[Disclaimer: This blog post is about an app called “Carrot Rewards”. This is not a sponsored post nor is it intended as a promotional post for the app. Rather, my goal is to explore the idea of turning fitness into a reward-based activity and discuss some of my thoughts about this app]

So, there’s this (relatively) new App available called “Carrot Rewards” that I’ve recently started using. It is a government-funded app which claims you can “Complete healthy offers and be rewarded for making healthy lifestyle choices. Earn points every time!”. It allows you to earn points (Petro-Points, Aeroplan, Scene) for completing surveys or through fitness tracking.

The Surveys

The surveys are not commercial surveys, they are not based on specific products or your spending habits. Rather, they are aimed at informing you about a topic you may not know much about. Surveys pop up roughly once a week, take less than two minutes to complete and are worth between 5-200 Scene Points. (A free movie costs 1000 Scene Points). The three most recent surveys have been “Live Life, Pass it On” which was about the importance of being an organ donor, “Let’s Get Moving for Mental Health” which was about the connections between physical and mental health, and “Gettin’ Outside” which was about the importance of spending time outside.

Fitness Tracking for Points

The Carrot App partners with either a FitBit Product (there are many) or your phone’s built-in fitness tracker to keep track of the number of steps you take daily. For the first two weeks, it keeps track of your daily steps to calculate a daily step goal for you. After the initial two weeks, you earn points by completing your daily step goal (I’m earning 4 Scene Points daily which is worth about $0.04 real money). You also earn a bonus of 55 Scene Points every two weeks if you meet your goal 10 or more days out of the 14. Every two weeks, it updates your daily goal based on how often you meet you goal.

There are two major cons to the fitness tracking aspect of this app. One, it only tracks your steps. This means any other physical activity you do won’t earn you any points. Two, it currently only partners with FitBit or your phone’s built-in tracker. This means you have to either be always carrying your phone (which I am anyway) or own a FitBit product.

My (Somewhat Random) Thoughts

As a student (student=poor), I love this app. Usually, I don’t pay to see a movie in theatres unless it’s a something I REALLY want to see. Usually, it’s not. So, I like being able to see movies for free. With this app, I earn enough points to see roughly one free movie per month. I like that the points I earn can be used for something tangible, an actual real-life thing. There are many apps that turn fitness into a game but most of them turn it into a virtual competition (see Samantha’s post about losing Strata segments!), reward you by posting to Facebook about your activity or reward you with a virtual medal or trophy.

Has it increased my fitness levels? Not really. Generally speaking, I walk most places unless it’s really far then I take the bus. But what I have noticed is that I’m more aware of my daily steps. Often near the end of the day I find myself checking how close I am to my daily goal and if I’m close, I’ll make an excuse to go for a short walk (for example to return library books or pick up groceries).

I dislike that it only tracks steps. There are days where I spend all day standing and moving around and I feel like it hasn’t been a particularly inactive day. Then I look at my daily step counter and realize how few steps I’ve actually taken. Or if I take the time to do other activities such as swimming and don’t walk very far, I feel like those days should count for something.

Has anyone else used this app? What are your thoughts? I have many more including the implications of it being government-funded, issues around accessibility for people who may not be able to walk as easily as I can, etc, etc, etc but I won’t get into them here. Instead, I’ll simply end by saying that this app isn’t for everyone, but for me, I like earning free stuff so I’ll keep using it even if it isn’t perfect.

Mallory Brennan is many things. Currently finishing a Certificate in Conducting at Capilano University. Daughter of Samantha (and Jeff!), part-owner of Cheddar the dog, lover of the outdoors, hater of shoes, singer, conductor, and traveler. 
 

I learned how to ride a bike when I was 7, when my dad and Howie Stolz, beers and Rothmans in hand, took me and the Stolz kids to the top of a hill in a German campground, balanced us on our bikes and let us fly downhill.  By the end of the weekend, knees embedded with gravel, we knew how to ride bikes.

My bike has been freedom, openness and adventure ever since. But despite riding for 45 years — 3500 km last year —  I’ve never been able to keep it healthy and running myself. But I’m planning a solo, unsupported trip this summer in the Baltics, and I finally had to come face to face with learning basic bike repair.  My 4.5 decade strategy of having reliable bikes, befriending people with skills, hoping for the best and knowing that I can always call someone to come and get me if things fall apart won’t work when I’m alone in Latvia and Estonia.  So.  I spent last Sunday in a one-on-one bike clinic with an amazing mechanic I met on the Bike Rally last year.

Alex is an excellent mechanic, a born teacher and just an all round lovely human.  We spent 6.5 intense hours together, and I felt like my bike was slowly peeled apart and revealed for me.  I was literally and emotionally given the tools to move into an empowered, more intimate relationship with it.

I’m not remotely mechanically inclined. I’m also a total klutz. I once punched myself in the mouth and made it bleed trying to put a tire back on after changing a flat. (I also recently dropped a cup of coffee in my work bag and destroyed all of my electronics, but that’s another story).  So I’ve always engaged in bike maintenance with some indifference, a little fear, and a high sense of incompetence.  I oil my chain and keep the tires pumped, can put a chain back on on a ride, and once adjusted my gear cables. But as much as possible, I outsource my bike care.

Until now. Last weekend, I learned and did a 7 point A-B-C-D safety check (an intense 2 hours), adjusted my brakes, learned how to adjust my gears using three different points on the bike, created and fixed a flat, fixed a broken chain, replaced a spoke and trued a wheel by carefully adjusting spokes.  I completely changed a brake cable, adjusted the headset, and learned how to tape my handlebars.

Several times, I felt like the bike was inside out. We pulled the handlebars and stem RIGHT OFF the fork, and I felt actual anxiety when the handlebars and cables dangled down over the front.  But I also *felt* my bike in completely new ways.  By running my fingers down every cable and housing and threading them back into their slots, I felt like I was finding my bike’s veins. By pulling on the cables and derailleur gently and watching the gears shift, feeling the exact moment where the tension wasn’t perfect, I felt a new flow, the real connection between clicking the gear shifts and the bike’s response.  Gently tightening and loosening to find one spoke after another until the wheel spun evenly was meditative, truth in my fingertips.

A bike is physics, and craft, and engineering, and magic. The spokes act in tension and compression to distribute the weight of the bike and the person as it moves forward without allowing the wheel to squish — but there is, apparently, still a debate about exactly how this works.  Looking at the bearings on the inside of the wheel axle, I understood in my hips how balance happens when you’re pedaling. By feeling the layers of how the chain links slip effortlessly together, how to tighten them, I had a little physical sensation of movement.

There was a lot of laughing, and I had a lot of “ahas.” What felt scary and foreign became intimate.  Alex taught me mountain biker tricks about how to get “back to camp” even when your bike has been, basically, run over by a car, by twisting spokes together and whacking the wheel back into something approximating round. She broke me of my lifelong habit of trying to adjust both sides of the quick release wheel at once when putting it back on, explaining that the little acorn nut is the only one that really moves, and you don’t have to worry about the balance. (This will change my life — I take my wheel off a LOT). She also explained that it’s my habit of changing trying to shift the gears too hard on hills that makes my chain fall off so often — that I should just look ahead and start out in a gear closer to something I can sustain.  Changed. My. Life.

By the end of the day, I felt a tiny bit of shame that I had waited so long to try to understand my bike like this.  It feels like I’ve taken my bikes for granted my whole life, deriving huge pleasure and trust in them without bothering to really get to know them. Feeling a bike from the inside out, gaining intimacy and familiarity with parts I’ve literally never looked at — it makes me feel like I’m honouring what my bikes have given me. Bikes are miracles and deserve care.  And knowing how to listen differently, know what that noise means, how to respond to things that could go wrong out in the world, how to care for the parts —  makes me feel more intrepid, like anything is possible.

Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede, who lives in Toronto where she works as an educator and strategic change consultant in academic healthcare and other socially accountable spaces. She blogs here on the second Friday of every month.  If you’re interested in deepening your own relationship with your bike, leave a comment and she will hook you up with Alex, who does freelance coaching and repair instruction and riding skills workshops — and is awesome.  (Alex is also reachable on twitter at @legslegum).

I was surprised that I even wanted one.

Me, the person who has always been (and continues to be) somewhat suspicious of technology. Or at least too much technology. Or too much dependence on technology. Don’t get me wrong—I love my laptop. And I would DEFINITELY, in a heartbeat, run into a burning building to save it. I also love my iPhone. Maybe a little too much—I bring it everywhere with me (to bed, to the bathroom, you get the picture).

Anyway, my wanting a Fitbit was a bit of a surprise to me and my loved ones—up until recently I didn’t even know what it was for. But in my renewed commitment to my fitness, it seemed like a great tool to help me along and encourage me to move every hour, track my heart rate (which I have always felt is too irregular, I don’t know why), log workouts, track sleep patterns, and so on and so forth.

And for the first while, it was great! We went everywhere together, I wore it to bed every night, and I kept earning all sorts of badges…

My Fitbit would be like, “Great job, Tracy, you’re crushing it!” “You’re getting all your steps!” “Great job!”

And I’d be all, “Oh you…” So flattering!

The next day, my Fitbit would say something like, “Wow, you’re meeting all your goals…you’re walking everywhere, and you’re doing like, 25 flights of stairs a day! Awesome!” (Even though this wasn’t always the case—since Fitbits can’t tell if you’re physically walking up stairs or taking elevators/escalators. But I didn’t have the heart to tell it that.)

For the first little while everything was great. Every time I’d meet my goals I’d enjoy watching the corresponding graphic on the Fitbit (digital fireworks or a little rocket ship taking off or whatever). It was like any other new romance! My Fitbit was telling me how great I was, and I felt super pumped about it. We were literally in sync.

Then, after a couple of months, I had a couple sluggish days, maybe a sluggish week or two. I’d get the weekly updates in my inbox saying how I walked 20km or 30km less from the previous week. Or, down 100 active minutes last week from the killer week I’d had before.

And it was rough because I felt like I could never explain myself and say, “I know, I know, I’ve just been really busy with work and with deadlines…” Or, “I had a rough week and just needed to chill out! I’m sorry!” Nope. I would open the Fitbit app and see all the areas I was falling short: Steps, short. Calories burned, short. Floors climbed, short. Active minutes, short. Kilometres walked—something my Fitbit had praised me for on multiple occasions—short. It became a real bummer.

Then I’d have moments where, if I left the house without my Fitbit on, I’d panic for a second thinking, Shit now all these steps won’t count! (In searching for pictures to go along with this post, I found MANY others experience this same panic and express their feelings in meme form.)

You get the picture—my motivation was starting to be fueled by what my Fitbit had to say and not about how I felt. Just because I’m not wearing the Fitbit, doesn’t mean those steps lose value. Yet I started to feel like maybe this was the case.

Other times I’d have days of way surpassing my goals: getting over 17,000 steps in a day (the average person gets around 6,000/day I’m told and the recommended is 10,000), or having over 100 active minutes in a day, or whatever the case was. But often those days I’d be completely wiped or burnt out. I didn’t feel healthy–I felt exhausted and had only surpassed these goals because I was running around doing 50 things that day and didn’t even have a quiet moment to myself.

Of course, this wasn’t always the case–sometimes I’d feel great for surpassing my goals for the day. But the point is, the raw numbers don’t tell you everything.

I’ve really had to stop and think about extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation. (Extrinsic being pressure from something other than myself; including striving for praise from a tiny computer.) I want to be the person behind my motivation to be fit and healthy. I want to do it for me because it’s what I enjoy, or what I find interesting or exciting or worthwhile.

And I get that the purpose of a tool like this is to encourage you to make positive changes. Certainly having a Fitbit for the purposes of daily activity tracking has been great in some regards. I was sleeping better, going to bed on time, waking up earlier, walking more often instead of taking transit, and getting up regularly to take breaks from desk work.

I’m sure that I’ll be happy to have my Fitbit back in regular rotation at some point in the near future. But things were starting to feel a little off.

I’ve learned that I don’t ever want to feel enslaved or beholden to a certain number or weight or outfit or angle or image or object when it comes to how I feel about my own body. So until then, my Fitbit and I are on a break!