Is the Road to Hell Paved with Activity Trackers?

Is the Road to Hell Paved with Activity Trackers?

Just Get On With It

As I mentioned in my August Progress Report, I have a (cunning) plan for losing the weight and slimming down. It involves activity trackers. And it is based on my 1918 weight control guide book. The one where Annette Kellerman says we can all find the time to walk every day. For an hour and a quarter . Plus 10 miles (16km) three times a week.

Things came to a head when I took the CSIRO Healthy Diet Score. I was very smug thinking that I have been eating very well and I am too ashamed to even tell you how low my score was. But the thing I learned, is that I have no idea what a serving size looks like. And no idea what I “should” weigh.  When I searched I got a spread between 45kg and 65kg (a bit extreme) – who knows where the truth lies. Though according to Kellerman’s handy guide, I could definitely do with slimming down. The sensible thing to do seems to be to start, keep going and see where I end up.

I’ve been thinking that if I stop wearing elastic clothing for “work” and start wearing the jeans and business shirts that are now a little snug (they don’t stretch) maybe their tightness will remind me that I need to move more and that I don’t really need those chocolate biscuits. This will be my motivation to get moving – to make my clothes more comfortable.

According to Katie Heath (website shut down), your daily walk is an ideal time to listen to a podcast.  I would like to listen to business development podcasts, but I generally think other tasks are more important than professional development. But you can’t work when you are outside walking so it’s the perfect time to listen. “Development Time” will be my reason to get moving.

I get caught up in my writing and research and before I know it I’ve lost the day. What I need is something that tells me I have been sitting too still for too long and should move now.  I did some research and bought an activity tracker that reminds me to move after an hour of motionless. It also tracks the number of steps I take and the calories I burn. I don’t know how accurate it is, but it is consistent with itself so it’s a good baseline for comparison.

Now that it knows my height and weight it has decided that I use a baseline of 1400 calories just existing (who-hoo!) and then it calculates how many I burn by being active on top of that. So having a few days data to work from, I now know that for me, it takes 6.37 steps to expend one calorie and that 6.37 steps takes me a distance of 4.19m (about 66cm per step).

So my favourite chocolate biscuits “cost” 80 calories, and therefore require 510 steps to pay them off. Except of course that you never just eat one do you? Makes the choice about whether they are worth the investment a little easier.

The software wants me to share what I eat with it, but I still don’t want to eat like a science experiment. Not being good at serving sizes doesn’t really help that situation. I have found that it does make me more conscious of what and how much I’m eating without doing anything further. Toseland uses his activity tracker to monitor his heart rate. Katy uses hers for sleep tracking. But both have said the same.

So as Katy constantly tells me, stop talking and just get on with it!

13 June 2017: I reconsidered activity trackers.

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