Getting Wedding dress ready with Withings activite pop

With only 4 months to go before our Wedding, I really need to start getting Wedding dress ready! When I was offered a Withings activite pop watch to review, I knew this would be just what I needed to kick-start a more active lifestyle. It looks and feels like a timeless watch, but with really clever tech packed inside. It doesn’t require any charging and has 8 months of battery power. It’ll use a subtle vibration to wake you gently in the morning, you can track you sleep cycle and jump in the shower. The Withings activite pop is water-resistant to 50km and so it’ll track your swimming as well as walking and running too. Synched to an app on your smart phone, it uses gamification to keep you engaged and motivated.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m no couch potato… but I’m not fit nor lean either. Part of this is down to lifestyle and part of it is down to having PCOS where weight gain is one of the unfortunate side-effects. With PCOS I have to watch what I eat – and it’s not as simple as cutting out treats and takeaways, it’s more about eating what’s right for me.

When it comes to lifestyle, being a busy Mum to a toddler, working part-time and running this blog (and not to mention the wedding planning!) doesn’t make it easy to get to the gym. I can’t go to evening fitness classes either and so I try to stay active with my family rather than separately from them. When I’m at home I’m always pottering around, tidying, cleaning, cooking etc. unless I’m sitting down to write a blog post! But using the Withings activite pop has made me realise that I’m not quite as active as I thought I was : (

Last week I had a half-day at work (I get 2 tubes and a train to work do about 25-30 mins of walking each way) and then we had a department away afternoon and went bowling. I think I only sat down for a few hours on that day and yet I still didn’t make it close to the recommended 10,000 steps a day. It made me realise that what I though was being quite active, really wasn’t active enough.

Even sailing which can be pretty gruelling (especially during the Round the Island race) and a very active sport – but without going for a run or a long walk too, I wasn’t hitting that magic 10k steps target.

And then last Sunday, we packed up the pram and headed up to London to support my Fiancé’s sister who was running the London Marathon. It was amazing seeing thousands of people of all ages and sizes running for such great causes. I’m never going to run a marathon as I get too bored running, but it did inspire me to step up my game – literally! We ditched the tube and walked from Tower Hill to Charring Cross and by the end of the day I’d hit that 10,000 step mark – wahoo!!

One of the other features that I love about this watch is the sleep tracker. Since I had my son, I’ve turned into such a light sleeper and often wake up in the night. This element of the Withings activite pop really helps to manage your sleep health as well as your active health. Weight and heart monitoring are other elements that the app has and you can sync it with MyFitnessPal to give you even more of an overview into your health.

What the Withings activite pop watch has made me realise is that I need to be much more active to have sustained fitness. It has encouraged me to go take the stairs, walk up the tube escalators and walk an extra mile to get those 10,000 steps each day. An activity watch isn’t going to do the hard work for you – but it will make you more aware of your activity. My only criticism is super-picky (sorry I have crazy attention to detail), but it’d be good if the alarm worked with the sleep setting of the phone. As it’d be good if it went off again in if you dose off accidently and then turned itself off if you’re already awake. The watch can tell if you’re asleep or awake so it’d be so clever if the alarm synced to this.

So how is getting Wedding dress ready going for me? It’s bloody hard, but I’m getting there slowly!

Natalia xo

The Withings activite pop is available at Currys, John Lewis and Harrods for £119.95