Since I got married (nearly 3 years ago) I’ve put on around 10kg (around 1.5 stone or 22 pounds). Yeah that’s a lot. I don’t blame my lovely wife for this additional weight, but rather a combination of my lifestyle in the Middle East (very little required movement) and my body’s very slow metabolism.

Earlier this year I decided that enough was enough and that I would do something about this situation. Apart from general health issues associated with gaining the above weight, by wardrobe is useless, which then affects my general comfort/confidence levels as well.

Proof of Concept

Like any self respecting geek, I turned to my trustiest device to help me out, my iPhone 4. I tried several fitness apps, but settled on the Pacer app. While not the prettiest app, it gave me basic information, the number of steps I was making and calories burned, in graph form, mapped over a week.

I realised that having this information drove me to be more active. I have yet to achieve 10,000 steps a day. I average anywhere between 6000-8000 steps per week, however I realised that the exercise that I was doing was not being logged properly. My gym machines indicated a much higher level of activity, that my phone wasn’t capturing.

All the Gear…

I decided to get a little bit more serious about this weight loss malarky. There was one thing to it, buy more gadgets that would help me achieve my goals, obviously.

The first accessory that I bought was a pair of sweat proof earphones - I cannot tell you how many Apple earbuds I’ve destroyed due to my excessive sweating over the years. The Sennheiser OCX 685i Sports headphones came highly recommended (and they are great).

The next purchase was my Fitbit One. The truth is I didn’t jump into this world quickly. I used the Pacer app for a solid 2 months before making the jump into the Fitbit world. I’m still getting to grips with the website and the app (although syncing with my current setup isn’t as smooth as it could be ¹ ), but I like what I see so far.

The last part of my gear was a new set of scales. Actually, I’ve not owned scales in 3 years, which probably explains a great deal for the general decent into obesity. So here’s a tip kids, make sure you own scales and get on them once a week. If anything it will highlight things that you’re generally scared of.

I hope that the data that I compile will help me make better decisions in the kitchen (after all a diet starts in the kitchen) and that it will motivate me to be more active, more regularly, even if only a little more every day.