Tag Archives: fitness

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, Iā€™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 didnā€™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 isnā€™t a drastic difference. The other thing I wasnā€™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 thatā€™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,

ā€œ25.3

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 It is generally regarded as an outdated measurement for health as it does not differentiate between muscle and fat.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.

ā“˜ Your rating is scored against medical and scientific benchmarks established for people your same age, sex at birth and height.ā€

And my watch bluntly says,

ā€œAverage BMI 26.0

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

To help achieve this goal:

ā€¢ 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.ā€

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

ā€œKeep 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.ā€

I donā€™t know if Iā€™d call myself a ā€˜highly trained and muscular athleteā€™, but when my Hume app tells me that my body fat percentage is 14.8% and the fancy gym scale says itā€™s 14.6%, Iā€™m definitely not cutting calories and trying to keep weight offā€¦ in fact Iā€™m hoping to gain another 8-10 pounds this year.

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

Iā€™ve learned that my diet does affect my weight and when Iā€™m active I need to maintain my calories and especially my protein. Iā€™ve learned that sleep affects my ā€˜health scoreā€™ 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.

Iā€™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, Iā€™m not preoccupied or worried about themā€¦ which I think is healthy.

3,000 pushup February

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My buddy Dave and I have done the February 2,000 push up challenge for a couple years now and this year I suggested bumping it up. The actual challenge is 2,000 push in 20 days, but we were doing it over the full month. Last year I did 75-80 push ups daily in sets, sometimes just doing 4 sets of 20 or 3 sets of 25, sometimes less sets with more repsā€¦ With rest days.

This year I plan to do 120 a day. I only need to do that 25 days to hit 3k, so Iā€™ve got 3 rest days if I need them. Yesterday I did 4 sets of 25 and one set of 20. Today I plan to do 4 sets of 30. This isnā€™t hard, itā€™s a fun challenge, and my buddy and I keep each other motivated to do them. Having small, fun goals like this keeps me focused, and gives me small incremental goals to do a few more per set as the month progresses.

I think challenges like this are great. Even if you struggle to do 5 pushups, you can spread sets out throughout the day and shoot for 1,000 pushups in the month. That would be 7-8 sets of 5 in a day, but the thing is that within a week your new maximum will be close to 10 and youā€™ll need less than 4 sets a day at that point. In fact, if you struggle with pushups, youā€™ll see more gains than someone who already does them easily.

Itā€™s a fun challenge, find an accountability partner or just track your progress quietlyā€¦ either way, go for it. Youā€™ll love the gains and have nothing to lose.

Cardio time

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Last year I wanted to do one Max VO2 training session a week, but I really did it only every 2-3 weeks. This year Iā€™m committed. My activity of choice right now is 8 one-minute sprint intervals. My interval timer is actually set to 1:15 high intensity followed by 1:10 low intensity. The reason for the additional time is that it takes about 13 seconds to get the treadmill from my low intensity walk, at a 3.4 pace, to my high intensity pace starting at 8.6 and progressing to 9.4 on the final one (I skip 8.7 for those that are math inclined).

I thought Iā€™d share the stats from my watch for the last 3 runs, and then I can see how I compare closer to the end of the year.

January 11, 2025

January 14, 2025

January 20, 2025

Iā€™m actually not trending well, with my average and overall heart rate going up, but fluctuations are to be expected and thatā€™s why I decided to share the last 3. There are two big challenges ahead. The one I have control over is dedicating to doing this at least once a week. The one I have less control over is seeing how quickly I can get my heart rate to recover and if I can decrease my overall peak heart rate doing the same activityā€¦ this challenge should be achieved just from the commitment to do this weekly.

Time will tell, and the data doesnā€™t lie.

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 thatā€™s relative because they are pretty skinny.

Proportionally I look like a guy who chooses to skip leg day. Thatā€™s not fully true, I work my legs almost daily, but thatā€™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 bodyā€¦ but almost always walking, and for cardio rather than explicitly to strengthen and grow them. If I look back at last year, Iā€™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. Thatā€™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 Iā€™m going to feel sore legs. Yuk. But if Iā€™m going to gain another 10 pounds, another goal I have for the year, most of it will need to be on my legs. Iā€™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, Iā€™ve put my goals out into the universe, now Iā€™ve got to make them real. Leg day #2 done for the yearā€¦ Iā€™ll link back here at the end of December.

Healthy Living Goals – 2025 Reflection

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Itā€™s that time of year again where I go to my big tracking calendar and add up my totals for the year.

Once again I was very consistent with my workouts and meditation, and Iā€™ve yet again maintained my daily writing for another year. Iā€™ll break a few things down as I reflect on the year.

Workouts: After taking a look at my 2024 calendar, I realize that I havenā€™t missed 2 days in a row in over 2 years. This year I was a little less strict in my definition of a workout, sometimes only doing 15 minutes of cardio, and sometimes not doing both weights and cardio, but still committing to a workout 326/365 days in 2025.

In my 2024 post I said regarding one of two goals, ā€œGain 7-8 pounds of muscleā€¦ Now I fluctuate around 167-169 pounds and would like to bring that to 175 pounds.ā€

For the last couple weeks Iā€™ve been bouncing around 173-175 but I hit 178 a couple months ago and Iā€™ll get back there after the holiday break. So, I totally achieved this goal, and couldnā€™t be happier. For 2026 I hope to be in the 183-185 range. I think this is a huge challenge, my body seems to like the 174-176 range and Iā€™ll have to work more on a consistent diet rather than just focusing on weights and training.

Meditation: This is something I need to improve. While statistically I did well with frequency of meditations, about 85-90% of these were done when walking on my treadmill. Although I listened to a guided meditation, I was almost always distracted and allowed my monkey brain to wander instead of truly meditating.

Iā€™m actually not going to try to change this at all in the next 6 months, but once I retire Iā€™ll attempt to meditate for longer, and be more dedicated to meditation. This will include a more formal setup and a setting other than on the treadmill. For now Iā€™ll stick with the status quo.

Daily-Ink: Iā€™ll continue to write every single day for 2026. This started in July 2019, and I have no plans to change this in the short term.

Creativity: This was a failed goal but Iā€™m still happy to track it. I wanted this to increase, but it decreased. Essentially, the only thing I tracked this year was meetings with my uncle where we discuss our Book of Codes project and just as importantly, life, the universe, and everything. Again, Iā€™ll have new goals after retirement, but for now Iā€™m in maintenance mode and just want to keep going as-is.

So, my main goals this year are calorie tracking and building muscle mass. I only want to get to 185lbs, this isnā€™t a plan to keep gaining weight after that. I actually like the weight Iā€™m at right now, but at 58 with a not-so-great back, I realize that Iā€™m one injury away from having to take a few months off and potentially dropping 8-10 pounds. Hopefully such an incident is a couple decades away, but even if itā€™s only 5 years away Iā€™m keenly aware that I will have a much harder time regaining weight in my older years. So if I can sit at 185lbs as my normal weight, I know that I likely wonā€™t drop below 175ā€¦ which again is a weight Iā€™m quite happy to be at.

185lbs by the end of 2026 is my goal, and to get there I will focus on hypertrophy in the gym and a higher protein and calorie intake than I have normally consumed.

Fitness, meditation, and writing are things I no longer need to track to ensure that Iā€™m on track. For this reason, I think I might be retiring my large calendar and stickers. I recently got a Garmin watch with Lifestyle Tracking and Iā€™ll still record these daily, but itā€™s time to put an end to the calendar. It has served me well but having joined a gym, I no longer go to my basement every day and tracking this month has been less diligent since I could go a full week without adding stickers. That said, if you are starting a new goal, I canā€™t recommend this strategy enough.

2026 is going to be a great year of continued progressā€¦ Gradual at first, but picking up speed after my mid-year retirement.

Tracking training

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Iā€™ve got to say that I love my new watch, the Garmin Venu 4. Iā€™ve been very interested in tracking my training, but have only been tracking my number of training days until getting the watch. Now I get to see what my speed and heart rate are during my workouts, among other things.

I try to do most of my workouts in Zone 2, but my watch says Iā€™m actually in Zone 3. My next bit of research is determining if Iā€™m going harder than I should or if I am just in good condition for my age. More data needed before I decide.

Today was my second time with my watch on an interval run. I do a warm up walk then 8 intervals, high intensity for 1:15 and low intensity for 1:10 eight times, then a cool down walk. The high intensity is really just for a minute and about 3 seconds because it takes 12 seconds to get the treadmill from 3.4 at low intensity to a range between 8.6 to 9.4 for my progressively faster high intensity intervals.

Whatā€™s really awesome is getting the data about my workouts from my watch. Here is just some of the data:

This is just my second data point for intervals so Iā€™m creating a baseline from which I can hopefully see progress. Until now my only data has been how tired I feel. Now I can dig a lot deeper and actually see gains. I can also make sure that Iā€™m training at the right pace. High intensity intervals arenā€™t exactly fun. Collecting data on them and getting results to compare over time will make them just a little bit more enjoyable.

Completely unaware

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I recently joined a gym and got a few sessions with a trainer. Itā€™s interesting being taught by a guy younger than my daughters, although I have to say he has an impressive amount of knowledge. The first time I met with him he asked me to track my food, and suggested the app MyFitnessPal, which I dutifully downloaded that night and started using it.

I know how important food is in taking care of myself. I saw the impact of supplementing my protein with a morning shake and paying attention to how much protein I take in. The results have been impressive. And yet I have been blissfully unaware of both the nutritional value and portion sizes of my meals until I had to track what I ate in an app.

I had no idea what 2 cups of pasta looked like on a plate? Not a clue what 2oz of pistachios looks like? Not a hint what the calorie or protein amount is in a Booster Juice AƧai Avalanche Smoothie?

I was clueless.

Today I finally figured out how to connect my new Garmin watch data to MyFitnessPal. I had some issues with signing into both accounts to get them to speak. And now that Iā€™ve figured it out I can identify if my calorie expenditure is more or less than what Iā€™m burning. Again, something I know very little about.

So Iā€™m actively doing something about my cluelessness, and hopefully heading in an even healthier direction. I have already been on a good pathā€¦ yet I still have a lot to learn, and I think diet and tracking of my food has been the missing ingredient in my health journey.

Light but right

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I just joined a gym and they had a great promotion on 5 sessions with a personal trainer, so I took advantage of the deal. Today I met my trainer, but not until after Iā€™d already done the Coquitlam Crunch (3x up, once down – 9 kilometres with 3/4 of the time going up hill).

So I wasnā€™t exactly fresh and ready, but I was excited to get started.

My trainer asked what I wanted to work on. I definitely didnā€™t want to do legs after the crunch, and my buddy and I did a hard chest and back workout yesterday, so I chose shoulders. He had me doing some exercises with 2.5lb weights, and some face pulls that Iā€™d normally do with 60 or 80lbs, but he had me working with 20lbs doing a technique Iā€™d never tried before.

Hereā€™s the thing, I definitely got a good shoulder workout in. I donā€™t need to go heavy, I just needed to focus on technique and to work my muscles in a way that Iā€™m really not used to. It was hard to get a full set in with these light weights and both my form and technique definitely faltered as I progressed.

Itā€™s a nice, humbling reminder that itā€™s better to go light, and do it right, than it is to slap more weight on and have crappy technique. Iā€™d say, ā€˜lesson learnedā€™, but I know thatā€™s actually just an observation rather than a shift in practice. Itā€™s going to take a few more sessions for me to really understand how to push my body properly with lighter weight rather than muscling through workouts sloppily, with heavier weights.

To be ever better you better neverā€¦

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In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear shares the idea of getting 1% better. Whatā€™s fascinating about this is that the evidence of improvement is not something you see early on.

Going to the gym 6 days a week for 2 weeks will not have your muscles bulging out of your previously loose shirt, but 2 years later you might need a new wardrobe. Reading just 10 minutes a day doesnā€™t make you an avid reader in 2 weeks, but 2 years later youā€™ve read a couple dozen books.

The idea of working to be just 1% better is fantastic, and it has some great long term benefits, with no downside. However, there is one thing to consider and that is avoiding pitfalls that set you backwards. The simple example is that you are making great progress in the gym then you push too hard and get an injury. Now it takes months of rehab before you can get back to where you were before the injury. Thatā€™s a lot of days not getting 1% better. Sometimes these injuries are from pushing too hard, sometimes itā€™s from a simple movement that your body wasnā€™t expecting. These are understandable, and not always avoidable.

On the other hand, sometimes these injuries fall in the ā€˜you better neverā€™ category, fully avoidable and preventable.

You better never pick up a football and throw it to almost your maximum distance without warming up with a dozen or so short passes first.

You better never challenge someone half your age to a race and go from zero to full speed in 12 seconds.

You better never do that Instagram challenge where you contort your body and try to pick something up off the floor with your teeth.

Essentially, you better never do dumb shit that your body used to do easily when you were half your age, letting your ego get ahead of your current abilities.

On a journey to be ever better, you better never choose to do something where 10 seconds of misguided effort sets you back months of consistent progress.

Mind muscle connection

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Iā€™m a poster boy ā€˜non-exampleā€™ of why you should put kids into sports early. I grew up on a tropical island with no organized sports. When I moved to Toronto my parents didnā€™t know that kids were put into things like soccer, baseball, and hockey. The extent of my learning sports came from playing kid-organized baseball and street hockey with friends that lived on my street. No coaches, no lessons, just stick a glove on my (wrong) hand (having only played cricket before moving to Canada) or lend me a hockey stick and Iā€™ll do my best.

I didnā€™t do any organized sports beyond physical education classes until I joined the school water polo team in Grade 11. And then I was deservedly last off the bench for the whole first year because I sucked. The worst part of it was that I had a crappy swim stroke, so not only was I uncoordinated with the ball, I was the slowest person on the team.

But I loved the sport, I trained really hard, and I got to play at a fairly high level, but always as defensive player who learned to watch the play and anticipate what was happening to compensate for my slowness and lack of talent. A few quotes from different coaches:

ā€œIf air were denser than water, you would swim backwards.ā€

ā€œIf the pool was on a 45Ā° angle, youā€™d be the fastest to the top.ā€

And my personal favourite:

ā€œDave, there are two kinds of people in this world, the talented and the hard workersā€¦ You are a hard worker!ā€

Yes, I was the slowest person on the team, but I trained with faster people and was forced to do swim sets where I had half or a third of the rest that everybody else would get. That just made me have incredible cardio, and allowed me to push myself and keep going when others couldnā€™t.

No, I didnā€™t have a lot of talent, but I compensated by really understanding the game. And while some hotheads would try to do more than they were capable of, I understood I had a role to play and coaches learned that they could count on me to play that role.

But itā€™s only the last few years that I realized that my limits and talent didnā€™t come from being talentless, but rather from not really having a good mind-body connection. What it comes down to is: I know what my body is supposed to do, I just donā€™t communicate it well to my body. A great example of this is that when I weight train, rather than really focussing on the muscle that Iā€™m working on, I tend to compensate with my whole body. For example, if Iā€™m trying to do a bicep curl, and Iā€™m struggling on the final set, rather than making a good connection with my bicep what I do is I start to use my body position and shoulder muscles. I compensate with other muscles rather than connect with the muscle Iā€™m supposed to use.

Essentially, when other kids were getting coaching and learning drills that helped them connect their body to their actions, I was at home watching tv, or playing sports without any drills or coaching to help me make that connection. Even living in Barbados, where I swam all the time, I never once had a swim lesson, never got coached, and learned to swim to survive, not to move efficiently or effectively.

I donā€™t regret any of my childhood, I think I had it pretty good when I compare what I had to some of the stories of my friends, but if there is one lesson I can take from this itā€™s to help kids find a physical activity they love and foster their physical growth through that sport or physical activity. It doesnā€™t matter if itā€™s a team sport, dance, gymnastics, martial arts, or swimming. What matters is that at a young age they have an opportunity to be coached about how to make a good connection between their minds and their physical bodies. This simple opportunity, early in life, will pay dividends for a lifetime.