Taking the advice
Fri, 2011-09-23 10:38
Hi everyone, my name is Eeva. I work with the R&D of Wellness Diary, and I'm taking charge of Wellness Diary blog posts for now.
We have been talking about Wellness Diary, monitoring and changing habits for a while now but there was a demand that we should put it to a test. I’m answering that call and putting myself on the line: let's see what changes I can make in a month!
Here are the facts: I'm 30 years old, my BMI is a bit on the heavy side and my lifestyle is moderately active at most. The summer was less than active in terms of exercise and less than ideal in terms of healthy eating. Quite the usual story, but now it's time to shape up.
My predecessors have talked about making small changes to create new habits. I’ll try and take the advice. My targets are to eat healthier every day, re-introduce exercise into my life and increase my daily steps. I have established my baseline, so finding more somewhere will be interesting. I have already noticed how eating vegetables and fruits keep my energy level higher, so I'll try and create a habit of eating more.
Let’s chop those targets to smaller bits: I’ll use Wellness Diary to write out my targets, log my success and use this blog to tell all of you about it!
- I will have my food monitor on the green every day (so five portions of veg & fruit daily).
- I will increase my average daily steps to 5000 at first, and take it from there.
- I will add my exercise hours up to two hours each week. If that seems too easy, I’ll increase the amount.
Here’s the catch: I’ll report back to you in two weeks for the mid-point check-up, and then in a month’s time. Hopefully I have some significant progress to show you!
Do you have similar goals? Join me in this challenge! Let me know in the comments, let’s do this together!
- Eeva
Comments
NICE
I have similar goals yes, over the summer I shot back up to 210lb, so at the beginning of September I decided to cut out junk food. I am a moderatly active person and walk pretty much everywhere, it's a 1.6mile walk to work everyday.
Since the beginning of September my BMI has went down a point and I have lost 10lb, my goal is to get down to about 180lb by Christmas.
I tend to only use Wellness Diary now for a pedometer, I found an app on WP that not only tracks your activity but also what you eat, nutritional facts etc.
This is something people have been asking for for ages, linking up with Sports Tracker.
I have a little different goal, but I did exercise for one month and I can see the differences.
So here is my advice: if you mind what you are doing and why, and don't delay what you can do every day, the results will come.
Good luck!
My plan is to get to full marathon distance before the end of the year.
Currently capable of half marathon disctance and recovering from patella tendonitis.
mbrett
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I'm surprised how useful and down-to-earth Wellness Diary is, already.
The summer was apparantly very nice, according to WD. Only things to consider for optimized life expectancy seemed shortage of red wine and overdose of sports ;-) (according to duodecim, see below).
Most useful for betalabs could be an in app possibility to file comments and suggestions. Few things are more powerful than a really easy to use and working feedback system?
Beginning "a new life", training and monitoring period, one might want to take the Duodecim health test found as a link under Services. What's really missing is an easy possibility to save the extensive input you give in that test, and the results for later reference after some time of active, healthy life.
The rewards are a good thing, adding an element of interactivity and "personal coach", pushing you to keep up and giving feedback & motivation. Enhancing the coach feature could have potential.
To me it seems vegetables count is having a short (zero) memory, while the app memory for salty and sweet snacks is considerably longer. Seems so wrong, so wrong ;-). Perhaps on purpose, but I have difficulties to find it logical in all aspects.
Using Sportstracker, of course, why couldn't you sync those results to Wellness Diary, just type of sport, how long, and calories burnt.
Getting into details: In Trends > Stats, you might want to scroll time and even zoom, watching the Stats change over time.
Wellness Diary can have potential for a killer app like Sportstracker, but needs absolutely flawless and optimised UI (it's on the right way being relatively minimalistic, just need to be near perfect to get the positive rumor mill running for killer app status), and some well decided related feature/app integration. Compare with Sportstracker: just knowing you can have HR and do have the map integrated, stops the grunt "in principle a good app but still lacking...".
Perhaps more being a hint for Sportstracker, check out Gymlog. That seems to be missing for Symbian(?) as a well working app. You'll see the point.
A really working nutrition app, e.g. integrated/cooperated with keventajat.fi or something like that; it could give the knowledge and data needed if you train actively and why not also the other aspects of nutrition in a health and weight perspective.
Getting a bit amibitious; WD could be the central app/interface for a modular small app family (like maps), where you might want to add periodical health related data like fertility/pms cycle; migraine diary; medicine diary and reminder. Features not needed, just hide them in settings as now. Some data you might want to export, and a password protection could become needed. It is probably wise to keep a balance with positive, Wellness things; if needed, add other healthy habits for the balance.
You might want to share and coach with a small number of people like partly possible on sportstracker.com; not necessarily all over e.g. fb and twitter.
Go for it, both in you personal efforts and developing the app!
Hi everyone, and thanks for your comments!
@ammar224422: Glad you liked it :)
@garymoncrieff: I thought about walking to work too - I usually take the bike, and it's really not too far away. So far I've been just so lazy, although it would take some 10 minutes more of my time. Maybe already tomorrow...?
@steceso: You're right, there's no reason to delay any more. Just jump in (and that's why I'm blogging about it...)!
@mbrett: Brilliant! Recovering can take a long while, but going for a half-marathon already is an excellent achievement. Keep up the good work! I'm following your example, although slowly... :D
@kim.westerlund: Thanks for your insight! We're working on a new version, and there will be some changes. Unfortunately I can't spoil yet what, so I'll just keep on thanking you for your comments and encouraging words!
Feels great to have so much support, thanks!