORE than I was paid to give that person the item. Yes, I paid someone to take one of my items. Frankly I would have preferred to keep it than to pay to give it away. I could have at least donated it for free. UGH. Altogether, I was sent $107 including shipping, got about $100 of it after paypal fees, and then after paying for shipping and ebay fees, took home about $45. That’s outrageous.

This is why I’m glad ebay limited me to ten auctions. I still have another 35-ish items to sell, and I’ll find another venue for it. Sheesh. I’d thought the ebay revival stuff in commercials and online meant that it was actually reviving, but no. It’s just stealing most of your money. Lesson learned.

Posted in Personal | Tagged | 4 Comments

Review: Empty Faces

Posted on December 7, 2018 by Thistle

Back in October, Jason and I saw an ad for Empty Faces, a paranormal serial story package. The basic premise goes like this: Each month for the duration of the story, you get a box that contains clues that you work out to solve the mystery. Empty Faces was put out by the same company that released a serial mystery thriller, Hunt a Killer, but this one sounded more like what Jason and I enjoy. We decided to pre-purchase the first five-month episode, The Woods. We’ve received two installments now, and I thought I’d do a quick review-so-far.

November – Month 1
In this package, we received an introductory letter from a fictional character asking for help. I won’t go into details about this, no spoilers! The rest of the package contained several diary entries, a medical letter, a couple pages of different codes, a pendant necklace, a notebook for taking notes on the case, and a bundle of sage (some items pictured below). What we were expecting: to work out a whole hell of a lot of codes and clues to try to solve the mystery that we were asking to help with. What we actually got: Sure, codes and clues to work out, but instead of beginning to solve the mystery, they were pretty much an introduction to the story.

Mostly, our reaction to the first package was, “Wait – is that all??” One of the codes was easy to work out as long as you knew what you were looking at. (It was a real-world code, and we thought it was easy to recognize, but looking spoilers up after we did our solving, it turns out this is harder for most people because the code is impossible to solve unless you recognize it.) The second code had a short primer to get you started, and then it became pretty easy to convert. Reminded me of middle school trips to fairs where you got to solve simple codes and tangrams. There was also a URL for a blog that made for interesting reading, including some password-protected posts. We were only able to work out one of the passwords, but we have a feeling that’s all we were supposed to work out in the first package.

All in all, it was an interesting concept, though we definitely expected to work harder and have more clues on which to build theories. We kept the package and hoped that installment two would build on it and potentially give us a bit more puzzle to work out.

December – Month 2
Our second package came with another letter, more diary entries, another medical letter, more codes (some same, some different), a creepy photograph, a book excerpt, a heavy prism, and lots of loose feathers. (Some items pictured below.) Our expectations were a bit lower this time, and we picked up the box a few days ago, thinking we’d solve it in under an hour again. Um…no.

Turns out, that first box was just a taster. Not only did this second box have non-code puzzles to work out, but it had codes that had no primer or seed that we had to decipher from scratch, and codes that required us to hunt for a seed. When we finally got a password for one of the protected blog posts, it lead to another, which had even further difficult codes to work through. There were a lot of things we hadn’t heard of and had to seek out, and in doing so, made new connections that might be significant later in the story. We spent hours on this package over several days, and we’re still not sure if we’ve found everything we were meant to find. There were also a lot of very creepy moments while puzzling everything out, including two that both gave me instantaneous goosebumps.

Overall
This has been a lot of fun. I was apprehensive after the first box arrived, but the second box more than made up for any ease of the first. I’m really looking forward to future episodes, and maybe if we can wrangle it into our budget, we’ll try another series from Empty Faces when we’ve finished with The Woods.

Posted in Personal | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Wellness Wednesday – Garmin Vivosport

Posted on December 5, 2018 by Thistle

Guys – I’m excited! I mentioned on Monday that I pulled out my old Garmin Forerunner 310XT that I hadn’t used since 2013. Honestly, I didn’t use it for very long. I’d used a Polar heart rate monitor to track calories for my workouts since early 2011, and then later got the Garmin when I started doing a lot more run-training, since it had a GPS. But there was something about the Garmin that I’d forgotten since I last used it. Chest-strap heart monitors suck, and the one for my Garmin was built in a way that caused it to chafe against my ribs to the point of blisters. The latter would be manageable if I wrapped the connector in cloth, but really, I hate wetting chest-straps and trying to get them all set up before I go out exercising.

I started looking into something new. My Fitbit is okay – though I highly preferred the One before it went bad – but it doesn’t do any of the GPS or pace tracking for my walks. That’s Garmin’s specialty, so I looked into what they had available. I came across the Vivosport, which seemed to be exactly what I needed. Unfortunately, it cost $170 and I just couldn’t afford that! Only then I found a refurbished model for $80, guaranteed to work, and decided that was worth it (especially because then Jason could have my fitbit, which he really wanted).

The Vivosport showed up on Saturday. I was immediately impressed by the fit, which is about a thousand times better than my Fitbit, and didn’t irritate my skin. Then I did a cross-comparison of the Fitbit vs Garmin in terms of steps, elevation, calorie estimation, etc.

Steps and Elevation
The Garmin seems to be fairly identical to the Fitbit in terms of steps. It’s a bit less sensitive on the wrist, so it doesn’t measure steps when I’m just turning my wrist or waving my hand, but it also doesn’t pick up every step I take. The two seem to balance out to roughly the same amount. Elevation works differently, though. The Garmin doesn’t convert hill elevation to floors climbed. It only counts flights of stairs, and it doesn’t seem to be as accurate in this regard (I get one flight for about every two I do). This is a less important measure to me, though. I have yet to test the Garmin while, say, pushing a grocery cart (when steps don’t register on a Fitbit), but I imagine as any wrist-pedometer, they won’t count.

Sleep
This is a mixed bag. Fitbit seems to be better at measuring when I’m actually asleep, and it certainly gives more data. The Garmin doesn’t record a resting heart rate for sleep only, but instead works on a rolling resting heart rate including those times that you’re sitting during the day. (Therefore it changes throughout the day and makes it hard to get an accurate idea.) On the plus side, I can put the Garmin in Do Not Disturb mode, so it doesn’t flash light in my eyes coming on every time I move my arm in the night, and this is a HUGE advantage.

GPS
Fitbit doesn’t have a GPS function, so it estimates the distance I’ve walked based on the number of steps I’ve taken. The Garmin of course does better than this. As long as I turn on the GPS function before my walks, I get fairly accurate distance and pace information. The GPS isn’t quite as good as the phone GPS – it seems to measure just slightly more or slightly less distance than I actually walked (by a small amount, about .05 miles per mile). [Example photo is of four laps around an outer lane of the track, but the GPS recorded it as inner lane and even further in sometimes.] The GPS is very close, though, and I can see my changes in pace over distance (and over hills), and the data I can overlay (elevation, heart rate, pace) helps me to get a fuller picture of my workouts. In non-GPS workouts, the Garmin seems to be the same as the Fitbit in recognizing when I’m exercising or just being generally active. It also calculates distance during indoor walks without the GPS, based on your GPS cadence/stride estimate.

Calorie estimation
Like the Fitbit (when worn on the wrist), the Garmin calculates your daily calorie expenditure based on heart rate and activity. Also like the Fitbit, the calculations seem extremely high! I have a hard time believing that I burn an average of 2900 calories every day. If I did, my daily calorie deficit would be a LOT larger than I think, and you’d think I’d actually lose weight! In general, I think the Garmin overestimates the same as the Fitbit, so I won’t take its estimates very seriously. I’ve actually decided to try something a bit different in terms of calorie-tracking, but that’s a subject for a different post.

Overall
Altogether, I’m really happy with the Vivosport. There are a couple things the Fitbit does that are better, but I don’t mind the tradeoff, and I think I’ll get far more from the Garmin in the long run.

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