Month: April 2017

Fitness watches are pretty popular these days. I’ve owned more than a few starting with a Jawbone UP followed by the Fitbit Surge and currently the Garmin Fenix 3 HR. I bought the Jawbone UP because I wanted to analyze my sleep more than anything, but I figured that having a device count my steps would help motivate me to move which in turn would help me lose weight.

Did it help motivate me to move? It did, for a while. However, as I began to notice that my walking had no real impact on my weight loss, I ignored the little “Get up and move” notifications from my UP and used it mostly for sleep analysis and counts of how much or how little I walked. Not much else.

The Surge was half smartwatch half fitness watch, but what really changed things for me was the heartrate display and the GPS built into the device that allowed me to track walks and runs with pinpoint accuracy. This could be used to truly analyze my progress, and I have to admit that this big change helped usher me into walking, jogging, and finally, into running. The Surge made it possible for me to go back and look at my run utilizing data that helped me find ways to improve my runs, areas to work on, and to find trends (I run faster in the mornings with my pace dropping only after two miles, for instance).

Moving to the Garmin Fenix 3 HR was an evolutionary step in many ways. The smartwatch features are greatly enhanced in the Fenix 3 as is the GPS and health tracking. The amount of data the Fenix 3 gathers and analyzes is staggering and impressive. However, what really got me were the larger display, ability to change watch bands, and the battery’s longevity. My Surge, a wonderful watch, was beginning to exhibit signs of battery life degradation. I was needing to charge it every 2-3 days depending on GPS use (more often if I used the GPS function for a run). My Garmin, on the other hand, can go around two weeks even with three GPS uses a week. That’s quite a difference!

Both the Fitbit and the Garmin worked with Bluetooth while the old Jawbone required a connection to my phone via a headphone jack (which takes it out of play with the iPhone 7 I now use). I understand that the original UP was a first-generation wearable fitness tracker, so I won’t hold that limitation against it.

So, back to the original question: will using a fitness tracker help me lose weight? I honestly don’t think so but that’s mostly because weight loss is a function of diet while fitness is the result of exercise. So, will a fitness tracker enable you to become more fit? Absolutely. It can definitely help as it has helped me. Will it help you lose weight? Maybe, but it really hasn’t for me. If you want to do something to lose weight, read about Whole30 or Paleo. If you want to have some cool tech help you get more fit and healthy, then sure, a fitness tracker is a great tool, but it doesn’t guarantee weight loss or even fitness. Ultimately, that’s all up to you.

It just hit me. I’ve accomplished some amazing things in the past 18 months:

• I lost over 140 lbs
• I got back into decent shape
• I can fit into clothes bought directly off the rack at any store
• I can run three miles with a 9 minute/mile pace (or better)
• I can do 80+ push ups
• I am no longer diabetic
• I can use the tray table on an airplane in economy

All of this because of Whole30 and Paleo and a lot of perseverance.

I thought of this because I used to watch other people start diets or exercise plans and invariably, a year or so later, when they posted their accomplishments, I’d look back at that same period of time and think to myself, “I did nothing to make myself better in that time. Here I am, same as before, while this person has improved their health and/or fitness. I wasted all that time and could have done something better!”

Now, I’ve had people tell me that very same thing. “If I’d have started when you did, I’d have lost a lot of weight by now, too!” Yes, probably. So do the next best thing: start today!

As I was losing the bulk of my weight, I was always curious about where the physical fat went. Did my body eat it up? Did fat cells die and get flushed? Were they burned up in some process? This article helps explain it all. The tl:dr version is this: “When fat is lost, it is mostly exhaled as carbon dioxide (84%), with the remainder (16%) being excreted as water.” Wow. The processes within our bodies are extraordinary and complex.

I’m asked every now and then if I think weight loss surgery (gastric bypass, gastric bands, etc) is a good option for people who just can’t seem to lose weight every other way. My answer here is the same answer I give to everyone who asks: It’s risky and just not worth it if you’re not going to make the effort to change your diet for the rest of your life. And, if you’re going to do that, then you won’t need the surgery anyway because you will lose the weight safely and naturally.

I know two people who died from gastric bypass. That’s two too many. I also know at least half a dozen people who had the surgery and had great results for a year or so but then slowly gained the weight back and became obese once again because they didn’t change the types of food they ate. Sure, when you have a gastric bypass, your stomach size is greatly reduced, so it becomes impossible to eat a lot of food, but if the food you continue to eat is rich in carbs and sugar, you’re still taking in a lot of calories. Also, these people have failed because eating the foods high in carbs and sugar kept them hungry, forcing them to eat more often due to cravings, which in turn stretched out their little stomach pouch back to original size.

Forget surgeries. Do a Whole30, commit to doing it right, and then transition into something. I transitioned into Paleo and I’m now 140 less than I was a few years ago. I am often asked if I had surgery and people are always surprised when I tell them that not only have I not, but that I lost over 110 lbs in 12 months through diet alone. They assume I suffered; they couldn’t be more wrong!