One of the best things about using the Apple watch is to let it record your health data and the Apple Watch health benefits. It encourages exercise for 30 minutes per day, burn up a set number of calories and to spend time standing up so you’re not sitting down all the time. I have the activity app set as a complication on the face of the Modular watch face. I can see how the rings are going towards daily completion. The red ring is to show how many calories you burn during the day. The green ring is for exercise and counts how many minutes of your recommended 30 minutes per day you’ve done. Then there is the blue ring which shows how many times you’ve stood for at least one minute during the hour throughout the day. The first screen you look at shows the three rings together in one view. Swipe up from that to show more information. View the number of active calories you’ve burned, the total number of steps you’ve taken and total distance. I’m just looking at mine now and I can see I’ve walked a total distance of 1.26 km so far this morning. 11,831 steps by the end of the day and 8.76 km walked. Phew…!
Sliding to get more information
Slide your finger across the screen from right to the left to move to the next set of information. First one gives the single view of the calories burned, slide up from that to see a graph of how those calories were burned during the day. With the same swiping movement from right-to-left move to the next screen to see your exercise ring. This shows when you have exercised to the level of at least a brisk walking pace. Once again if you slide upwards you get to see a graph of how that exercise happened during the day. Looking at my watch now I can see I got most exercise from going out walking the dog at about 10 o’clock. The next screen to the right will show how times standing for at least a minute in the hour during the day. Sitting down all the time is not healthy. Many people now recommend using a standing or walking desk. If you’ve been sitting down for most of the hour, a reminder will pop up at 10 minutes to the top of the hour to stand up. The watch will give a little beep when you have completed that one minute of being upright and upstanding. Well done, give yourself a pat on the back.
Apple Watch health benefits- Looking at the data collected
All of this information is also available in the iPhone Activity application. In the application you get information on how you’ve done during the day. Excellent to see how it stacks up over time. If I want to look back at my performance on a previous day I can check that out. In the achievements section you’ll see things like the badge for completing a perfect week of exercise or a perfect month of exercise. There’s always something to aim for to help reach your goal of physical perfection. There’s a section where it will show workouts completed. I haven’t been doing this for a little while because I forgot about it.
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For the best Apple Watch health benefits keep a log of your exercise regime with the health app. I can see that in February of this year I did 23 workouts and most were outdoor walks. Seems I’m always out walking the dog! I must use these workouts again to return to the mindset of keeping fit. It’s also possible to filter the view of workouts. If I want to look at just the outdoor cycling, it’s possible. It’s possible to get more information about the workout. The app shows the number of active calories burned and the total number of calories used for the workout. View the total distance, average pace and your average heart rate for the exercise. The workout information either comes from the activity application or from other applications like the pedometer application. It’s easy for me to see I get a much better workout by going for a cycle ride. My average heart rate is up to 123 bpm. Obviously that’s suggesting cycling is better than walking for exercise.
Activity/+/+ and Pedometer/+/+
Activity/+/+ is another way of looking at your activity rings from the Apple watch. I liked this application at first. Not so sure there’s much to be gained from way the information is displayed. There is less information overall, but you get a different view on the statistics. Tap on the statistics button in the top right hand corner to see the statistics for the move, exercise and stand rings. It shows you an average of the number of calories burned daily. It tells you when was your best day and how many calories you’ve burned on that day. Learn how many times you reached the goal. In my statistics I can see I’ve reached the goal 428 days out of 497 days. My best of consecutive days of achieving the goal is 301 days. Woo hoo only another 64 days to have completed a whole year of reaching the move goal. For Apple Watch health benefits maybe this application is worth having to augment the data viewable in the Apple Activity application.
Pedometer – Counting steps
Another application available from the same developer is called Pedometer/+/+. This is a free application with advertising and is worth having for better information about the number of steps for the day in a graph. Get info about the number of floors have climbed. This works on any incline and not just by using the steps to go from one floor in a building to another. So walking up a hill gives some climbed steps in the graph. I like the red colour in the graph when starting the day and haven’t done many steps. At a certain point during the day it will change to an orange colour and only turn green when you’ve got past your daily step goal. My daily step goal is 10,000 steps and I can change that number in the settings for the application. Also in the settings for the application you can tell it to merge Apple Watch data. This is useful so you don’t double count the number of steps taken. I can start a walking session directly from the app to watch and it will record my heart beats per minute, calories and the kilometres walked. This information will find its way into the Apple activity application and give answers to questions about Apple Watch health benefits.
What’s the point of exercise?
The main point is to be healthy and secondary is to not be a lazy fat slob. It’s fine to record all of your exercise, but to do the job properly, also record the amount you eat. Losing weight is simple and easy – remember these four words – EAT LESS MOVE MORE. My problem is biscuits, they are full of fat and sugar. One big and successful move with that problem was just to reduce my ration by one half. Instead of having two biscuits with a cup of tea I only have one. No! I don’t drink more cups of tea during the day to make up for it either. My next move will be to half that ration again. Either I will eat half a biscuit per cup of tea or I will just have one biscuit every other cup of tea. I took the same approach with the food on my plate. I made the meals half the size they used to be. You’d be surprised at the level of exercise needed to work off the calories in one biscuit. Much easier to not eat the biscuit than spend the whole day exercising to pay for it.
Other health applications worth looking at
When I was fully into losing weight, I started by using an application called Moves. It did a great job of tracking exercise during the day and I think it gave extra encouragement along the way. Can’t remember everything about the app now because I’ve since changed to using an application called Calorie Counter & Diet Tracker by MyFitnessPal. I connect this application up to the health application on my Apple iPhone. I track the food I eat, the exercise taken, weight, water drunk and my status. The status is where you add a progress photo and show how skinny you now look. Easy to record food intake because often you consume the same combinations of food together. Such as tea and biscuits or yoghurt and muesli. When I add the cup of tea, it will offer to add the biscuit to go with it. Easy to add a new food during the day not eaten before, scan the barcode and add to the list of foods. Later when you add the same meal on a different day, choose from the list.
Setting up a target weight
Set up a starting weight and add a goal weight and this will set the number of calories per day. Connect devices to record your steps, I set it to track steps from the Apple Watch. It does a little sum starting with target number of calories minus calories for food eaten plus the calories for exercise. Basically, it takes into account the need to eat more on a day with a lot of calorie burning. So at the end of the day mark your recording activities and calories consumed record as being complete. The application gives an approximation of what you would weigh after a specific number of weeks if doing the same thing more or less each day. On the same page they take the chance to offer a premium service you can pay for. Get advanced tools, better analysis and no advertising in the application. It’s going well at the moment in free mode. I don’t need to start paying anything yet.
There is a suite of other applications to link into this same application from the same company. Such as MapMyWalk+, MapMyRide+ and MapMyFitness+ these are all useful if you want to map a variety of activities and you can choose from running, walking, road cycling, mountain bike and more. They haven’t included cycling with an electric bike, yet. I work hard when I’m cycling on the electric bike, using the motor to make me go faster rather than only let me cycle easier. You’ll find a huge list of activity types including table tennis, shovelling and even wrestling. There’s something for nearly everybody. The brilliant thing about these apps with map in the title, is you do get a map. You can choose from routes you rode before or you can record a new one. Handy applications to help you keep your body in good shape! Use the social element within the applications to send messages to your social networks about what you’re up to. The Strava app is popular with cyclists. There are some great Apple Watch health benefits used in conjunction with the fantastic health apps on the iPhone. We will all be as fit as fiddles.
Apple Watch Health Benefits – Lose Weight One of the best things about using the Apple watch is to let it record your health data and the Apple Watch health benefits.
