Another post in this series that I am determined to push out.
This time I would love to talk about tracking your fitness progress
I have recently fell in love with a company called Withings through Daily Mom. You may or may not have heard of them. A really amazing brand that has innovative and technologically advanced products for your health. Up until recently, I have just been eyeing their products for their cool design and functionality, so finally I got a chance to test them out in real fitness situations. I am in love.
WITHINGS ACTIVITE
Let’s start with a fitness watch. I have stayed away from fitbit type of fitness trackers because honestly they look ugly. I am not a watch wearer, but the idea of having a watch that is a fitness tracker as well was a lot more was acceptable. I was still doubtful that I would wear it. I mean my life can be insane sometimes. I stay up late, wake up minutes before I have to leave, work til the last second, I am always in a rush. When would I even have time to remember to put on a watch. I don’t even tend to wear jewelry.
Look at all the features of the Withings Activite Steel:
TRACKS SWIMMING – With Activite, you actually don’t need to take the watch off. EVER. It’s waterproof, so it can be used during swimming or showers. In fact it automatically detects swimming and tracks the activity. I was telling someone about this feature and they said “Oh I didn’t know you do swimming”. I don’t I said, but it’s still cool. Haha, So if you’re into doing laps after the gym (sounds good right now doesn’t it?), this is the perfect tracker for you.
TRACKS SLEEP – At night it tracks your sleep- how deep it is, how many times you wake up or go into REM sleep. So there is really no reason to take it off. Honestly, I do take it off at night simply because I sleep completely naked and am bothered by anything on me. But for people who don’t have an issue with that, the watch wouldn’t even come off.
TRACKS STEPS AND TIME – Let’s not forget its primary function- watch and step tracker. I have been surprised with the number of times I would look at the time on my watch rather than my phone like I thought I would. It has two dials: one for time and one for steps.
DESIGN – Let’s not forget how pretty it looks. I have worn it with all kinds of outfits and I have to say, for a person who never has the time to put accessories on, having my Withings watch has really made a difference in my looks. It just adds a little bit more class and style to any outfit. So I love it.
I am super excited about this one. I have recently gotten into weight lifting and have been more focused on numbers like body fat percentage, muscle mass, water intake, nutrition than I was about the actual weight. It’s well known muscle weighs more than fat, so as you gain muscle and lose fat, your numbers on the scale will actually go up. So going by your weight when you’re consistently exercising is counterintuitive. I needed a scale that would show me more than just the number of pounds I am at today. Body scale kind of made me giddy. haha
Once you have set it the Withings Bathroom Body Fat Scale with your height and age (and added your family members if needed as it accommodates up to 8 people), it will track your daily weigh-ins, BF percentage, muscle mass and water levels and display progress charts for how those measurements changed over time. When you’re working on building muscle mass (and don’t be scared, girls who don’t compete, that just means getting stronger and leaner more than bigger and manlier), tracking your BF percentage is essential along with macros tracking (did I lose you yet? Yeah I’ll write a post about it). So I go on a vacation for 2 weeks, I come back- the first thing I look at is how much body fat I gained and muscle mass I lost ( really painful to see but good to know).
The scale is wireless, so it will sync with your phone app (Health Mate) automatically and load all those numbers there whenever you’re near the scale.
This product I got for my mom but it works for anyone whose blood pressure is an issue and needs to be tracked throughout the day especially when heavily into fitness.
This is seriously the coolest BP monitor you will ever encounter. It’s portable, it’s light, it connects to your app via bluetooth. It takes three measurements and averages them. You can elect to send the charts and BP progression to your physician for further analysis. For my mom who has known BP issues, this was amazing. She quickly figured out how to use it (despite not understanding English that the app is in) and I watched her measure her BP daily while she was here. To be honest, I did the same, just for fun. It is nice getting a confirmation that you’re in good cardio health 🙂
So at the end of the day, you can open your Health Mate app and see all the numbers it has collected from all your devices to give you a personalized and detailed snapshot into your body and fitness health and progress. Can’t beat that!
While those are the products that are specifically useful to me and my family, Withings has a range of other hi-tech options: home video cameras, thermometers (I need to get one for Lexi), different fitness trackers and bands, high tech light alarm clock (if you live in a northern climate and have to get up early, just go and get the alarm clock, it is unreal)
Aside from my Withings bundle, there is a nutrition tracking app (which actually syncs with Health Mate), MyFitnessPal. It’s the app that allows you to track your food. Once again I (and most people seriously in to fitness) do not track it for calories or calorie cutting. It is a perfect tool to track your macros (protein, carbs, fats) for whatever fitness goal you have. Just set the percentages you’re shooting for in the nutritional goals and then adjust as you go through the day. I will talk more about macros in the next posts.
