Physical health is the basis of my energy, so it’s a place I’m happy spending money and energy. I’ve been buying lots of technology to help me understand and measure my health and fitness and this post will track my favorite toys.
To help my measure my heart rate, paths run, and control my music, I have an apple watch - which is expensive but worth it.
To motivate me to bike and run, I use an app called runtastic. It does a great job measuring, and motivating with features like story running, live mode, and voice prompts. In story running, runtastic has produced several first party audio books that are high tempo and sub-consciously make you feel like you should be running faster . Live mode is a feature where your friends are notified you are running live, and can cheer you on. Finally voice prompts are a voice coming up every 1/2 mile telling how fast you’re going and your heart rate in case your pace has gotten too fast, or more likely, too slow.
To keep detailed track of my heart rate I use heart watch. This app gives you very detailed heart rate monitoring, and incredible graphs. It’s also great at measuring your workouts.
To keep detailed track of my sleep I use auto sleep. This app gives you very detailed sleep monitoring, and incredible graphs.
To help me wake up in the morning, I have lights which turn on automatically at 5am. I found glaring harsh light is a much better motivation to wak up, then a simple alarm clock.
To help me measure my weight, I have an bluetooth scale. Every time I measure myself it loads my weight into Apple Health.
For fun, I monitor my blood glucose with a continous glucose monitor (GCM). You need a prescriptoin to get it, but it’s pretty fun. I use the Freestyle Libra
All of my health data is stored in Apple health, which I have the ability to export and analyze with my favorite data analysis tools.
Products that didn’t work for me.
Not all health products are awesome, here are list of product I’ve tried but don’t recommend.
Spire - A wearable which measures your respiration and stress. A cool idea, but I didn’t find it accurate, nor could I keep it in the right spot. I stopped using it a month in.
Lumo Lift - A wearable which measures your posture, and notifies when you’re slouching. Again, cool idea, but very easy to ignore and a bit fiddly to put on and keep in the right place. I stopped using it with a month
Muse - A device which measures your brain waves, helping you know if you’re meditating well and relaxing. As much as I wanted this to work, it seemed to be random for me. I stopped using it within a week.
Beddit. It’s a device you place on your bed which automatically measures your sleep patterns. It used to work great, but was bought by apple a long time ago, and has since stopped working.