Bellabeat Review

I’m so excited to share my Bellabeat review with you all today. I’ve had my eye on this super stylish health tracker for a little while now – so when the guys over at Bellabeat asked if they could send over their signature wellness tracking and meditation bundle for me to try to share my Bellabeat review with you – I couldn’t wait!

For those unfamiliar with Bellabeat – it is an all round wellness and health tracker – which you wear either wrapped around your wrist, on their infitiny necklace, mala bead or clipped onto shorts or a shirt.

Straight off the bat, I have to say, I absolutely LOVE this product!

The Urban Leaf Bellabeat Product itself:

The Urban leaf I received was the rose gold and dark charcoal – which I just love. The actual tracking device is detachable and can either be clipped onto a rubberised wrist strap, clipped onto the plain gold necklace or onto the custom mala beads. You can also wear it clipped directly into your shirt collar/neck so that the flat tracking part sits on your chest.

The mala beads I received are the new Prosperity Mala which comprise a Tiger’s Eye stone for “willpower, self confidence, practicality and the correct use of power.” I just loved the little write up that is attached with each mala.

The rubberised wrist strap is really great as the whole device is water-resistant, so it’s perfectly safe to wear in the shower or if you are planning on getting sweaty! The strap wraps twice around the arm and has plenty of holes so the sizing is completely adjustable – which is important for someone like me who has quite small wrists!

The complete meditation bundle comes with a pair of Bellabeat headphones which are bluetooth connecting and very sleek looking. Because the headphones are bluetooth – there are no wires between your phone and the headphones – which saves you from getting tangled in a hot mess! I really like that the two headphones are connected to each other – so there is no chance of getting one in the pair lost – or one accidentally falling out without you noticing – if you are say on a walking meditation around the park!

What does the Bellabeat health tracking device do?

In a nutshell the Bellabeat device tracks everything related to your overall health and wellbeing. The five main categories it tracks are:

• Steps/Movement
• Sleep
• Hydration
• Meditation
• Menstrual cycle

which combine to give you an overall indictor of your resiliency/susceptibility to stress.

The device itself has no screen or digital face (which I really like) – so all the data is collected on an app in your phone.

The user interface of the app is SO simple and easy to track – which makes it really easy to stay consistent with tracking. I LOVE that all of these key wellness components are all in the same place so that you can get a really quick overall check in with where you’re optimising your wellness and where you need to bring some more awareness.

As soon as you open up the app – you will see quickly at a glance how many minutes you’ve walked, meditated, how many hours you’ve slept the night before and a percentage of your resiliency to stress. If you click through to each category it gives you a further, more detailed break down.

How does the Bellabeat health tracking device work?

Steps/Movement:
When you wear the device against your skin it monitors movement – which it syncs automatically (at your command) to calculate your steps per day. You are also able to set it to vibrate on your wrist/body every hour as a reminder to stand/move.

Sleep:
Wearing your Bellabeat at night against your skin – also picks up movement – and it is surprisingly accurate in giving you a reading about the hours you spent in ‘restful’ sleep and restless sleep. On the first night I wore the device, I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom – (because I’d drunk so much freaken water – see point below), I was very interested in the morning to see if it had picked up me being completely awake or not. When I synced the device it showed up as a patch of ‘restful sleep’ – which is colour coded as deep blue, then a some periods of ‘restless sleep’ colour coded as lighter blue and then a very distinct block of bright yellow – which indicates periods of being completely awake. I was suitably impressed! And it has been very interesting to monitor my sleeping patterns (and basically confirm what I already know – as getting my most restful sleep in the early hours of the morning!)

Hydration:
To track your hydration using the Bellabeat, you are able to log water manually directly into the app. You can either add one glass of water, half a litre of water or a custom amount. I thought this would be a bit gimmicky to be honest – but after using it for a few weeks, I can say I think it’s been one of my favourite features on the app! And it has ONE HUNDRED percent encouraged me to drink more water and be WAY more mindful and aware of my water intake.
As a side note – Bellabeat have also come out with a hydration tracking waterbottle – so that your water intake is synced automatically when you drink out the bottle without you manually having to put it in to the app – which I think is freaken GENIUS!

Meditation:
The Bellabeat app comes with a whole host of guided meditations from chakra meditations, to body scans and visualisation meditations. They range in time length from 5/10 mins – all the way up to an hour plus. You simply whack in your bluetooth headphones and start the meditation whilst wearing your device and the length of the meditation is then automatically synced to your data.

The meditation screen on the app features a pattern of “waves” – which I like to think of as ‘your state of calm’ – as you get deeper into the meditation, (with the tracker measuring your movement/breathing) the wave pattern starts to ‘quieten’ down until it is a single flat/still line.

I finished a 30 min meditation one day and looked down to see the ‘wave pattern’ completely flat and was amazed at how it had picked up that I was so ‘still/calm’ and so, (because I’m a skeptical hippo), I decided the next day to do the meditation again, but this time take the device off my wrist and just lay it on the ground next to me. Low and behold the wave pattern didn’t quieten down nearly as much as it had the day before!

If you are someone, like me – who likes to do their own meditations or has other meditations that you like to follow (like from my Members area!) you can also do whichever meditation you like and then add in your meditation time manually.

Menstrual Cycle:
When you enter in your last menstrual cycle dates into the app – it creates a prediction of when your next cycle will be and when your estimated window of fertility is. As you use the period tracking over time, it gets more and more accurate and then inputs this data into your main feed – which has an effect on the ‘overall stress’ reading, based on which hormones are most likely to be present. You can also opt not to track the menstrual cycle in this app if you choose not to – but it is quite handy to see everything together – and interesting to correlate your activity levels and sleep levels with the time in your cycle.

Those five main categories (or four if you choose not to track your menstrual cycle) combine to create an overall percentage reading for your current ‘stress level’ or resiliency/susceptibility towards stress. If you’ve had a good nights sleep and are rested, hydrated, have gotten outside to walk/move your body and taken time to meditate or sit in stillness – your stress percentage drops significantly compared to if you’ve had 3 hours of sleep, haven’t moved at all and are about to start your period.

In some instances stress is created in the mind, so what I’ve found really interesting in this –  is that if we think we are stressed so it creates stress. Over the first few weeks I was tracking all these things, I was noticing that I *was* getting good hours of sleep, I *was* drinking way more water (as I was so much more aware of it thanks to the app!), I was tracking my meditation and when I looked at the app and it told me I was only ‘17%’ susceptible to stress I thought, “ah! haha that’s a relief!” and it felt like a big long exhale… which ironically is where I think that the entire process of de-stressing begins. Food for thought!

What I love about the Bellabeat wellness tracker

• I LOVE that it is a truly well-rounded indicator of your well-being. Unlike other sports watches it has a big focus on meditation and mindfulness. Which we know is HUGE for lowering our stress levels – which is in turn massive for our health.
• I think it’s amazing that the app tracks hydration – as this is something that I know personally I really struggle with – so it is great to have a reminder to drink more water! Plus having the device on you – is also a good visual reminder!
• The Bellabeat is REALLY pretty! I’ve had people comment on how lovely my ‘bracelet’ is – before even realising that it actually has a whole lot of added benefits hidden inside it, other than being fabulous to look at!
• You can wear it in multiple ways – so that it really does become something that is more like a stylish fashion accessory, than a heart rate monitor/health tracker.
• The app user interface is SO simple and easy to navigate. And it’s so wonderful to have all these components sitting next to each other to get a quick overall check in on your wellbeing.
• It really does make you more aware of your movement, sleeping, water intake and meditation habits!
• Compared with other health watches and trackers it really is super affordable!

One of my friends who has an Apple watch saw my Bellabeat and asked me what it was like as she was thinking of getting one. I was surprised as I thought that since she had the Apple watch it would be unnecessary to have the Bellabeat as well.

Warren and his family bought me an Apple watch for my birthday – which co-incidentally arrived about a week after I received the Bellabeat – and, after using them both for some time now, I have to say I think they are completely different devices and have a completely different focus! I am looking forward to doing a comparision post soon – so stay tuned!

I’ve absolutely LOVED using the Bellabeat and have noticed such a big shift in my attention to continuous movement (ie: “let me walk to the next bus stop cause I need another 500 steps!”) and hydration, and of course a way to log my meditation.

They say that awareness is the first step towards change – and this device for SURE brings one hundred percent more awareness to your sense of well being! Plus, I mean – it’s pretty freaken stylin’!

If you have any other questions on the product or how it works – please leave a comment below so I can get back to you!