I’m a Giraffe. Let me explain.

Look, I’m not the guy who gets a solid 8 hours of sleep every single day. I wish I was, but the reality is a lot different. That being said, for someone with a medical condition like Type 1 Diabetes, it becomes all the more important to consistently get a good night’s sleep. But these things take practice and a lot of patience to get your life back in control. Fitbit has offered sleep tracking functionality for a while now with features like Sleep Score, Smart Wake, Silent Alarms, Sleep stages, and more included in all their flagship trackers and smartwatches. With so much data available, sometimes these things can get a little overwhelming. For instance, if your sleep score is always low, you might feel a little less motivated to do something about it. The score also tells you only a part of the story. And that’s where Sleep Profiles come in.

Deeper sleep insights with a tiny dose of personality added to it

Think of Sleep Profiles as a combination of three very important things. Your monthly sleep analysis based on ten key sleep metrics, your sleep animal, and then tips & tricks to improve your sleep over time. According to Fitbit, “Sleep Profiles look beyond your nightly sleep and analyze your sleep over a month-long period to identify your specific habits and trends. Sleep Profile helps you understand your sleep more than ever so you can make informed decisions to help improve your sleep quality over time”.

Okay Yes. The Giraffe part

See every month, using all the data and other sleep metrics obtained by your Fitbit, you’ll receive a Sleep Animal that closely mirrors your sleeping style from the past month. You could get anything from a bear to a dolphin or in my case, a giraffe from a total of six different creatures. No jokes, all it takes is 10 different sleep statistics and Fitbit knows what kind of an animal you are. Stats like sleep schedule variability, sleep start time, the time before sound sleep, sleep duration, deep sleep time, REM sleep, restorative sleep, sleep stability, nights with long awakenings and Days with naps. Quite a mouthful. Well aware. But that is the amount of data that goes into deciding what Sleep Profile suits you the best. Giraffes for instance signify that your sleep tends to be shorter, and you are more likely to sleep later and wake up early. You might have a relatively good proportion of deep and REM sleep even though your overall duration of sleep is short.

The bigger picture

I get it. It’s cool to have so much data but you’re probably wondering what you are supposed to do with it. Sleep profiles are meant to help you understand your overall sleeping patterns so you could essentially focus on different areas to improve. You’ll be able to pinpoint key areas within those ten sleeping metrics to generate a better sleep score next time. Things like going to bed and waking up at a consistent time, Practicing mindfulness, and eating healthy are just some of the ways that contribute to a good night’s sleep. Thanks to Fitbit Premium, you have access to all these resources at the click of a button making the Fitbit app, your go-to place for all your fitness-related matters.