Tracking sleep

[Rockhopper]

Background:  Fitbit replaced my One after over a year of my complaining. Customer Service was very nice and very understanding of my frustration with the issues and lack of salient responses. So, this is a do-over for the Fitbit, but only because the rep treated me with patience and respect.  She didn't act as if I was a nuisance, or too ignorant to understand the website or the device.  She validated my concerns as well as inability to get simple direct solutions.  

Issue:  Sure, it was about nine months that I didn't use the old one, but I seem to recall a night-to-night chart of my sleep patterns, i.e. sleep vs. restless vs. awake. But I cannot find that any more.  

Entering food and drink is understandable, but logging sleep when the One is supposedly tracking it seems like duplicate input.  (The easier, the more likely one will follow a regimen.) I'm not trying to be contrarian, but all the problems with food entry are enough to make me eschew that part for now.  (Perhaps if the simplest aspects of the One's use are conquered, I won't mind spending a bit more time with the food log.) If the One is not registering the time I sleep, it doesn't make sense to log when I go to bed and wake up, because I already know that and it's irrelevant to my fitness goals. What IS relevant is tracking my depth of sleep, which is what the Dashboard had provided in the past. It is crucial to see if my methods for dealing with my insomnia are working--without the mental-haze-inducing meds the doctors want to toss into my medication cocktail. After all, one of the selling points is that the One "tracks sleep".  If entering bedtimes is all it does, then 50% of the usefulness is lost. Cuz firing up my agonizingly slow old laptop, then opening the browser which is also gawdawful slow, then slogging thru logging in to the web site, then entering the two times, is more work than has value. (A little notebook and pen is faster.) So, my bedtimes are useless without knowing the quality of the sleep.  

Hopefully, I've only misplaced the chart showing my sleep quality. 

[RobertoME]

Hello there @Rockhopper and I'm glad to see you around in our community. Note that if you are using your web Dashboard the graph hasn't change. Note that your One will track your sleep as long you press the button before you go to sleep and when you wake up you just need to repeat the process. When you sync your One with your Dashboard all your sleep information should appear on your sleep section and on your Sleep tile.

If you press on "See more" you will be taken to the details of your sleep. Here you will see the graph of your sleep efficiency and the times you were awake. 

As long you start the sleep mode on your One there is no need to manually enter your information on your Dashboard, it will be require only to sync your information.

Hope this helps, I'll be around..

[Rockhopper]

Hi Roberto,

Thanks for the suggestion.  Despite the earlier recommendation from another moderator, I already knew how to use the sleep band--extremely easy to figure out.  And, I have been pushing the button and seen the counter activate/de-activate. So it's not a matter of not understanding the simpler stuff.

But the Dashboard shows inaccurate sleep bar "graphing" (shows sleeping when I was very much awake, but even then big spikes over eensy weense time spans when it shows sleeping). There hasn't been any "breakdown" as shown in your other illustration.  That's what I miss most.  In the meantime, my insomnia is "better" but I cannot seem to get enough sleep, so I suspect I'm not getting the right REM sleep.  Now, I have been falling asleep while watching evening TV.  In the past, I could never ever fall asleep in a sitting position.  That has changed.  

Between yesterday and today, as best I can tell:

- went to bed about 6:30am. 

- got up about 3-4 times, went back to bed within minutes

- woke up exhausted about 1:30pm

- walked around and did some stuff but was still sleepy, so thought a nap might fix that, but...

- woke up tired at 4pm

- tried getting stuff done, but...

- sat down to watch TRMS and promptly fell asleep...

- woke up about 9pm and forced myself to stay up... it's now 12:23am and I am not sleepy, so it'll probably  be about 6, 7, or 8am before I'm able to feel sleepy enough to try it again.

This scenario is variable, but seems to mostly fall into this pattern... and it's worse than it was 6-9 months ago.  That's why I'm trying to see if it's the quality of my sleep.  (And, I refuse to take any more meds for it as they help me sleep, but leave me fuzzy-brained once I'm awake.) I've read this sort of thing happens with aging, but there has to be something better  (I'm sort of hoping weight loss might be part of the solution.)

Does that help explain why I need to map my sleep quality?  I've stopped checking it since there wasn't any data.  Maybe it was a temp glitch or something, but I would rather just know how to make it work, period, not guess my way around the issue.

So, taking your time to try to assist me is appreciated.  But, I pretty much know how to work most of the website (granted, not all of it, and I do find it less linear and direct than I prefer), it just appears that there's another factor affecting things.  (I use 3-4 browsers because browsers do seem to make a difference in some Internet problems.)  

Thanks,

R'hopper

PS:  My laptop is fairly old, as computers go. Perhaps it's time to upgrade??????

[TandemWalker]

Hi @Rockhopper. I've read over both your posts and I'm puzzled with one part of your orignial posts that says "...then entering the two times, is more work than has value."

All you have to do is start and stop the timer every time you attempt to sleep. But you have to understand that your Fitbit One is not a sleep lab encapsulated. When you start the timer to track sleep, your One is checking for inactivity; and if indeed your are inactive between the timer's start and stop times, that time segment will show on your sleep log and graph.

But if you're not sleeping and walking around during that segment, then the One doesn't know that you're attempting to sleep and might catalogue that time segment as activ on your Log - Activities page. When you hover your mouse over a timed activity, you will see two shadow icons appearing next to it. Clicking on the pencil icon allows you to Edit a timed record. Once the record opens up, right at the bottom of the it, you have the option to catalogue this record as SLEEP instead of active time. In doing so, the record will automatically be transferred from Activities to Sleep and populate your sleep log.

So essentially, if you always use the timer functionality of your Fitbit One to track all your attempts to get some sleep during the day, you should NOT have to key in any times manually on your Log Sleep page.

Does this help any?

Hope this helps. Please let us know how it goes.

             TW             

____________________________________________________________________________

(If this tip solved the problem for you, please mark this post solved, as this will be helpful to other users experiencing similar issues.) 

[Rockhopper]

Hi TW:

To reply to this forum post, click here. Do not reply directly to this email.

>>My Comcast email will not allow me to respond via Click Here... wants to add you to my contacts.

 Anyway, you certainly are trying to figure this out for me.  Thanks.

All you have to do is start and stop the timer every time you attempt to sleep. But you have to understand that your Fitbit One is not a sleep lab encapsulated. When you start the timer to track sleep, your One is checking for inactivity; and if indeed your are inactive between the timer's start and stop times, that time segment will show on your sleep log and graph.

 >>Already know that... have been doing it all along.  Don't expect it to be a sleep lab, just show my time asleep vs. awake (better than my brain is aware of). Doesn't do that with any sort of accuracy.  (Has shown me sleeping for about 15 mins. every 5-6 hours, for example (at least it had been... haven't checked recently.) BUT, I know why this last week has been so crazy with being really tired and sleepy--been coming down with a headcold and lost the battle with the congestion this morning (prescription decongestion was no match)... shoulda figured that out.

I haven't seen a "graph" or link. 

But if you're not sleeping and walking around during that segment, then the One doesn't know that you're attempting to sleep and might catalogue that time segment as activ on your Log - Activities page.

When I first lay down (try to do it when I feel a bit sleepy at least), the first 2-3-4 hours, I'm up and down about 3 or 4 times. I usually go to the bathroom (even if I don't feel the need as it seems to "reset" my sleep mode) and then go back to bed, but if I'm not back asleep w/in 30 mins. experience with my insomnia has taught me to "trick" myself by watching some boring TV as opposed to trying to MAKE myself go back to sleep, otherwise, my brain kicks into "panic" mode that OMG I'm not going to get enough sleep. It usually works well enough that I do go back to sleep--just a little trick that might not work for everyone.  After the initial yo-yo time, I do go to sleep for about 4 hours,then wake up... go to the kitchen for something to drink or to ye old john regardless, and then back to bed then I fall asleep again and am dead to the world for about three to four hours.  (Sleep through two alarms and my cat has to treat me like I'm the Coast Trail to rouse me for her brekkie. When I wake up after that, I force myself to stay up, stretch and move around and eventually don't feel like I'm the walking dead.

When you hover your mouse over a timed activity, you will see two shadow icons appearing next to it. \

Please define "timed activity" more clearly... sleep activity? The rest of your advice might mean more if you can supply that.

Clicking on the pencil icon allows you to Edit a timed record. Once the record opens up, right at the bottom of the it, you have the option to catalogue this record as SLEEP instead of active time. In doing so, the record will automatically be transferred from Activities to Sleep and populate your sleep log.

So essentially, if you always use the timer functionality of your Fitbit One to track all your attempts to get some sleep during the day, you should NOT have to key in any times manually on your Log Sleep page.

 That's the supposition I'd been functioning under with no success.

Found a Fitbit Connect tiny icon hiding in my system tray, but it does not respond to any mouse clicks.  Huh?  But, it's no biggie--one problem at a time.  And right now my burning eyeballs, achy-breaky body, stuffy nose and germs are headed to bed.  (Got the chills now... aaaarrrrrgggghhhh!)

Unrelated: Last night the cat rescued 3 years ago did something new and cute:  Chased her tail... would stop and bat/**ahem** at it, then do it some more. She was having so much fun and it was so effing cute I couldn't help but grin and wonder why when Congress chases its tail, it's not entertaining at all.

[TandemWalker]

Hi @Rockhopper. What device are you using to look at your dashboard - a phone, a tablet, a computer. If the latter, please tell me which operating system you're using. Then I might be able to answer some of your questions in your last post, with screen grabs of what I'm talking about.

If you use your web browser to navigate to www.fitbit.com and sign-on to your account, and click on the Log tab, it takes right to the Food Log page; but that page also offers other tabs, two of which are SLEEP and Activities.

Wheat I was trying to explain in my earlier post is that some of your SLEEP records (or those timed records where you were attempting to sleep but were still tossing around a lot, getting in and out of bed, etc.) might very well be on your Activities log instead of Sleep. And if they are, you have the ability to change those activities from active time to sleep time.

             TW             

____________________________________________________________________________

(If this tip solved the problem for you, please mark this post solved, as this will be helpful to other users experiencing similar issues.)