Putting you in charge
A busy life and poor sleeping habits were leaving stylist Esperanza De La Fuente feeling burnt out. Can the Fitbit 30-Day Challenge help her get back on track?
working in fashion has to be a pretty sweet gig, right? As a stylist for leading brands and magazines including ELLE, Esperanza De La Fuente has what many would see as one of the most enviable jobs in the business. ‘It can be fabulous, sure,’ she agrees, ‘but it can also be demanding. I am vegetarian and do a moderate workout a few times a week, so I have quite a healthy lifestyle, but I often struggle to keep my energy levels up.’ A ‘typical’ day can mean anything from organising to attending shoots, and often involves rushing between appointments. Throw in the need to travel regularly for work and that energy drain is hardly surprising. But the job – which she loves – is not going to change, so Esperanza was looking for ways to boost her energy and maximise her time. Enter the Fitbit 30-day Challenge.
With guidance from author and founder of The Health Studio Dr Shan Hussain, we asked Esperanza to keep a daily diary of her thoughts throughout the challenge. Her new Fitbit also tracked her resting heart rate (RHR), activity levels and sleep patterns, providing her with daily insights that helped her make the right changes in her daily routine and to see the impact of those changes.
Sleep – or rather the lack of it – may be one of the most common malaises of modern living, but it wasn’t one Esperanza thought applied to her. ‘I was shocked to discover how poor the quality of sleep I was getting,’ she says. But the Fitbit Versa device doesn’t simply track sleep patterns. As Esperanza found, it can also help you set a restful sleep schedule to maximise the sleep you do get. ‘I’ve started using Fitbit’s bedtime reminder to encourage me to start winding down earlier and hopefully improve my quality of sleep,’ she says.
Dr Hussain recommends daily mediation to help offset everyday stress, which can ultimately affect your resting heart rate. ‘Esperanza works long hours — often late into the evening — and was struggling to find time to fit this in,’ he says. He advised her to practise 30 minutes’ ‘mindful reading’ every night instead. Not that stress is the only reason for keeping an eye on your pulse: ‘Measuring our resting heart rate — on average, 60-to-100bpm — can help to keep track of our overall physical fitness,’ he reveals, since improving your cardio fitness levels can help to reduce your RHR.
To maximise results, Esperanza also had weekly catch-ups with Dr Hussain. Of course, overall health and wellbeing require taking a holistic approach to your body and lifestyle needs, so along with his other suggestions, he recommended she cut out dairy and wheat, and add in a daily probiotic to promote gut health. Thirty days on, it remains a work in progress, but Esperanza is seeing results. ‘The Fitbit is definitely helping me to be more mindful generally of my body’s needs,’ she explains. ‘It’s also helping me manage and keep track of my sleep when I’m working abroad and travelling in and out of different time zones, which is really helpful.’ Not long then, surely, before she can say goodbye to that 3pm slump once and for all.
‘I am vegetarian and work out moderately a few times a week, so I have quite a healthy lifestyle, but I often struggle to keep my energy levels up’