He ain't heavy, he's my brother -actually it's me

As you have seen from my other posts I have been trying to get my ballooning weight under control recently. My fitbit devices have been really integral as part of my attempt. The Aria and the Flex have been my daily companions. The Aria greets me every morning once I wake up. Visually reminding me to step on and get the result. It displays weight plus body fat as a percentage. I try to do it every day, same time, same place. Lately while the actual kilogram figure is yoyoing, the body fat as a percentage has been shrinking - interesting today is the lowest. This morning displaying 24% tonight in the 23% range. ( see below). Because the aria is connected to my wifi network it automatically uploads the results to my fitbit account which my iPhone app pulls down and displays.

I am by no means athletic.

This all started while trying to pass my fitness test for my work. I have never been a runner. Running usually induced two types of pain - shins hurting almost immediately and my throat acting like I am taking my last breath.

Stopping by my local shoe shop with the gait tracking and balance measuring gadgety in store it was identified that my arches are falling ( don't quote me, I think that's right). The sales person kindly offered to sell me $220 worth of the ugliest shoes available. Politely declining, I opted for the ever sexy orthotics. I have to say the change was instant and amazing. Since losing a tiny bit of weight the throat stopped burning weeks ago. But the shins continued. The orthotics had an immediate effect. The first day I kept wanting to stop where I remember my shins hurting onto regular route. Only this time I didn't hurt.

A week later, I am feeling great. I have an appointment with a podiatrist tomorrow to hopefully measure and custom make orthotics rather than off the shelf numbers I have now.

Wish me luck

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Quantifying self - Fitness / life tracking

I recently heard a BBC Radio 4 program about Life tracking ( they had a fancy title, Quantifying self). While listening I was thinking HOLY CRAP, thats me.. my whole life is recorded - whether pictorially through Facebook or Instagram, textually through here or tumblr and fitness wise I will go into below. I recently have been trying to shift some KGs after hitting my highest weight without much effort! (mid 80kgs)

As you are probably aware, I am a gadget man, the first item that grabbed my eye was the new Fitbit Flex.

Basically its a Bluetooth Enabled Pedometer which doubles as a sleep tracker.

The wrist based device 'gameifies' the process of basically moving your body. In default setting of 10000 steps as a goal per day the device shows one single light per 2000 steps, providing vibration feedback when the 10000 is reached. The crowning glory of the divide in my opinion is back end - the app tracking and recording.

More recently I have added the Aria - the wifi enabled scale that perfectly couples with the Flex and the Fitbit app, not just measuring KGs but also lean body mass.

For the record - am now in the 70kg range.

Fitbit Flex:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/viZsv2kMZeo]

Fitbit Aria:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/Pap8wqbKqIM]

Adding runkeeper to my arsonal has really helped to, I am finding I am racing my own personal best minutes per KM rate.
Runkeeper
I have recently found a new service that claims to link / sync everything together - I am still testing this:
Sync Metrics

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b02mfzrw