Building better fitness apps

[wshaffer]

Lots of food for thought in this article. I don't entirely agree with it - I think the author doesn't recognize the extent to which competing against oneself and setting and exceeding goals can be an empowering experience for someone who's always struggled with fitness or exercise. Certainly, for me personally, being able to track my progress has

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[wshaffer]

Back when I was in grad school, I used to get audiobooks from the library and only listen to them when I was walking or riding a stationary bike. Provided that I liked the book, it was a pretty effective motivator.

I logged my food with the Fitbit for about half a day, just to see if they'd done anything to make it less mind-numbingly tedious than other apps I've used. And they hadn't.

On how I get the steps in: I set aside 30 to 60 minutes on most days for deliberate exercise. Right now, on any day that I'm not lifting weights, my deliberate exercise of choice is walking or running. That probably accounts for half my step total on most days.

The rest of it does boil down to taking lots of opportunities to take short walks. I'm somewhat fortunate that my office at work is tucked away in the far corner of a building on one end of a fairly large campus. So, just getting up to go to the bathroom/get a cup of coffee/stop by a colleague's office/walk to a meeting/get a document off the printer is likely to net me a few hundred steps each time I do it. Since I got the Fitbit, I sometimes deliberately stretch those step counts a bit: I might go to the upstairs break room for my cup of coffee, or take the scenic route back to my desk from a meeting, or just get up and walk around while I'm thinking something over.

I've seriously considered going the treadmill desk route, but I'm guessing they're probably loud enough that I wouldn't be able to use it at work without disturbing my office mate.