Susie Felber, who is also known in the Romance universe as “Edith Layton’s daughter,” has a cool new job with a French company, Withings, which makes connected health and fitness devices. She reached out to me to see if I’d be willing to host a giveaway of two of their Activité fitness trackers – a gift for Valentine’s Day that’s the opposite of chocolate, as she put it.
Mais oui, s’il vous plait!
I know that many of you probably set up some personal fitness resolutions for this year. Since taking care of yourself and making sure you feel healthy and happy is very important, I think this would be a great boost to any of your fitness goals. I rarely talk about fitness because, well, I have been on the receiving end of long monologues about workout routines and I don’t want to inflict that on anyone! But I got serious about my health a few years ago, hired a personal trainer (whom I miss a LOT now that I’ve moved), and started working out almost daily. Since then, I have learned that, to quote Peter Drucker, “What gets measured gets managed.” In other words, if I’m paying attention to what I do, what I eat, what I lift, and when I do all of the above, I see the progress I want. Trackers like these can help a lot with all that measurement and monitoring.
Thanks to Susie, we have two to give away! AND a coupon. Thanks, ma’am!
There’s the Activité Steel, which will come with two bands in raspberry and white:
And the Activité Pop, in limited edition Coral Pink:
What’s it do? It tracks steps, swimming, running and sleep, and syncs to their Health Mate app, available for iOS or Android. In the app, thanks to the tracker, you’ll see distance traveled, calories burned, activity, sleep data, and all that fun stuff. Health Mate also syncs to other apps you might already use, like My Fitness Pal.
On the device itself, you’ll see the time, because it’s a watch. Plus there is a small dial that tells you how much of your daily activity goal you’ve achieved.
The Activité does not need charging, either. It runs on a standard watch battery (aka one of those little silver button cell batteries) and one battery should last up to 8 months.
The Activité Steel retails for $199, and the Pop in coral retails for $149.
Plus, we have a coupon should you wish to check out the other products at Withings.com! With coupon code WITHSBTB you’ll get 20% off your purchase. They make Wi-Fi scales, a home camera, and other health tracking devices as well.
Susie also sent me an Activité Steel to try out, which I’m terribly excited about. I’d been trying to decide which fitness tracker to buy, and having one that is a watch and a monitor is very cool. If anyone would like a review, I’m happy to write one up after I’ve used it for awhile.
Standard disclaimers apply. Void where prohibited. Open to US residents only (sorry sorry!). Must be over 18 and prepared to work it out in order to win. There is a correct way to tie your shoes, but really, whichever way you do it so you don’t trip is good. Measure twice, cut once. If you drop the beat, please clean up after yourself. Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear. Anyone who allows party rock to enter the house tonight will answer to management. Do not remove internet under penalty of law. Two winners will be selected to each win one of the two watches by random integer from the comments at or close to noon ET on Sunday 14 February 2016. Winners will be announced that day.
Want to enter? Yay! I hope so.
Just leave a comment and tell me what you do – or would like to do – to help keep yourself healthy. Health means different things for different people, and figuring out what helps you personally is, I think, very important.
Good luck!
ETA 12/14/16: Congratulations and hooray, we have winners!
The winner of the Activité Steel is Kristen, and the winner of the Activité Pop is Brandy.
Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to everyone who entered! I wish you all success on your fitness goals – you can totally do it.
Spin and walk more and rejoined Weight Watchers, since it worked for me in the past.
I have cut out sodas and keep an eye on my portions and have already dropped quite a bit; I already need new pants. Now I need to actually move to lose more. I love the raspberry!
Doing couch to 5k!
Took up swimming just a couple of years ago (when I was in my very late 50s) and now average between 7-9K a week. Talk about a change! The watch is for swimming??? Woot.
I go to the gym 3 times a week and I try to eat healthier food- I cut back on white sugar and I switched to coconut sugar. I love baking but when I bake I use spelt flour, coconut oil and I reduce the sugar in every recipe by 20%. I eat lots of ftuits and vegetables and whole grains.
I wear a pedometer to keep me moving toward 10K steps each day, which at my stride is also a 5K/3 mile walk. I manage to hit that goal about 5 out of 7 days each week. I also drink plenty of water, and aim for 7.5 hours of sleep each night. I need to do more, and a good fitness tracker might help.
Walk the dogs. If your dogs are overweight, you aren’t getting enough exercise.
I need to cut out a lot of the sugar I eat. I read before work and really should exercise instead as I will not do it after.
And yes, please write a review.
I monitor my calories on myfitnesspal, try to do 70/30 clean eating, and run at least three times a week
hikes thru the city!
@Lisa J: WOW. 25k steps? Do you work on a treadmill? Or do you work for the postal service? 😉 That’s impressive!
@bev: I will absolutely write a review for you. I’ve had the watch for 2 days now, and I’m really enjoying it.
@Melssandre: I think if you ask one of the staff at the gym, you can set up a tutorial on how to use the weight machines and what routine would work best for you. I personally love lifting, partly because I have mild-to-annoying sports-induced asthma so running is a challenge, and partly because I can do a different routine every day if I want, so I don’t get bored. I bet they’d be happy to show you how the weights work.
Those are the prettiest ‘fitness’ watches I’ve ever seen. Even if I don’t get to win one, I’m adding those to my wishlist for future purchase. Awesome!!
The combination of Weight Watchers and the gym (5 days a week) has already netted me a loss of fifty pounds in the past six months–and hopefully, I can keep it going this year, too! I can’t wait for summer so I can add swimming back into my routine.
To keep myself healthy – I’ve been trying to give up sugar in all its sneaky forms. Trying, not always succeeding. Also definitely trying to move more – whether walking, running, or even just getting up from my desk and pacing while I talk on the phone! It does help.
I just started with a trainer at the gym to do strength training three times a week – otherwise I’m all about the walking and any kind of dancing, so long as no one cares if I look good doing it!
Oh my god, that’s so PRETTY! I wear a FitBit and I love the push to move more and all the data it tracks, but I hate that it’s this slate grey rubber band thing when I’m at work & dressed nicely. I’m in love with this thing, wow.
(Oh, and I’m on WW, have lost 40.4 lbs in the last year, walk-jog three times a week and swim once a week. I think I NEED the Activite. Srs. Heh.)
I have been using a calorie tracker on my phone and have lost 19 pounds since Halloween! As it turns out, starting a diet during the holidays is hard. who knew.
I have also started actually taking breaks during my workday and walking about a mile twice a day. It hasn’t helped much with weight loss, but it does help with stress.
I need to get more active since I’m sitting all day. I tried another activity tracker but I really need the watch. This will cover everything and is perfect.
I want to get back to regular walk/jogs
I’m trying to limit my sweet tooth to the weekends so I can maintain fairly clean eating during the week. I’m adding in a walk at lunch too.
After struggling for years to lose that post baby weight, I decided to take the plunge and do Take Shape For Life, a medifast program. I was initially hesitant about the shakes and bars route but I decided that I already tried the other traditional routes that didn’t yield much results (clean eating and exercise) so it wouldn’t hurt to try this. 6 weeks into the program and I’m down 11 pounds; I’m a quarter of the way to my weight loss goal and am happy to be finding the old me again.
Yoga and swimming! Gentle, enjoyable, effective! What a gorgeous watch.
These are some of the prettiest trackers I’ve seen! My goals are to get more regular about yoga and cooking at home instead of ordering in.
I eat low carb (which helped me lose 60 lbs and maintain it). I also walk two miles 4 or 5 times a week. And of course I read lots of novels!–romance, sci fi, mystery.
I’m good about exercise, but need to eat more vegetables and less chocolate.
I’m overweight, no way around it. However, I’m a fairly healthy overweight person, which is probably due to the fact that I’m highly active. I walk, both treadmill and out in the world. I do zumba 1-2 Times per week, because the music is good and that hour goes by a lot faster than the treadmill hour. Two years ago, I approached the staff at my son’s martial arts dojo (he has autism, and quite frankly, they were the only ones that looked at him and said that, yeah, they could work with this) and asked what they had for clumsy olds. Now I have a green belt and should probably test for purple pretty soon (my son is also a green belt), so two nights a week, I’m doing that. I also do a 90 minute class at my gym on Saturdays that combines spin, circuit training, and weights. So yeah, I’m forever sore.
To stay healthy, I walk – less now that my Fitbit died. I also do a month of low-fat vegan intermittently because it resets everything and my body feels good when I do this. I am currently entering week three and realizing that cheating (which I did at a work party) did not make me feel happier or healthier.
Walking, gardening and drinking plenty of water are my top choices.
I love these! I’m trying to meet the 10,000 step goal.
I’ve been going to PT to get my knee back (after surgery). It has been almost a year and a half since I’ve been able to walk without pain, much less exercise, but the PT is bringing me back. When I can move, I love pilates and walking, and I use my indoor bike during bad weather. This is the year I get back in gear!
My life is pretty sedentary (copy editing and teaching, which means lots of grading), and I’m trying to work more activity into my daily routine — walking, biking, yoga, even just being out with the kids. My husband just got a FitBit through work, and I’m beginning to think the tracking might help (I’ve been using Habitica.com to encourage some habits, like drinking water instead of soda and getting up to move around on the regular.
I use MyFitnessPal’s food and exercise journal pages to keep track of things – like am I eating too much sugar, etc. I love it, it does all the work calculating the calories, etc for me.
I also use SparkPeople’s recipe calculator. Since I make 95% of our food from scratch it doesn’t come with handy labels and I’ve always had to calculate the nutritional info by hand, so this is a huge help to me.
I like the look of these, much more attractive that the other fitness bands I’ve seen – including an analog watchface is perfect!
Leave it to a French company to manage to make a tracker look sexy! C’est tres beau! Unfortunately I need a tracker more than chocolate! Got to move it more! I’ve got a Concept2 rowing machine & need to ramp it up.
I like to swim laps in the morning and walk on my lunch hour.
To keep healthy, I’ve started reading labels and aiming for eating “real food” as much as possible. I love to walk, but I haven’t been able to since late December, when I broke my ankle. I finally got out of my walking boot a couple of days ago, so I’m looking forward to walking again!
I like to ride my bike to work to stay healthy and walk places when I can. I’m not a huge gym person so that keeps me active when I’m not snowboarding, which I love!
I’ve started replacing sections of my commute by public transport with walking! It feels great to have a purpose to my exercise that is immediately rewarded (getting places!y and it helps me meet my goals of mindfulness too.
To stay healthy I bring a reusable water bottle with me everywhere (I bought a water bottle strap that does wonders for carrying it around). I park as far away as I can from a store in a parking lot to get the extra walking steps and I take walking breaks during lunch!
I received an activity tracker as a gift two years ago and it has really changed my life. I am healthier now than I’ve been in several years – more active and more conscientious of what I eat. I use it every day, but I have been seriously considering upgrading to a device that also tracks sleep, since I would really like to make whatever changes possible to sleep better.
Oh, those are nice! I couldn’t get into the Fitbit thing, but I love that it works as a watch/swim tracker/alarm.
I’m trying to swim early in the mornings, and once the weather gets nicer I’ll be biking to work once or twice a week. I also need to get out to yoga two or three times a week to stay flexible.
I’m trying to do more meal planning, including pre-prepped freezer meals or crockpot recipes for nights when I just don’t feel like cooking. Most of the time I already eat pretty healthy, but that can get derailed when I’m too exhausted to plan ahead.