My Fitness Journey (so far)

This will be a lengthy read but I sat down last night to put to paper what my fitness journey has looked like and wanted to share it with everyone to keep myself accountable but maybe also inspire someone else.

My current fitness partially began in February 2019 during my annual physical.  My doctor looked at me and said “if you don’t lose weight by the time you are here next year you’ll be on blood pressure medicine.”  I weight 325 pounds and my blood pressure was 145/95.  At the time I didn’t pay much attention.  I really got serious in August 2019 when my son started expressing interest in going to Northern Tier, a high adventure base for the BSA.  I could in no way attend this adventure with my son because I was horribly overweight and in very poor physical fitness.

In high school, I was athletic and played sports.  I knew based that in order to be successful I had to find a way to keep myself accountable.  Being a long-time Apple guy (I already had an iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Pro) I naturally settled on an Apple Watch to help keep myself accountable by closing my rings.  Apple had started to make a more heavy investment in health and fitness and it seemed to fit in with the direction I wanted to head.  I started out slow by walking and tracking my rings with my Apple Watch.  As I started to get in shape I knew I needed to start tracking my progress.

It was at this time that I started using the MyFitnessPal app to track my food and water intake.  I also used the app to set my caloric goals for each day based on my current weight and my goals for weight loss.  I wanted to make sure my goals were realistic and achievable and not some fad diet that in the end, I would just put back on the pounds.  I also purchased a Withings Body+ scale to start tracking my weight, body fat, muscle, bone, and water.  With the amazing ecosystem, Apple built with the Apple Health app everything seamlessly worked together.  I could see my weight in MyFitnessPal and see all my app data aggregated in the Health app.  It was truly a remarkable experience.

As I continued with my journey I started getting into the gym and working out in addition to my walks.  I slowly worked my way up to being able to run a few days a week.  The Apple Watch made running amazing, I could track the run, my progress, my heart rate and listen to music all without needing to take my phone with me.  I had been using these features for my walks as well and once again, the seamless integration across all the iOS apps makes it a very fulfilling experience.  Things were going extremely well, my weight was down, my fitness was up, my move ring goals were increasing each week and I was feeling better than I had ever felt.

In February COVID hit hard where I live and everything shut down.  Gyms were closed and I was devastated.  I pondered how I could keep making the progress on my fitness journey.  I started focusing on running and it was going well but I live in Kansas and it gets really cold in February so it became much harder to motivate myself to run.  By luck, I happen to reconnect with an old friend of mine from high school, Tim, who was now a personal trainer in Florida.  He shared the story of his journey and it was remarkable how much of his story echoed mine.  Gyms were shut down in his area as well so he was offering 3 times a week virtual online classes during the lunch hour.  It seemed like an exciting way to do something different so I started attending them.  He definitely whooped me in a way I hadn’t been whooped in a long time, but I absolutely loved it.

After about two months the gyms finally started opening back up where I live.  I had really been enjoying the workouts my friend has been offering virtually so I wanted to see if he would write personalized workouts for me and been another source of accountability for me.  He replied that he would and we worked out the arrangement.  Tim began writing workouts for me for four days of the week and I continue to pursue my cardio regiment two days a week.  The workouts Tim provided have advanced in difficulty and continue to challenge me.  He does an amazing job of whipping me in the gym on a consistent basis that gives me an amazing feeling of accomplishment when I’m finished.  The Apple ecosystem and especially the Apple Watch continued to be a huge part of my success.  As I transitioned to a more regimented workout I learned a lot more about heart rate zones and how to keep track of those for proper training.  The amount of data available through the Apple Health app from the various devices became crucial to me as I learned more and more each day.  I started learning how to apply the data to my training and fitness goals.

Apple launched Fitness+ in December of 2020 and at first, I didn’t pay much attention to it.  I had a pretty good thing going with my regiment.  But as the colder days of winter set in, running outside became less desirable to me.  As I started to run more in the gym during the cardio days I decided to try Fitness+.  I started using it in January and was blown away.  I’ve never been a fan of running on the treadmill, I did it because I needed to, but it was never enjoyable.  Apple Fitness+ completely changed that.  I’ve done almost a dozen of treadmill workouts now it has completely changed my opinion of the treadmill.  I’ve definitely found a couple of favorite trainers (here’s to you Scott and Jamie-Ray) but I continue to try them all out.  The Fitness+ experience has been so amazing for me that I’ve even used it for some other workouts such as mindful cool downs after my runs or a good core workout.  I actually look forward to cardio days now on the treadmill thanks to the amazing variety and experiences of the Fitness+ workouts.

Every week I have a goal of learning something new about a data point that I can either collect or are already collecting, to help keep my fitness goals on track.  I recently learned about Heart Rate Variability after reading some articles in the Fitness section of Apple News.  It intrigued me as I learned more and more about it and how you can use it as a gauge on how effective not only your workouts are, but also your rest days and overall readiness for your workouts.  I have already started incorporating it into my daily routine to understand the impact of my workouts, when I can take it harder and when I should make it easier, in order to maximize my gains.  I started using the Heart Analyzer app to get a holistic view of the data to really be able to pinpoint any changes I need to make in my routines.  All of this is possible because of the seamless integration that Apple has invested in its ecosystem and it has truly been a game-changer for me.

I’m just over 18 months into my journey and still going strong.  I’m down almost 110 pounds from when I started, my blood pressure is now 115/65 on average and I’m in arguable the best shape of my life.  I can easily do pushups now and can do chin-ups and dips which I’ve never been able to do in my entire life.  I’ve dropped 3 shirt sizes and 14 inches from my pant size.  I still have plenty of work ahead of me to get to my end goal but I am extremely happy with the success that I’ve had to this point.

I attribute a large part of this success to the ecosystem that Apple has built and has enabled me to use with devices such as my Withings Body+ scale and my Apple Watch and the amazing apps such as MyFitnessPal, Apple Health, Fitness+, and the Withings app.  In addition to the automatic collecting of data from these devices, being able to log things such as my water intake or blood pressure reading make the entire ecosystem work seamlessly and empowers me to understand my journey and continue down the path I’m on.  Combine all of this with the personal accountability and butt-busting workouts I get from my friend and trainer Tim and it has been an absolutely amazing journey of discovery.  I’ve had plenty of bumps and setbacks along the way but I’ve continued to push through and look forward to continuing the path I’ve set for myself.