Tag Archives: fitness journey

More health data tracking

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A while ago my wife bought a Hume scale. You pull a handle with sensors up from the base, stand on the scale while holding the handle, and it gives health data far beyond what a simple weight scale does. That said, I’ve questioned the accuracy, and it definitely took some time to adjust, or should I say acclimate, to what it was reading about me.

The thing that really didn’t seem right at first was the heart rate, now with my Garmin watch to compare, I think it is about a heartbeat or two per minute above accurate, but that isn’t a drastic difference. The other thing I wasn’t sure about was body fat percentage, but I just did a scan at my gym that tends to be more accurate and it was pretty close there too.

One stat that all 3 sensors, the Hume, my watch, and this gym scale, all tell me seems to be accurate but the information is useless, and that’s BMI – Body Mass Index. The stats shared with me are 25.3, 26.0, and 25.2 BMI respectively and the Hume app says,

“25.3

High

A ratio of weight to height squared, widely used as a general health screening tool. It is generally regarded as an outdated measurement for health as it does not differentiate between muscle and fat. We have included it here for users which find it useful.

ⓘ Your rating is scored against medical and scientific benchmarks established for people your same age, sex at birth and height.”

And my watch bluntly says,

“Average BMI 26.0

Reducing your BMI to 21.9 can help lower your Fitness Age.

To help achieve this goal:

• Focus on both diet and exercise.

Cutting calories has been shown to be most effective for weight loss, but both regular exercise and calorie maintenance are important for keeping the weight off.”

However, further down in the description of BMI my watch also says,

“Keep in mind that BMI may not be a useful metric for everyone. Highly trained and muscular athletes, for example, may report high BMI numbers even though they are very fit.”

I don’t know if I’d call myself a ‘highly trained and muscular athlete’, but when my Hume app tells me that my body fat percentage is 14.8% and the fancy gym scale says it’s 14.6%, I’m definitely not cutting calories and trying to keep weight off… in fact I’m hoping to gain another 8-10 pounds this year.

All that said, I’ve learned that BMI is not a measure I plan on concerning myself with. And while it’s flattering to have such a low body fat percentage, I wouldn’t mind if that went up a bit while I focused on gaining more muscle. And so it’s good to have data to track but I’m not fixated on the numbers as much as the trends I’m seeing, as these numbers fluctuate.

I’ve learned that my diet does affect my weight and when I’m active I need to maintain my calories and especially my protein. I’ve learned that sleep affects my ‘health score’ and that sleep really is important for my strength, recovery, and overall health. And finally, as mentioned, trends matter more than concerning myself with daily numbers.

I’ve enjoyed tracking these and more data points on my Hume scale and Garmin watch, I do wish theses apps spoke to each other and shared data, but both put product loyalty (buy our watch AND our scale) over customer convenience. What I like is that I can see how my stats are trending, and while I do pay some attention to the numbers regularly, I’m not preoccupied or worried about them… which I think is healthy.

Leg day

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One of my health goals this year is to increase the size of my legs, specifically my quadriceps. I think that for their size, they are pretty strong, but that’s relative because they are pretty skinny.

Proportionally I look like a guy who chooses to skip leg day. That’s not fully true, I work my legs almost daily, but that’s usually a weighted walk on the treadmill, or once-a-week sprints, and of course, mentioned many times here, the Coquitlam Crunch walks weekly.

Basically, I exercise my legs more than any other part of my body… but almost always walking, and for cardio rather than explicitly to strengthen and grow them. If I look back at last year, I’d guess I did about 40 or so leg days, barely over once a week for only 75% of the weeks in 2025. Then to start this year, I did legs on the 1st, then today, on the 11th.

My goal, which I will be tracking, is to get at least 78 dedicated leg days in this year. That’s an average of 1.5 times per week. This is harder that it would seem because I need at least 2 days rest after a leg day before my training to Everest the Crunch, because climbing the Crunch progressively more times to train is by no means fun after a leg day.

One thing I hate about leg day is that I find of all my body parts legs hurt the most for the next two day. That means over 150 days this year that I’m going to feel sore legs. Yuk. But if I’m going to gain another 10 pounds, another goal I have for the year, most of it will need to be on my legs. I’m not going to get much bulkier in my upper body, so legs are the place I have the most potential to grow.

So there it is, I’ve put my goals out into the universe, now I’ve got to make them real. Leg day #2 done for the year… I’ll link back here at the end of December.

In and out

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I joined a gym, and I took advantage of a deal to get 5 sessions with a trainer, for a great price. My trainer had me download MyFitnessPal, an App to track my calories and macros. I’ve been using this app for 10 days now and it has taught me a lot.

What I’ve learned first and foremost is that I have been totally clueless about my food intake. It’s such an important part of living healthy and yet I have had no idea what and how much protein I eat daily. I’m oblivious to how many calories I eat, and have zero sense for volume or weight of the food I eat… which makes knowing the benefits or consequences of my food intake impossible.

I’ve ranged from 1,104 calories with 65g of protein to 4,554 calories with 186g of protein daily: Basically from subsistence to gluttony eating almost 200grams of fat on my ‘big’ day.

I’ve done this with zero connection to how much exercise I’ve had in a given day. My lowest day also included an hour and 16 minute workout going up and down the Coquitlam Crunch with a couple extra loops of the 457 stairs section.

I need to understand what I’m putting into my body, and also how much energy I’m outputting. I want to know what I do to fuel my body and ensure I’m doing so in a healthier way than I have been. Tracking is a start, knowledge is power, but it’s only a start. Tracking has taught me that I’ve got a lot more to learn.

It’s time to start

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I’ve been working out between 5-7 times a week for almost 7 years. It has been at least 2 years since I skipped two days in a row. To count a workout I do cardio, a stretch, and pick one muscle group to work pretty hard. Over 95% of my workouts are at home in my small basement gym. It has been a great routine and I’ve enjoyed it.

But I am feeling stuck now. I feel the limits of my small gym. I seem to fall into the trap of focusing in on a few workouts I like and avoiding getting to many muscles that I’d normally work out in a bigger gym. It’s not that I haven’t seen gains, I have. The gains just haven’t been evenly distributed.

I think it’s time for me to sign up at a gym. I feel the need to do more than my home gym provides. I don’t yet know how this will upset my morning routine? Maybe I’ll have to write at night? Maybe I’ll do cardio at a different time? Even with just a 15 minute drive to the gym, that’s still a half hour daily of driving to add to my routine.

I’ll admit that I’m a bit apprehensive about changing my morning routine, but I know this is a step I need to take. It will only be a challenge until the end of this school year, when I retire. The question I then ask myself is, why don’t I just wait until then to join the gym? The answer is, I just know that now is the right time.

We often spend much of our life waiting for the right time, rather than just doing the thing we want to do. My only holdback right now is that most gyms have deals at Christmas/New Years and I’d rather not pay a lot more than necessary because I didn’t wait a few days. Holding off for less than a month seems reasonable. Holding off for 7 months doesn’t. Even if I only use the gym 2-4 times a week to start, I think it will fill a void I’ve been feeling with my workouts, and will push me in a way that I’m struggling to push myself after 7 years in my tiny home gym.

Doing hard things

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My workouts have stagnated a bit recently. I’m doing the minimum, but the good news is that I’m still showing up. Yesterday I did my first interval training in about 3 or 4 weeks. I want to do it weekly, but I haven’t made it part of my routine yet.

The reason I haven’t made interval training part of my regular schedule yet is embarrassingly simple: It’s really hard. The purpose of doing intervals is to maintain and improve my Max VO2 levels. To increase Max VO2, I need to not only do intervals, but do them at a very physically taxing level. That’s hard to do when just showing up is a challenge for me right now. But yesterday was a day off work and so I used the day as an opportunity to get an interval workout in.

I did a warm-up then eight 1-minute sprints. My sets are actually 1:15 hard and 1:10 easy, because it takes about 13 seconds to get my treadmill from my easy recovery speed to full sprint and I want the sprint to be a full minute. It’s not fun, but it’s much easier than the Norwegian Protocol which is four 4-minute sprints with 3-minute rest intervals. And I think that’s going to be my ticket to get back into regular intervals. When a task is hard to do, break it down into something more manageable. I can talk myself into 1-minute sprints even when I’m not feeling fully motivated… four 4-minute sprints feels like torture right now.

Through all this I’ve still been very consistent with my zone 2 training, but I think even that has not been ideal. I’m not sure how effective I’ve been because I haven’t been tracking my heart rate and so I’m not certain if I’m getting and staying in the zone. That’s changing this month, when I buy myself a Garmond watch, then I’ll really be able to track my cardio workout progress. I’m hoping the extra data will help motivate me to push myself.

When consistently doing hard things, maintaining motivation is important. I’ve become a master at showing up. My dedication to my workout habit is unwavering. Last year I did 326 workouts, and I’m on schedule to be around that total this year. I know how to show up! But if I were to rank myself on an intensity scale, this year would be much lower than last year. So my focus is to finish the year hard and strong. And I’m fortunate that I’ll have the tools to help track this. It benefits no one to lie to myself about how hard I’m working, and so the extra data the watch will give me will both inform me, and keep me honest about my progress.