As with most people, the last year was unbelievably disruptive to the daily routines I once had. As an outcome of that disruption, I found myself at probably the least healthy point in my life. Not by any extreme measure, but enough for me to stop and realize that I needed to turn it around. I’m a person who looks to technology to solve most of my problems (it doesn’t) and so with my health I looked to find gadgets and gizmos to get me back on track.
I’ve used health tech products for quite awhile. At the beginning of the last decade, I used a Nike+ iPod Sport Kit which was a little sensor in your shoes with a receiver on your iPod for tracking runs. About 6 years ago, I ordered the first Apple Watch. I’ve also owned a smart scale from Withings for many years. But, I had never really had a holistic strategy for using technology to monitor, manage, and ultimately improve my health.
My journey started by looking at the Health app and trying to get a sense for what data I could potentially start measuring. What became clear was that there are both inputs into my health (activity and nutrition) and outcomes from those inputs (heart health and weight). So what I’d like to do in this post is list out the different apps and devices I’m using to improve my health. While I’m not a doctor and don’t claim to have solutions for everyone, I have been able to lose about 10 pounds since last August while increasing my VO2 Max about 10 mL/kg/min. Nothing earth shattering, but I’m happy with where I’m headed.
Inputs - Nutrition, Activity, and Sleep
FoodNoms & WaterMinder
While I’ve used WaterMinder for about a year, tracking all of the food I eat is totally new to me. I’ve had close family use Weight Watchers in the past few years which got me better at understanding nutrition on a practical level. But I’ve had the unfortunate mindset that if I just run a little more I can eat whatever I want.
I started tracking food using MyFitnessPal because it’s free and integrates with the Health app. However, I wanted to start tracking caffeine which is a paid feature. I figured if I’m going to pay money, I might as well do some shopping. Lucky I did because FoodNoms is a much better match for what I was looking for.
I think of FoodNoms as a front-end for Apple Health nutrition data. I can scan food labels and track meals and recipes, and everything I track is synced back to the Health app. It looks and feels like an extension of the Health app which I love. I tried using the FoodNom recommended nutritional goals, but felt better about setting them all manually. I made a spreadsheet that lays out all of the formulas and source materials.
Apple Watch & Activity
The Apple Watch is a great motivator for keeping a baseline of healthy activity. “Closing the rings” is the name of the game, but watching the daily average of active energy is where I’ve learned to stay focused. My move goal is 500 active calories a day, but I’d like to keep my average at 850 calories a day when looking at the whole year. So the move ring serves as more of a baseline at this point. This setup also makes it conceivable to hit the 300% and 400% move goal awards on days with long runs and intense workouts.
The Apple Watch monitors activity in lots of ways. More than makes sense for me to list out in this post. But the other important measurements to me are the step counter, the number of flights of stairs climbed, and walking and running distance. I’ve found that keeping these numbers up over time has been helpful in maintaining that baseline of healthy habits.
Apple Fitness+
For quite some time, I’ve turned to the Nike Training Club app for workout routines. I very well may go back to Nike but for now I’ve found Apple Fitness+ to be closer to what I’d like from a workout app. The workouts are simple to navigate through, the Apple Watch and Apple Music integrations are fantastic, and the iPad support is really appreciated. On all three of these fronts, I wish that Nike could make up ground.
My favorite thing about Apple Fitness+ is the brevity of the workouts. When I find a few spare minutes in the day, I’ve turned to my iPad to do some exercise (even a 20 minute core workout while food was in the oven). This has made working out feel much more achievable and less like an event that takes up a whole evening.
Strava
Strava is an app that I always wanted to like but could never figure out how to fit it into my running life. I used the Nike Run Club app almost exclusively until the Apple Watch supported an always-on display, something the NRC Watch app can’t do, and a feature I found I couldn’t live without once I had it. But, since leaving the NRC app behind, I found I missed having a more detailed and fun look at my running data and Strava’s subscription features started to make more sense. So my current running routine is to use my Apple Watch workouts app, then import the run into Strava when I’m done. I get the best of the Apple Watch experience with the data analysis and social features that Strava provides.
One other issue I had with the NRC app was the running plans feature. As soon as I fell behind the schedule, I felt like a failure and grew more and more frustrated that I couldn’t pause the plan for a bit when life got busy. Strava has a similar running plan feature, but the worst that it can do is continue sending you daily emails of the current days run. Otherwise it’s almost as static as a PDF, and doesn’t integrate with the workout data on Strava at all. What a blessing.
So my latest plan to avoid feeling like a lazy runner is to recreate the Strava running plan into a Google Spreadsheet, and just do the runs at my own pace. We’ll see how this goes. I do really wish that these apps just had a pause button.
Beddit
Getting an adequate amount of sleep is the last major piece of my health “inputs”. Of course, the Apple Watch now has it’s own sleep monitoring features, but when its battery is low, or I just don’t feel like wearing the watch all night, the Beddit sleep monitor is a fine backup. The device itself is beyond annoying and I’ve found it to easily slide off the mattress and down to the side of the fitted sheet on my bed. But lately I’ve taped it down to the mattress (really) and that seems to have worked out.
My wife uses the Withings sleep monitor which I would more easily recommend since it actually goes under the mattress and connects directly to your WiFi network. The Beddit relies on a Bluetooth connection with your phone, so if your phone dies in the middle of the night, the sleep monitor goes with it. Unlike the Withings sleep monitor, however, the Beddit monitor can measure your respiratory rate. So as a Health app completionist, I’ll stick with the Beddit for now.
Outcomes - Body Composition and VO2 Max
Withings Body+ Scale
As I mentioned, I’ve used a Withings smart scale for many years, but I recently upgraded to the Body+ Scale for more detailed analysis than just my weight and body fat percentage. The Body+ scale includes muscle mass, which is a nice extra. It also seems a bit more accurate overall than the previous model I owned.
The two stats that I track in the Health app are my body fat percentage and lean body mass. It’s unfortunate that the Withings Health Mate app doesn’t actually calculate lean body mass, though I believe it has all of the information needed to calculate it. So using Soulver (also good for food measurement), I set up the formula and enter the measurement manually into the Health app based on my body fat percentage and weight. For those interested, the formula is Lean Mass = Weight - Weight × Fat Percentage.
At this point, I want my body fat percentage to go down and my lean body mass to go up. With those two goals in mind, my weight will tend to go down over time, though I suppose eventually it might go back up again if I where to lose enough excess fat and had continued muscle gain.
Apple Watch VO2 Max Estimation
Recently with the release of watchOS 7.2 this past December, the VO2 max measurement in the Health app has been given a few interesting new features. Mainly, there’s more guidance about where your cardio fitness level is versus where it should be given gender and age. While I could also look to my resting heart rate or maybe even my blood pressure to understand if I’m generally heart-healthy, I think VO2 max is probably the best thing to look at over time. Over the past few years, it’s fluctuated on a path that closely matches the amount of exercise I’ve taken on, so I feel like the Apple Watch actually does a decent enough job at predicting my VO2 max.
A Few More Thoughts
Tim Cook did an interview with Outside magazine recently and reflected on the idea that people shouldn’t necessarily need to go to doctors to understand what’s going on with their health. And as I’ve started to use more health technology products, I’ve found that to be abundantly clear. Indeed, ever since I’ve had the Apple Watch it’s felt laughable that a doctor would “check my heart rate”. Look at my minute by minute heart rate over the last 12 months! It has to be better than some random check. The same is true for blood pressure, weight measurements, and even things like hearing tests. These can all now easily be done at home, and the data can be aggregated and processed so that doctors can provide more value now than they could before.
My health tech setup will definitely evolve as time goes on. But I think I’ve reached a point where if I do start to gain weight, or lose my endurance on long runs, it’s won’t be a mystery as to why. And seeing these numbers improve over time will hopefully give me the confidence to know that I can push harder and run longer, faster. And hopefully if you’ve made it to this point in the post, you have some ideas of your own for how to make 2021 a little better than 2020.