Wellness seen by an IT Engineer
This is that time of the year that, after a deserved holiday period, you reckon with your weight scale.
I did it and what I saw was not so cute, I weighted too much.
In fact, even if I do kettlebell training (if you are interested I use the StrongFirst tecnique) on a regular basis, I enjoy too much eating and the results of my lifestyle are clearing blinking on my weight scale display.
This leads me to make a decision: I need to get back into shape.
The engineer inside me
I am an optimist by nature, I used to think that every problem has a solution.
I am also an Engineer and I tend to see a problem like something that have a cause and an effect.
In my case, I weight too much because I assume a lot of calories, more than that I can burn daily. The solution is simple and made by two points:
- I have to introduce less calories into my body
- I have to burn more calories as possible during the day
The first part is quite simple in theory (although it is very hard on reality); choose a food plan with fixed calories and do it. In my case I already have a plan for 1.700 calories a day (I am an habitual) and I am stuck on it.
The second part requires some daily fitness exercises added to my usual workout.
Moreover, as engineer, I would like to monitor and measure my progress both in lost weight and burnt calories.
The IT Guy inside me
As I mentioned I want to monitor burnt calories and weight. I want also track records of my progresses.
For the first part I needed a way to monitor my hearth pulse during activity and estimate calories burnt. I wanted also a device that can track some data into my iPhone (I am an Apple Guy but the sotware and hardware I use can be easily found also for Android devices), particularly I want to use the Apple Healthkit to store data into Apple Health application (which will be my data store).
I do not want to spend a lot of money on this monitoring device, mostly because I am quite lazy and, if I will give up, I will not regret about how much money I spent.
My choice has fallen upon Xiaomi Mi Band 2. This device has a pedometer, an heartbeat tracker and a sleep analyzer wrapped into a tiny band. Moreover, it costs less than 50 €.
I read a lot about this device and it has a great value for money. Obviously it can not stand with professional devices (which costs notably more of this band) but it is quite accurate with its measurement. Also its software for Apple is quite simple and integrated with Apple Healthkit: every measurement the device can take is synchronized with Apple Health instantly.
The only thing I missed on this device was the abilty to be used as a continouous heartbeat tracker that could be paired to Runtastic. I was not blaming the device for this missing feature. The device itself is quite cheap and I can not pretend too much from it but, after digging into Apple Store, I found Mi Heart rate continues monitoring. This software does exactly what I want, it pairs the band with health software and the device becomes a continuous heartbeat tracker.
It has a free version that monitors heart for ten minutes and a cheap in-app purchase that will unlock all the features, such as Apple Healthkit integration. Using this software I gained continous heartbeat tracking that usually costs a lot more (this feature is available only with heart rate monitor chest straps).
Having set up my monitor system, I focused on storing my possible weight loss. I needed an application that could be a sort of diary for my weight, used to check if I am performing well or not. Also, this software has to interact with Apple Healthkit.
To be honest the MI Band software also has weight tracking functionality (because they sell also a MI scale which interacts with it), but it merely tracks the weight, it is not able to compute trends nor define time — goals.
Happy Scale, on the contrary, is able to do what I was looking for. I bought this software (also this one is not expensive at all) and completed my hardware — software suite.
After I had satisfied the IT Guy that lives in me, I had to use what I have bought.
The not so sportsman inside me
As I said before, I want to pair my actual StongFirst training with some daily activity to boost my calories consumption.
Since I am not a fan of running, I rejected the idea of going outside every day trying to run, barely breathing because I have no stamina at all. Moreover my knees will surely be wrecked by this activity since I weight too much to run properly right now.
So I focused into a HIIT activity I can manage in the morning, before going to work.
There are plenty of videos on Youtube that can teach you a lot of exercises that you can do without any kind of equiment (the only equipment I bought was a yoga mat). I am currently doing some of these exercises:
Aside the inital awkwardness and laziness, I managed to do this everyday workout just after woke up and I am still doing it!
After a month…
It is almost a month I engaged myself in doing more fitness and eating less food and it worked!
At the beginning I was very puffy and weight loss was quick, now I have a costant weight lost around 0,8kg a week.
The Abs Workout is a daily routine right now; at the beginning it was very hard, now it is better (however it is still hard) and my stubbornness helped a lot on doing this exercises.
Kettlebell workout is always on the stage, and it is also helping a lot.
Moreover in Apple Health I have all the history of my progresses, which in case I will post on next articles, that I proudly admire and use to monitor if I am improving or not.
