Gym Tools

Several people have asked, so I thought I would write a quick post and share several tools that I use at the gym.  These things are very helpful to tracking all of my health related stats.  

My most used piece of hardware is my iPhone of course.  There is nothing special about the iPhone, any smartphone that can install apps are helpful.  Android should be fine, I’m not sure about Windows Phones at this point.

The first app for me is Lose It.  This is where I track all of my food and my weight loss.  Every calorie I eat normally gets entered into this app.  It does all of my calorie calculations based on my height, weight and age.  It adjusts every day for my new weight.  It has a barcode scanner to scan your foods, a recipe calculator and friend accountability.  It also tracks exercises, but in my opinion, it is not the best calorie expenditure calculator.  I’ll compare the results I get from Daily Burn (below) and my heart rate monitor (also below) and enter this into Lose It.

This is where Daily Burn comes in.  I use Daily Burn to track every exercise rep I do.  Daily Burn also tracks nutrition information, but I like the Lose It interface better for that.  Daily Burn also has a barcode scanner and a favorite foods list.  The one thing I do not like about this app is that the last workout you did is persistent.  You have to delete the previous week’s exercises in order to enter the current week’s exercises.  A minor pain, but one that is worth it for the tracking.  I setup my workouts on the website in advance (I did this years ago) and just run down the list and enter what I did that day.  I take this calories burned measurement and just compare it to what my heart rate monitor tells me I’ve burned (see below).

The last app I use is Body mApp.  I wish this one had been around when I first started losing weight.  I’d love to have those measurements.  As you can see, you measure all parts of your body and enter them in this app for tracking purposes.  Once a month or so is probably a good interval for using this app.  I look forward to seeing how my body measurements are trending, especially now that I’m lifting weights again.

Onto the hardware tools.  I use a Polar FT7 Heart Rate Monitor to track what I’m actually burning in the gym.  The problem with Daily Burn and Lose It is that they track the calories that 1 rep burns.  Your heart rate stays up for a short rest between sets for which these apps do not account.  We rotate sets and my heart rate is generally elevated through my rest period.  If it starts to drop too low, I’ll run in place or do a few jumping jacks in order to keep it up.  At this point, I do not want it to get too high during my workout.  I try to keep my heart rate in the fat burning zone for now.  I don’t necessarily want to burn glycogen stores, I want to burn fat.  This HRM helps me to know where I am at all times.  I take the calorie number that the HRM gives me and enter that into Lose It.  That way I have centralized information all in one place.  The FT7 is a good starting point in heart rate monitors.  I may upgrade it in the future, but for now, it does all I want to to do and more.  The chest strap is very comfortable to wear through a workout.  I believe I could wear it all day and not get tired of it.  The watch comes in multiple colors.  It isn’t a wonderful fashion statement, but I believe you could probably wear it for most jobs.

My final tool is the Withings Wifi Scale.  There is a companion iOS app (WiScale) that goes along with the device.  When I step on this scale every morning, it transmits my weight, body fat percentage and BMI numbers to the website.  This in turn automatically sends it back to the WiScale app, Lose It, Daily Burn and a host of other sites if you choose to use them.  This is by far my favorite scale I’ve ever used.  I got this scale back in June 2011 I believe, and the batteries are still reading at 61%.  That was a big concern for me, but it has proven to have been unfounded.  Definitely a well-made piece of hardware.  Obviously, the body fat percentage is not going to be the most accurate—you will need a fat caliper set to get a true reading.  Body hydration can majorly skew this measurement.  You can at least see a trend over time and have a general idea of the reading.

These are the main tools that I use.  I have some other things I’ll share with you later—supplements, new recipes, and new favorite foods.  What are some things that help you in your daily healthy routine?