Fitness tracking requires motivation. The Apple Watch Ultra does all of that for you.
The Apple Watch Ultra has a batter that lasts a few days. This allows the Watch Ultra to track and log all kinds of metrics about your body and health, without your conscious involvement.
I've owned 2 Apple Watches - a Series Zero, and the Ultra. It's really something to see how massively this product has evolved.
Much like I did a decade ago on this app, I'm setting out on another fitness journey. This time, the Watch Ultra is central to that effort.
While it's not ALL about weight, I'm about 25 lbs heavier than I was when I tried this a decade ago - I guess that's the effect of being 10 years older and locked down for a couple of years.
Still - I want to take a holistic view of health this time. I'd like to see improved heart and lung function, blood pressure, the whole deal - and Apple's Health app, with devices like the Watch Ultra, can provide that data.
Here are some of the Watch apps - and other devices - that I'm utilizing in an attempt to reverse several years of sedentary lifestyle and iffy health choices.
The greatest aspect of this suite of apps - they all work together and share data, seamlessly.
1) Sleep - THE Killer App
Put simply, the Watch Ultra makes sleep tracking possible. The battery lasts several days, which means that you're able to wear it overnight. And sleep tracking is INCREDIBLE.
The Watch Ultra knows when you're in bed, and it tracks when you're in REM sleep, "core" sleep, and "deep" sleep. This is then summarized in a graph every morning.
The feedback that I'm getting about the quality and quantity of sleep is just amazing. I can see that I was getting almost no sleep during the week - between 4 and 5 hours - and that I was trying to catch up over the weekends.
This is not ideal! That kind of sleep deprivation is associated with wide-ranging negative health impacts, and is probably hurting me at home and at work. Hopefully, by measuring this outcome, we can change it.
The Withings app uses an algorithm to give you a "sleep score", which combines the quality, quantity and interruptions to your sleep into a single number. What is the Withings app, you say?
2) Withings - Weight, Temperature, Blood Pressure
The Watch Ultra is (easily) the best health tracking device that I have ever owned. It measures your heart rate, functions as an EKG. It measures blood oxygen. It tracks movement, and it tracks sleep. It tracks steps, calories burned, and even when you're standing or sitting.
But it can't measure everything. It can't measure my weight, for instance.
That's where Withings comes in. Withings sells a series of smart devices (scales, a touchless thermometer, and a blood pressure cuff), all of which send their data to the Withings app, which then shares data to the Health app.
Our original Smart Body Analyzer scale is still doing its thing, 10 years later - but Withings has multiple new generations of scales with all kinds of new functionality.
If you have a number of people using these scales, they can infer which family member is being weighed, and send that data only to their Health app.
My scale checks heart rate, and body fat percentage. The new Body Scan scale will be able to provide body composition percentages throughout different sections of your body via a handlebar that pulls up.
Withings also sells the Thermo, which will add my body temperature to Health every morning, and the BPM Connect, a wireless blood pressure cuff. I'll review both after they arrive.
3) MyFitnessPal - Food Tracking
Of course, none of this will matter if I'm not changing my diet.
I've used MyFitnessPal in the past, and I've found that the simple act of logging all of my food intake changes my behavior. I have a tendency to mindlessly snack throughout the day - which became a real problem when we all started working at home.
With MyFitnessPal, you manually log everything that you eat throughout the day, which adds a level of intentionality to your eating... and, to be honest, causes me to rethink how badly I really need a snack, just to avoid the hassle of logging it.
Logging IS, to be fair, pretty simple. The database of foods and beverages is vast - basically everything you could buy or make is going to be represented.
The key here, as with all things, is consistency. I was well over 175 days of food logging the last time I tried the app, and then I fell off. If I can do another six months now, I'm hoping that I have the wherewithal to continue indefinitely.
Process, then Progress
Every journey starts with one step. I'm only one week into this journey, and while I haven't seen ANY progress on the scale yet, I am seeing improving results on the treadmill.
I'm also finding that the habit of hitting the gym every morning is starting to stick. This means getting to bed earlier - which improves my sleep scores. I know my body, and I know that with consistent exercise and SOME level of mindfulness about eating and drinking, I can revert back to my pre-lockdown body and level of health.
It just may take a little more help than before. Fortunately, Apple and this associated ecosystem of HealthKit apps are providing the data that I need for motivation.
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