You Chose Poorly S04E06: VO2 pro max

How are you? Hi, Sawyer. It's been too long. It's been too long.

So we were supposed to do this like a month ago, before Easter. Yeah. And then just, la. Yeah.

Here we are. You know, life happens. Right? Life happens.

Yeah. Sorry about that. That's OK. But a lot has happened since.

I think we have more of a topic now, for sure. Yeah. We have a few. I don't even know what we're talking about today.

Well, I think the main topic, we can have a couple of many topics at first, if you like. But I think the main topic is like fitness. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Got it. He could be part of it.

But I think fitness stuff, because I think, OK, you have like new fitness stuff to talk about. A lot. Yeah. I have a long history of like you chose poorly fitness things.

So I think this is a rich topic. And I don't think we've talked about fitness before. Not quite. No.

Right. Kinda. Like we talked about the devices. To some degree.

Some of them are used for fitness. But we didn't talk about fitness. No. And I think it's mostly because I had no idea what to say about fitness.

This is the first time in my life that I have some grasp of some understanding or some experience along with theoretical understanding. Like I put some of it in practice where I get some basic fitness principles that I think people are taught like in health class, in grade school. I never really understood or grasped it or lived it until like the past four months. Right.

And I would have had nothing to say if we talked about this before. But it's been a crazy four months for me. And you chose poorly and it's related themes have a lot to do with it. Wow.

I'm excited to talk today. I remember when like you and I have had many conversations about like the Apple Watch and you bought an Apple Watch like right away. You were such an early adopter of the Apple Watch. And I remember when I finally bought one in 2020.

And you and I talked about it and you were like, here's what you do. You dial your rings as low as you feel you can. And then you just win every day. That's what we knew.

It's a ring that you want to complete. So of course you want to win. Right. Why would you set it up?

Why would you not finish the circle every day when you get to control the number that finishes the circle? And you took it to the extreme for me because I told you that like for the move and for the exercise ring. And that was 2020. So that must have been the pandemic.

That might have been like self care advice for the time. Right. Right. Because before the pandemic when I had the watch, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, this before the pandemic when I had the watch, it was just like, okay, my rings were bigger.

My goals were higher because life, but the pandemic just do what you can. But you took it to the extreme of saying, I was complaining. We weren't off of a podcast. I'm not recording.

And I was telling you about it. It's like 10 p.m. And I have like two stand rings, two stand hours ago. And you said just put it to eight.

Just change it to eight. Change it to eight. Standing. I'm just a what?

And then you say, who cares? It's the same drink. That's the ring no one cares about. So since then, for like 40 years, it was at eight.

Because you're right. Like we're not going anywhere. And it's 10 p.m. Are you forcing yourself to stand?

Yeah. Doesn't mean anything. It's not going to make a difference. So, yeah.

So we we we we we we keep raising the bar or lowering the bar for each other. Yeah. And I think that was the extent of our fitness. I think I will put the other thing you thought me.

Okay. You thought we was if I'm if I'm if my exercise ring is not as it didn't progress as much as I wanted to. And I wanted to use you thought me to do the mind and body exercise. The mind and on a podcast.

Yeah. The mind about so I'm going to link to this. You can go back to the you can go back to the season two episode or we talk about cheating. We talked about it.

We talked about it. I remember we talked about it. We talked about podcast and I I did I gave one incorrect piece of information in that podcast, which was that you could like you could retroactively go back and change your numbers afterwards, which you can't do. I do feel like you used to be able to do it, but like they fixed that you can't you can't like go back and make yourself look more impressive.

And if you break a streak, the streak is broken. There's not much you can do about it. That's right. But what you can do is if you feel like you're close to finishing your rings, but it's like 11 to 30 and you're not going to do a workout, but you need like 10 minutes of activity or something to change it, you can just do a mind and body workout and just sit there and it'll just sit there.

It'll do it. It counts. That's that's the one built in like cheat code to the Apple Watch is the mind and body workout. And it really is a cheat code.

Yeah. Because like there's a there's a mindfulness app. You know, what you're supposed to do with mind and body is what you do with a mindfulness app. You meditate, you breathe, whatever, but it has it's not connected in any way.

So you can totally do the wellness stuff and not earn calories or exercise minutes or you could just do the other thing. Do the minor body workout and do and you want to close your ring. If your like streak is more important to you than like raw, honest data, then do the minor body workout. It's fine.

Right. Yeah. So I think this is primarily the thing I want to talk about. And it's also made the biggest difference.

Yeah. Which I don't like how it sounds being the Apple guy. Oh, you're an Apple person. I'm more than I am at this point.

More. But yeah. I mean, what does it mean? Oh, but you have the newer stuff.

I do have a new Apple watch and I have a new iPhone and I do have if you want, I do have sort of six month reviews of both. If that's an interesting thing. I do. I do think we should do that for the phone when we talk about the cameras.

Okay. So I think that's where we can jump off to that. But I so just so if you don't mind if I may get started on this because I've been playing with this in my head for a while and I think after four months, I can now say something and play more instead of just dreaming of a blog post. So the idea of the Apple watch is that you're setting a move goal where you're actively doing stuff and it's supposed to measure how many calories you burn when you move.

This is calculated by your age or gender, your weight and I guess some tracking of motion. And then there's the exercise ring, which is arbitrary because it's whatever, it's arbitrary. You just whatever, however many minutes you want to exercise per day, it's going to measure that and that's going to be your goal. And then there's the stand ring, which I guess is to like fight against sedentary lifestyles or something.

But again, it's also arbitrary. It's all for computer people who sit here all day in dumb move. Right, right. And computer people is like all people now, you know.

So I get it. But since the Apple watch came out, which is since the whole time I've had it, that's what it's for. And ideally, so between doing the thing that the watch asks you to do, there's a huge gap between that and having it make any difference in your life. So I imagine if I was someone who was like classic computer comic book guy, like truly sedentary and truly like a caricature of unhealthiness, I imagine the Apple watch would make a dramatic difference.

And I think it I mean, just just having arbitrary goals from zero to suddenly I have 400 calories and however many minutes of exercise, that would make a difference. And but even if I was I have a large hefty person and I'm sedentary a lot, it didn't really make much of a difference. I think this is what I want to say. Like even if I had a streak going on for streaks over five, six, seven years of just broken every so often, but just mostly burning 500 to 1000 calories a day, 20 to 30 minutes of exercise a day and standing for eight to 12, 10 hours minutes a day.

Sure. The watch, like those fitness things didn't really do anything. It was it was other things that made a difference here and there with my health and the closest that the biggest difference I made before this season was after I got a COVID scare that ended up being diabetes, like I was diagnosed with diabetes and that scared me. And then suddenly like you just diet and then we just exercised a lot.

And this was during the pandemic. And to exercise around the apartment all very often. And then there was some weight loss. And but so the connection of the watch was that it would just trap how much exercise I would do.

But it really had not like the data I was getting from it was just how many minutes I exercised. That's it. And everything else was also arbitrary. I burned so many calories, whatever that means.

And I stand up for stand hours, which is a thing Apple invented. So now the difference is late last year after however many after 37 years of blood test results telling me I'm healthy. I suddenly get blood test results that tells me I'm not. And because this is just because of my dad and my mom and family.

It was coming. It was coming. I knew it was coming. And suddenly it was here.

And the advice aside from these medicines day and night is the usual lose away healthy diet. And I had no idea what that meant. I mean, I knew what it meant from health class, but it just means eat less. I can do that.

I guess. But it was a working mind. It's another podcast where I talk about what finally got me to do it. But several things inspired me and motivated me and just made me connect dots, which is the biggest the biggest dots that connected for me where that calorie deficit leads to weight loss.

Like that's it. Like there is no other trick. So whether you're aware of the calories you're putting in or not, it is the deficit that's going to lead to weight loss. But that and eat healthier.

Just the matter of stuff. That's still I'm not there yet. But the deficit and thinking about the deficit, there was a fad that my fitness file fad like it was a thing that everybody did for so long. And that I never I never I never liked it.

I thought it was weird. I don't know. I just have to do it. There it is.

Yeah. There is some research on what the best calorie counter apps are. My fitness files at the top. This other app called LUSEIT is there where they claim that the interface is nicer.

So that's enough. Yeah. So and then me being me, I thought it was nicer. So I downloaded both thought LUSEIT was cooler and then tried it and then here within a week soya a week a week.

I had lost like two kilograms. And this was because I am very heavy person. So it's easy for a heavy person to lose a little bit of weight. But maybe a little bit.

Like I'm not a difference. I'll stop you there. I think it's a tremendous accomplishment to be able to change your body on purpose regardless of what you're trying to do. Right.

I agree. And I always felt it was something I could never do until I did it. And what made quote made me do it was basic math with the help of my iPhone. Could I ask you a detailed question about LUSEIT?

Sure. Do you subscribe to LUSEIT premium features one year? No. Do you subscribe to LUSEIT premium one year?

No. Do you subscribe to LUSEIT premium lifetime? No. Do you subscribe to year of premium features?

No. Do you subscribe to additional year of premium features? Nope. Okay.

Zero. Okay. Completely free. Okay.

Because those are the listed in app purchases for the sound. Which is I think a hilarious list of items for sale. It is hilarious. My fitness power is like the very similar list of various funny in app purchase lists.

Right. I think they just list everything even if they change the price. Yeah. Yeah.

Apple will just list everything in the app store or listing. Yeah. I use my fitness power. But I might switch over to I'm not loyal to any of these.

For instance, I don't pay for my fitness power premium one month or one year or one month or monthly premium one month or premium one year or premium one month or yearly premium one year. I don't I don't subscribe to any of those. The yearly premium one year sounds like. Yearly premium one year is good.

Yeah. Yearly premium one year. Yearly premium one year. It's one year.

Right. So this is though. Gallery counters are old news. Sure.

I was not starving myself. I was not eating like things that made me upset. I was just doing the math and finding that I could be happy and be full and still fit my budget because I didn't set a crazy budget. I set a long wait goal for a long time from then.

Yeah. So it worked. It worked within a week. So then I got so I started looking to the app more because apps like this intimidate me.

But look at the app. You can link it to your watch. You can link it to Apple Health. And then when I did that and then it occurred to me that the calories that my watch is measuring can give me bonus calories to eat.

Sorry I love eating video game points for your watch, right? You get video game points. Yeah. And I had been setting just increasing my move goal thinking it make a difference.

Now seeing that this is the math that made a difference and that my watch can help me do that math and then it can result in an extra cup of rice and an extra pastry at the end of the day made me very excited to figure out how it works. So then I would just start. I had been completing my rings anyway, but now seeing the bonus I could now set my move goal. I'm sorry, just boring numbers stuff.

But my move goal was at a thousand, which to me is a lot. But I found that if I hit a thousand, I would get around 500, 600 extra calories to eat for dinner, which means that my goal, like to burn the amount of calories I should go is 600 less. So then I just set my move ring to whatever I need to burn as many calories to then get the bonus so that my watch can tell me at what point I can feel safe ordering a net an extra slice of pizza or something. So this is just about my happiness.

The thing that's blowing my mind here is that what's getting me results is just managing the video game part of my brain that makes me happy, that then also results in the eating which makes me very happy. So this is devoid of any nutrition education that came later. But just that basic thing just work. It's I hate saying this because when I was not into this, it kind of alienated me when people would talk about this.

So I now am talking about it. But when that click, it became and I don't want to jinx it, but it's been four months. So I think I can say it now. Kind of easy in that sense.

Later I met with a nutritionist because insurance gave me free access to nutritionists. And they said we don't we advise against calorie counters because they're bad for your mental health. We would rather you manage your portions and here's a giant spreadsheet about the appropriate number of portions for a type of food. And I wanted to yell at her and say, do you understand that that there's no video game happiness there?

Yeah. And you're making me you're making me actively feel guilty every time I look at my food. Right. The calorie counter eliminates that because then I know what I can and can't do before I even do it.

Right. Like she said something like I remember the thing that made me the endress was you can eat shrimps, but you got to you got to you have to make sure you don't eat the heads. Sorry in the Philippines. I'm Asian.

We just love the heads. Like if you're not going to eat the heads of the shrimp, I don't know. I don't know why are you going to shrimp. I might not know the difference.

I might not know the difference. Ah, well one day sorry we'll have a meal together. Okay. Let's eat some shrimp heads.

I eat shrimp heads. I think I eat all of it. I don't know. Let's see.

Let's find out one day. But yeah, she said just make sure you remove the heads and it just made me so angry. It's like is it a crunchy part that you pull off? Yeah.

Oh, there is a way to eat the shell inside the crunchy part. That's where all the flavor, all the juices and also where all the cholesterol is. But that's where that's where most of it is. So a lot of like shrimp based and like shrimp sauces are made by crushing the heads because that's all the flavors.

So the nutritionist, I guess, I mean, it's just what I mean. What nutritionist teaching what they've been taught. But it's so giving me some basic info help about like what to eat when. But the advice of managing your portions is better for your mental health than doing the math on your phone.

Just made no sense to me. And I think it clicked to me that oh, this is because I'm a I think this is the tech nerd video game Apple person in me. So putting those things together made me kind of excited to talk about this, especially since weeks and weeks after that fast forward to now it's been like four months. I'm very proud to say if I may say so publicly for in a condensed way for the first time, I have lost 12 kilograms since I started, which is that you can agents are used to that, but I still have to translate the pounds.

So that's something like five pounds. We the Canadians are I don't know if you know those Canadians are really weird. We just use whichever unit of measurement feels easier. So we I think we more or less use pounds here.

I understand kilograms because of Japanese pro wrestling, but yeah, mostly use pounds. It's weird. Our units of measurements here are extremely inconsistent. I think I think we're the same.

We just use pounds more than kilograms. I also understand kilograms, but a person as a person losing weight, it makes more sense to me to say that I need to lose 20, 30, 40 pounds. Sure. Five, 10 kilos.

And also we do kilometers here. We don't do miles. I think we're the same. I think we do kilometers, but we do feet and inches for high.

Yeah. Right. Same. You chose more Lee world.

We show like units of measurement is one of the you think it's hard to get people to change messaging apps like try changing units of measurement for people. Right. It's like use Android. Right.

It's a life thing. So I'm happy to say that it's work like the my watch tracking my motion and actually contributing to math. I understand that directly results in results like daily and weekly. My canonical weight is Sunday morning, right?

I've been losing weight almost every Sunday morning for the past four months now. And I'm and this is important. I'm not unhappy. In fact, I'm really happy.

My daily life of eating is happy and fun. We get the cook what we want to cook and eat it. And checking my blood sugar every day. It seems to be.

I seem to be okay. My blood pressure is normal. Like my health has improved in the ways that the Apple watch has promised. And it's because I now understand the numbers.

Yeah. The Apple watch measures. Yeah. And aside from aside from like 100 other things, privilege and support and happy loving people.

Yeah. Competition competition with char but aside from all of that, just the technology aspect of it specifically first specifically the apps on smartphone and the Apple watch is I was before this before recorded char asked me what we're going to talk about. And it just occurred to me that this is a thing I literally could never have done until now until this season. Like even as a younger adult before this stuff was accessible, I would not have been able to do this.

And it's while it's unfortunate that it took me this long. I'm kind of glad it's happening now. It worked out. So I'm very happy to say it.

So I don't want to say. There's still one of the things I always tell myself or is also the journey is long. Like there's a weight goal, but I think what's more important that I remain doing this by this. I mean, not necessarily calorie deficit, but just being wise about my choices forever.

Then it is to reach a weight goal consistently for a long time. But I just want to mark this with a podcast with you specifically and say I kudos and salute to Apple and technology because it does allow me to do something I could never have done otherwise. That's awesome. Dude, I think that's so good.

I have a couple of follow up notes based on what I was listening to there. But I think that's so awesome that you are feeling happy while doing this. Because I think that's usually the thing that goes first when trying to improve oneself is the happiness part. I'm so glad that that's a big part of it for you.

No, you're in a good mood. Your body feels good. You're in a good mental health space. That's tremendous.

There's a little bit of like, this is the first minute of WWDC keynote where they bring out all the people that Apple Watch saved. And that's crazy. I don't know why those aren't just commercials on television. But that's pretty powerful marketing to be like, oh, no, no, if I didn't have this watch, I'd be in a much worse situation.

So that's awesome. Sorry. Just about the watch being a commercial thing. The specific things that the watch can do does for me is tracking motion and tracking my heart rate.

And then the apps do the math, right? So I will say this is the thing any motion tracker can do, any modern motion tracker can do that's many of which are much cheaper than the Apple Watch. And I mean, Android phones can certainly do it, probably do it better. So it's not an Apple thing that I'm saying, but Apple preference just though.

Anything that gives you reasonably accurate video game numbers is good for this. Sure. I think it's really interesting that the nutritionist was like, don't do any of that. That's bad.

It's so like just for my own experience doing this stuff, I've become a bit of a believer in like, I forget what it's actually called, but it's like a scientific term for like a sample set of one in this experiment. And like health experiments that have sample sets of thousands have interesting results, but they often like fail when you actually like apply them to individual people and like fitness stuff seems to be like, you are running an experiment on yourself with a sample set of one. Right. Right.

And that's, it sounds like it's really working for you right now and that's awesome. I'm just, I'm super inspired, frankly, like, like when you told me like kind of like the TLDR version of what you just said in a chat earlier, I was like, I just are counting my calories again. Like, you know, I have been on and off the calorie counting train 100 times in the last decade. I find the habit very difficult to stick to, but I've never actually tried to lose it specifically.

I've tried my fitness panel a couple others, but like I find like the, the stickiness of the habit doesn't keep after like a week or two. Right. I just start forgetting. And then once you start forgetting, you go, Oh, well, it's been like three days since I've input anything.

What's the point now? Right? Yeah, of course. Right.

So that's inspiring to me to like, try to like keep that, like make it stickier for me to do it, you know, because it doesn't affect my mental health. If I type in too many calories in a day in the app, like it doesn't make me feel bad to see that I've, you know, eaten poorly this day and I've eaten 3000 calories or something, I'd rather have that written down than then forget that I did that, you know, right? But I could definitely just knowing you who see that would upset me, right? If it would affect me if I, if the psychology of these apps is really frustrating, but it's, I love it because it works where if you see the thing, it's red and it's tiny, tiny line of red really, really bothers me.

Right. We had a couple experiences where I forget the log something and then I loved it because I, and then I went over and then that just made me go, okay, I have to run now. Yeah. Like I just, this is like 10 p.m.

And that's what, like I remember there were some ads, there were some ads for Apple Watch ads where some guy saw that he saw that it was the same thing. Same idea as like, oops, I'm not done yet. I need to run for another minute. But the difference between an arbitrary ring and it literally being the thing that allowed me to have a burger today is, is huge to me because I care very much about the burger in a real sense than I do about some stupid ring.

Right. And I think the thing about the, the point that the nutritionist made was that it's bad for your, it's bad for your mental health because I guess it's coming from this general sense of people being too obsessed with their phones and, you know, just looking at their phones, staring at their phone instead of enjoying your food. And she wants all people, she wants their clients to enjoy their food and she assumes that by looking at your phone, you enjoy the food less. And it's the opposite for me.

Like, no, I don't find that all. Yeah. I get it out of the way and now I can, I get to eat, I'm happy now. And my brain adjusts, I guess.

Like, it's rare that I'm hitting my calorie goal and I'm not satisfied with what I've eaten for dinner because I think dinner is what counts the most. I think if you're busy for breakfast and lunch, you can just be busy for dinner. Like at the end of the day, I'm with my wife and kid and I'm unhappy. I think that's troublesome.

Yeah. But it's good times mostly. I will say also that this is also the phase in my life where this is perfect. I think when I was younger, I don't know how I could have done this really.

Like, you would have just not cared about it. You would have just been like, whatever. I'll be fine later. Yeah.

Because I guess, like, because we, we, it's not like we have a personal coop here. You know, we shop for, we do our own groceries and we cook. But I think the collaboration of living and remaining and keeping each other alive with the family, I think helps. I think that's, I think, that was the thing.

That was the other thing. That was the other thing I wanted to sort of point out was like, you mentioned, you know, you mentioned your wife a couple of times there where you guys are collaborating and challenging each other at the same time. And you're like a little competitive. I think if that's, if, if competitiveness like helps instead of hinders, like, yeah, that's awesome that you have that.

That's, that's another sort of set of one thing where that doesn't actually help for everybody or in like, always. But like, if, if you find being a little competitive about it is helpful, that's awesome. Push that. I will say it, what it is, it's helpful for her.

So it's for her, it's the competition with me helps her. For me, my existence and my doing this and her feeling like I'm competing with her makes me then feel like she's supportive of me. So it's not, I've not, I don't enjoy competing with her, but that's a very much a her thing. I joke with her friends who see us after a long time and they ask us about whatever we're doing to look better.

And, and one, I joke that it's, it's having a wife who's not supportive that really helps me because she's, I mean, if you just listen to the words and you're right down the words on paper, she sounds really mean and really unhappy that I'm making any sort of progress. But I know that what this means is like, we're testing. So that's a competitive attitude. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. So there's, there's one thing that I like observe because you guys broadcast your lives a little bit more. I don't know if you do it publicly or if I can see it because I'm friends with you.

It's just you. It's just you, you're DMing me videos. No, I, I suppose we'll be just private, but you just happen to be, you follow us both. Okay.

So that's, like, okay. So that's, I get to see you guys filming each other doing like Nintendo switch workouts, which is I have to say, like, I, I could never do that. So like have a, have a, what do you mean? It's one, okay.

So it's one of the reasons I don't really even like going to like a gym. I like working out at home because it's like private and no one can see me. The idea of someone like filming me, doing a workout is like ghastly to me, like especially like, like ones that I don't feel super confident in, you know, like a hit workout or something like that. I feel, I feel very, very self-conscious doing like a hit workout, but I force myself to go through it.

But if I had like a camera on me, it would be like, I get some sort of a, like, a, like, a such stage, right? You know, but I think if that's, if that's the kind of thing that like helps push you to in that like sense of competitiveness, because I can kind of get that vibe from you to when you're doing that, that you're like, that you guys are in a versus mode. You know, right. But like in a, in a good healthy way.

Yeah. You know, it's true. It is a, it is a bit of a versus mode, but I, especially for Ring Fit adventure, which we only started doing the past, like seriously for the past month because it's been so hot here. Like just, it's just so hot, global warming, goodness.

Like we just walk, we used to just walk. That was our workout. It was sort of a heat. It was just, okay, let's try Ring Fit again, which we hadn't played in years.

And then it's, it's been working for her. But the filming thing is more, she enjoys making me look like a fool. And I personally don't mind it. She's, she though is like, is like you.

So if you, I don't really notice, but there's many more videos of me. Oh, wait, what? Doing that stuff, right? And I, I swear I don't ask her to do it nor do I film it myself.

I feel myself is like coffee stuff, you know, but like workout stuff is, it's not a thing I identify with. I am not a fit. I've, there's another podcast here in what I'm about to say. I identify as a fat person.

So I hear that's my whole life. That was a fat kid. He made fun of me for being fat. I identify as a fat person.

It is not, I do not identify as any sort of fitspo or like fitness. Yeah. Online, that's not me. So I will never do this on purpose.

So this is her just like looking for an exercise that makes me look ridiculous and then filming that, like that's her. So, and it's her. So whatever. Yeah.

Like, you know, it's funny. I see the value in it, but it's certainly not, this is the way I'm now. You have also convinced me to like try Ring Fit Adventure. Like that might be if I see it on sale somewhere, I might pick it up.

I used to be a Wii Fit player. Like, yes, you mentioned this a long time. You know, the, the, so I got rid of my Wii U in 2018. So I haven't tried Wii Fit since 2018, but from like 2008 to like 20, like that 10 years, I regularly used that game app.

Right? I, yeah. Well, compared to Ring Fit, it's more of an app than a game. Yeah, maybe.

I mean, the, so the Wii U version of it though got was, was really good. Like I feel like they, there's been three Wii Fit. There were three Wii Fits. There was the Wii Fit.

There was the Wii Fit Plus on the Wii. And then there was the Wii Fit. Wii Fit U. I think that's what it was called, which, right, like, and we fit each other.

So speaking of identifying as a Fed person, the Wii Fit user interface would weigh you. So like it was, it was the first ever smart scale, I think ever. But like it was the first one that I felt was like accurate and good and it would weigh you and you had to sit on, you had to stand on it for like good 15 seconds while it weighed you. And during those 15 seconds, you're a Nintendo me character who in every other application on the Wii is a very sort of skinny stick figure like person as you, as it would weigh you in and as it calculated the weight that character would just grow in it in a pretty mean way.

Yeah. Like once it got to my way, which has been, I've floated between 220 and 235 for most of my adult life. It would get up there and because of the BMI numbers, which is a pretty mean number to like push yourself against and has largely been disproven as a thing. And I wonder if Nintendo feels bad about putting that number first and foremost.

But it would make you little me character look at its own belly in kind of sadness. And then like a little, I swear to God, like a trombone noise would play. Yeah. Oh no.

And it would be like, you're obese. And it would just be like obese. See, that's not helpful. No, that's not.

But I want like to some people, I wonder if that was helpful or motivational. To me, it just made me feel terrible every time. Right. But I did regularly use it because it was, you know, in the days before pretty good at home streaming workout videos.

Like I don't think people remember this. Like before Peloton took off, there weren't streaming video apps for workouts. Like that kind of just wasn't a thing. Like there were like a couple of scatter shot ones on YouTube.

But like since Peloton took off, you can A for free, find an unlimited amount of good workout videos on YouTube. There's Apple Fitness Plus, there's Fit On, there's dozens of very good services to give you very good workout videos. But like between 2008 and 2018, like we fit was like a pretty good one to actually like get you to go through the workout steps. Even though it was also kind of easy to cheat, if you wanted to cheat that we fit, you could cheat really easily.

I didn't, like I, because what's the point of cheating that we fit? There's no streaks like an Apple Watch. You can totally, sorry, just decide not to watch cheating. So Max, my seven year old loves playing with us, but he also loves cheating.

Okay. And he's a child, so he doesn't need to exercise. He really has enough exercise just being a kid. But every time.

I'd be concerned to play, he would just, it would really, really annoy us. Like I remember feeling really angry one time, because we just, I just had an intense like session charges added intense session. And then he's doing his thing and he's fighting the enemy and the workout is something like squats, which kills us. We squat and we kill us.

It kills us and he would just hold the the joint on, which is supposed to be strapped to his leg. He just hold it and do this casually and then it would he was just cheap. And I kept saying like, why are you even doing this? It's like Zelda.

Why? Why? What's the point? my voice and made him made him very happy.

Okay, so you want at that point? Yeah, because you want, right? And then he leveled up higher than well now he's not the second place now but higher than Char at that point. So you know it's a game to him.

But you're right there's no with but unlike we fit I think then don't learn like then don't learn you can adjust how your avatar can look however you want to look. It's not the same as the me or whatever you use for the switch profiles. But it's a character right and then I think there's a larger hypothesis here about the psychology of fitness with the pandemic and tracking but I think I think the tracking connecting to what you're saying about the experimenting on yourself like it's empowering to just know what you're doing. Yeah.

And the thing the thing that clicked for me is what to do with that like I didn't know what to do with that with all those numbers because my my Apple Health has my numbers all the way from 2015 from when I got the Apple Watch the first time. You know what man right now I'd have a street or something. Do you think that Apple has sort of like not dropped the ball but like they have all these numbers for you and then they don't really help you figure out what to do with them. Like they did add like trend lines which I did find more useful than what they had before which was just kind of the raw data.

Like the trend lines are better than nothing but I still feel like with the amount of data the watch has they should have better like action items for you. But it could just be apples maybe they don't necessarily want to be in the business of telling you what to do with that. Yeah it might have yeah I think there's a missed opportunity there but I also understand when you have nutritionists saying that it's a bad idea to track your calories. Sure.

Like you know who knows how many doctors would advise against it. I could I mean I am I can see why it wouldn't I can say I imagine that person the Tricia is saying who would have some serious mental health challenges looking at their phone before eating. I mean I'm quote lucky enough to have a calorie budget that allows me to be happy but I imagine someone with a different body in a different set of circumstances probably be very unhappy with their budget. Yeah and up telling them they can only eat a thousand calories a day or something you know.

Yeah that's insane but that's why it's like this this sort of thing it's so important to think of yourself as a sample set of one. Like all there's all the advice in the world and all the ideas in the world but like you should really only focus on what works for you and what doesn't work for you. Yeah yeah yeah not once and I think I'm gonna ask you to help me be accountable here but I can't imagine ever feeling confident enough to tell anyone what let's try what I'm doing. Okay you know we shouldn't like that's there's an underlying thing where I'm like oh we have microphones so we sound like authority figures.

We're just people with Apple watches trying to be slightly healthier. We have no qualifications you know. Zero. Zero and it's it's I also I'm so familiar with the feeling of feeling alienated or annoyed and worse or angry at worst by healthier better looking people telling me what I should do.

I do think having the title right below our video here where it says you chose poorly podcast I think that does undercut the authority slightly. Yes. Thankfully. Thankfully.

Which is good. I'm okay being a clown person. Right. Right.

In fact. To me the biggest benefit of this is like if there's anything that I am the most important thing that is that the most important result that I think I can measure is just that I'm happy most of the time. Yeah. Like I think like that's the one that is that indirectly leads to other stuff that's good for me but like.

Can I ask about that? Are you actually measuring? Yes. Like is that is that something you're actually writing down somewhere like how happy am I today with how I've been doing this?

Oh well the iOS whatever it is this year makes it easier but no I don't actively do it daily but I guess just living with another human gives me a way to track. Yeah. They'll let you know. They'll let you know.

Very easily. If you know if I am. I'm not saying everybody has their own shift to deal with. Yeah.

And there's like a 100 or 1000 things that I deal with on a personal on a daily basis but just this is the other thing I was thinking about this morning in preparation for today is like the whole relationship with food thing. That's too complicated a conversation for me to be a part of. I've never had that conversation. I've never talked to a therapist about my relationship with food but I understand that that's like that's a critical thing in everybody and many people's fitness journeys.

So I am saying nothing about this. Yeah. Right. I'm just saying with my specific relationship with food where a lot of my happiness has to do with food.

This is helping me get better eat better and meet my goals and also remain happy. It's like if it's if only for that this is the thing I want to talk about for this podcast. Thankfully though I also have some results that matter. So that makes me very happy.

So I just want to just close the book on myself for this one. I'm just a podcast about I am not at my weight goal yet but I did I'm very proud to say that I hit the Brett Hart 1994 weight last Sunday. Thank you. But I do want to hit I do want to hit I think it's Owen Hart was 227.

I think I only had 220. I think that's my kilogram pound conversion goal. I think once I get 220 I think I'll recalibrate and make some changes. But all this is about is hitting the 220 and remaining happy and I'm kind of okay.

It says I'm supposed to hit it next month but if it takes me longer as long as I keep doing this I think I'm okay. So I'm not married to like a goal by a certain date. But I just I'm just kind of I just want to say that I'm kind of proud of this is a version of myself I could never have imagined ever like ever because I just didn't know how to do it and technology allows me to do it. Like I didn't realize how handicapped I was before now and and so going back to the usual sporty thing like my relationship to the watch just changed to like the Apple watch you were you were talking we were complaining about the Apple watch and I realized that all of this like this covers over all of my technology annoyances just because of what it's what it is for me now what it means for me now and actually and this is the weirdest part is like I have now been looking into looking outside the Apple watch for tracking because like there are rings now which there are rings there are rings right and there are other things and there are other cheaper things too and there are things that you know what before the Apple watch they all went away but there were motion fitness trappers that didn't have a screen and they those things don't exist anymore or barely exist they're hard to find but I am I mean it all goes into Apple health I think so if I find one I think I'm very interested in that which is not a thing I could have imagined saying since 2015 so as much as I love the Apple watch now in a weird way I'm now kind of looking around for something else and I think I'll be an Apple watch person forever but I think it's a value to me is just like it's so defined now aside from it being an Apple thing I'm a fan of right like it's a value to me is like concrete oh it like it like became a tool for you finally yeah yeah and then and I also I'm aware therefore that there are other things that do the same thing you know so like I'm not like my biases isn't aren't as strong as they were yeah or rather my prejudices right aren't as strong as they were when the Apple watch came out so I just want to say that so I appreciate the support and the happiness and and just like the tech person perspective of it is like I know you're one of the few or I don't know I don't know what else would get it but you're one of the people in my life who would so I really want to talk to you about that good I'm so I'm so happy to hear all this I'm so happy to hear all this um I wanted to because I did want to talk a little bit about like the workflow of actually like putting your food into a thing this is the workflow I've been trying this week and I really have only been doing it for like six or seven days and I don't know if it'll stick but I've had such bad luck in not bad luck I like I haven't been able to keep that habit going at any point in time um even though I'm usually like pretty good at like inputting data on myself like historically I've been pretty good at the calorie counting I've never been able to get it to stick for me so this week what I've been doing was so we make a grocery list um and the things that we make like for dinner are usually like a recipe that's online and my fitness pal can take that URL and make a recipe in my fitness pal and grab like the calories from the recipe and I can input that and so when I have that dinner I just grab that recipe I put it in and I input it um and I've been doing that for the week um sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't like it's it's a little finicky like like the the actual sort of feature set of like grabbing all of the information like sometimes it'll just be like oh zero calories for this meal I'm like you didn't do your job right see I just think it like okay zero calories yeah but like I do wonder where along that line is either a person or a machine just making a wild assumption about what a calorie is in a food um like is it the like if I'm grabbing the if my fitness pal is grabbing the calories from the recipe but the recipes calories were just manually input by the person who wrote the recipe it's possible that those numbers like don't necessarily reflect real world like what I personally ate which is like which is why the experiment of one is difficult to have external data right yeah because their idea of what this recipe is because no one ever makes a recipe exactly the same way as what's in what's written down right so at that point also you're changing the numbers so do you account for any of that or are you just going on faith that the numbers are correct uh it's I think even if you do more it's still gonna end up being faith yeah uh because like even tracking how many calories you burn like that's an estimate like you watch doesn't know that right you know it's it was no yeah and even the idea of like uh the idea of the budget per day like it ends at midnight right right so the watch the app will allow me to then of a huge meal at 12 a.m.

yeah that makes no sense right right um historically bad time to have a huge meal right exactly um and you're not i'm assuming you're not doing any of the like intermittent fasting stuff you don't have like a stopwatch in between meals no right yeah i can't i tried do like that's a health reason thing too i used to do intermittent fasting uh that's one of the things that worked four or five years ago but since the diabetes diagnosis i just can't do it anymore right um but um no what we do is we just uh there's like so lose it can do everything my fitness pal can do if we subscribe to the premium thing okay uh but if we don't it's all manual now we have access to the database and we could do the barcode in the url thing if we pay but we're not gonna pay um oh that might keep me on my fitness pal thing because i do really like the url thing yeah yeah absolutely and i think you should just just say do it because the convenience would i imagine now like like had i learned more about these apps before i got into it i think that like if i had an idea of what the workflow might be like i would have probably just done my fitness pal right because the url sounds really convenient like for me everything's manual the database is good but um and here locally also it's good but yeah that's nice the idea is that like we don't eat everything that's in the database so we have to look for something measurable and if there are like 10 versions of something measurable like grand sorry one of the things we do by the way and this is helped by my coffee lifestyle is we weigh our food occasionally and i did want to ask if you're like if like in the kitchen you're going like i'm having this much of this and this much of this and you're writing that down yeah no well no we're not writing it now but uh we're not doing it in the kitchen we're doing it at the dinner table yeah because at the in the kitchen we're making as much as we can of whatever we're making also for the rest of the week yeah maxis food in school um but um but doing it at the dinner table i understand and i concede that that is something insane people do um but because weighing your food at the we won't do this in public it's ridiculous but at home it's like a normal thing for us and it's only normal because i have like three or four scales at the bar because of the coffee thing yeah so i think this is not a thing i would advise see like this is like weighing food i think that's a step too far for a normal person right but uh for us it works just because it's convenient yeah um but but we just go and it's all faith and since it's all faith we just if we're in if we're well behaved which we are most of the time we're gonna choose the we're gonna be conservative and choose the higher calorie count version of a slice of pizza oh that's nice that's that's that's that's that sounds fair of you to be like okay let's not pick the one that's 20 calories for the whole slice of pizza right yeah and that's that's where having the competition support thing helps right i think if i were alone i'd be very tempted to just like 20 calories it says so that's right hey it's okay i'm just i'm just doing this with them remote and winning the game right right my watch says it was fitness gaming so what two hours of mind and body every day i'm using my mind yeah but yeah that's we keep each other honest i think i forget that that's the thing i should say like that's that's a big thing yeah taking each other honest but it's not that's you know it's fun it's not like we're policing each other it's just it's just how it is but uh it is all faith though because who knows how many calories you burn in a day the only thing that's real to me is what ended up becoming the results right this is why i have the faith yeah um but the rest of it is just you know spiritual practice you don't know what's happening sure no that's that's a good way of putting it that's true all right cool well that's that answers my question um and then i guess the the other so the other question i have is okay so what if you miss like a couple of days on the app or like the tracking like you just like forget or you get busy i don't know do you go back do you go back and fill it out or you just you just call it those days are missed yeah well the app is designed to keep streaks and then if you don't you have to close the day you have to turn off the day logging so there were days where and then once you do that it says you've trapped the day so i have trapped like four days and i didn't close it and it would show and i remember and it would show that the streak broke so then i'd go back and close it but uh i have to prepare myself for the day that i actually failed the trap an entire day because there were meals that i failed the trap and i told you what happened was i forgot to the log like a big thing and then at the end of the day logged it and it meant i was over and i didn't want to be over so i went out for a run or a walk didn't really run it like 10 p.m but um but i and i was not happy to walk but i just considered a funny thing but it was not like a happy oh yeah i get to walk you know um but uh what happens if i miss a day i find out when it happens but i am preparing myself as uh an emotional easily frustrated person who identifies as a fat person that this is gonna happen one day and and i'm what what i have read and what i tell myself is that if i fail that's part of it i'll just do it again the next day yeah this is knowing my tendency to give up completely yeah if i fail so accepting that about myself i'm gonna try to just do it again the next day i when it happens though i let you know i let you know but i'm not supposed to stop because i forgot the trap and also like mathematically speaking if you go over your calorie budget for a day that's okay that's yeah that's fine yeah even if the app makes it look red and scary like i like you got you do have to allow yourself to be human yeah but i i also think part of being human is just forgetting that the computer asks you to put stuff into it yesterday sometimes right right yeah yeah i mean the one i mean this started like middle of the end of january like i have not had a birthday and christmas dinner yet you know uh where i'm almost certainly gonna go over right like not even just my calorie diet budget but like over over you know i was like that's gonna happen um the annoying thing is that the premium version allows for that and you don't lose a streak um i'm gonna send you a screen cap of a widget i've been using ever since we had this conversation like oh we can have go in this conversation i was like oh gosh they're taking this more seriously and so i i've been tracking my food and i've been using this widget like it's the top widget on my phone i'll send it to you now um sure it's like it's one of those like give you a bunch of information in one small space widgets um but it's like it's showing me like at a glance like the numbers i'm trying to actually like pay attention to so like speaking it from from apple house or from apple house from apple house oh because because what you log in fitness about goes at apple house goes at app like immediately yeah yeah um so like the widget i've i've any incentive to show you any any numbers you want from apple health but i wanted to show me like okay how much exercise time have you actually spent today and then um like how much protein and cholesterol have you had today because those are the two things that i'm caring about the most like making sure i have enough protein but also making sure my cholesterol is below what i'd like it to be um and then on the on the right of the widget it shows like a 10 day summary of my exercise time which is something i've always wanted from um like the fitness widget or the apple health widget which is like give me give me that line of completed rings or incomplete rings i want to see like the last couple of days of how i've been doing and so that's kind of what this gives me and then beneath it i have this little line that shows me like how far it's cycled today because that's like that's the most fun workout i do is ride my bike and so that's sort of to push me to do that more and then um sleep hours and then my weight which is 234.1 and then my like active calories right right so active calories like how much you've moved and how much you've eaten show notes this is great show notes yeah throw that show notes yeah um called widget wizard and i think i think all the app is doing is just is just pulling number from over here pushing visual over here it's not i don't think it's reading anything really right right yeah it's it's uh i i worry about not worry but you're mentioning the the features on on my fitness now and how lose it has been working for me and like like the the attention span the short attention span tech person in my brain is now trying to figure out like can i export this data and just try something else but i i the fact is like i'm so i feel so invested in lose it because it's what's associated with what's work okay what's the what's the title of our show right all right okay got it if you have found it you spent the last 60 minutes telling me that you figured out something that works right okay okay okay let's just stop let's stop let's stop lose it app works for me great then keep it up wait i mean if you can export oh my god i think you can use this widget with because i'm assuming you lose a thing we'll go into apple health right yeah yeah yeah so the you know if you use and this is one of like 200 widgets in the app store that shows various measurements and things like that like there's a nice rich um community of apps like that um but i like to me like that's the point of a widget is showing me a bunch of stuff so i don't have to go into an app right right yeah i've been uh this is uh the widgets for apple health for the calmery gonder and the pedometer app are all in one page for me yeah so i should let's screenshot up there yeah so i should screenshot i'll put it into a shot yeah but the phone is my webcam so maybe later but yeah but i was gonna say that um i know sorry there's one more thing since i thought just about this sort of thing i want to think about apple health that uh so my watch has been tracking all sorts of stuff that i never cared about but uh recently with the exercise and with my health uh apparently estimates your cardio fitness your v o2 max yes what they call it actually i did want to talk about the v o2 max number a little bit if you do you have an apple watch that's new enough that it's tracking that yes yes i mean since the series four i think i should since the series which has been tracking it since 2019 which is when i got the series port so i know the seven no you're on the seven okay cool is the i thought the v o2 max was connected to the blood oxygen sensor which was only eight and nine yeah that's that's what i would assume right but i have data on my health app all the way from 2019 so oh maybe it's like a level of accuracy that the blood oxygen helps with maybe i don't know i don't know yeah we're we're just folks with watches you know yeah uh this all we are like i i know they turn that off in the states because of like a patent thing but like we still get to use it yeah we still have it that's right you can buy one right now and it'll have it yeah over here the stores here right so suck it america but um the idea that so i saw and i was just looking back it's that it just the trends and then one day i got an alert telling me that my my v o2 max was low this was something last year and i just figured well of course it's low it's like what can i do it's low um but apparently in 2020 i looked back i was above average which made no sense to me because we were just walking around our little building that's all that's the only exercise we were doing um but apparently i was above average and since then i had been below average and then during the entirety of the pandemic after that it's low um and having seen that it motivated and then having exercised see the data made me think okay i'm if i'm doing 30 minutes of exercise a day i would like to see this trend it grew like this trend upwards to improve cardio fitness and it advises you the only thing apple will ever do to advise you is to just have the build paragraph at the end of every metric explaining what it is and what you can do to get better uh so it just says to more challenging more frequent cardio just trying and just trying harder so okay just get good so so i did this is so i did this and uh sure enough within not within but after uh say three or four weeks i went from low to below average so i'm very proud to say i'm below average cardio fitness now um but i don't feel all right so like i feel like i can run more i don't think i ever run really so i can certainly run more just because i'm actually running but so i don't know how measurable that is um but i can certainly run for a little bit longer than before i think see that's that's the equivalent of me having the burger sure but seeing the trend in the health app i don't know what that means right uh because you know i'm still doing 30 minutes of exercise i've been doing that since 2015 right but now seeing that this means cardio fitness has improved yeah uh means and now what it makes me want to do is i'm certainly i have the step goal and then cardio exercise is part of exercise but once or twice a week i have to do some quote serious cardio uh and the watch tells me when it's serious during the exercise with the zones and right the that stuff that has been in my watch the entire time and now it's it's helping me so this is the thing i'm happy about but see i had to like i feel like this is like more advanced stuff it this is a little bit this like level two in my fitness journey i'm still very thrilled about level one like i'm still just happy to count calories and for the deficit to mean i'm losing a little bit away um but like fitness now is i suppose another topic for but like fitness like exercise the cardio fitness is a thing that i think i don't know what other device what's needed to measure that because it could be the blood oxygen thing it could be other stuff uh but since it was only after the cv4 i don't know um and it's possible that i mean since v02 max is literally oxygen also it's possible that the my above average health was inaccurate because my watch couldn't measure blood oxygen at the time but i will say i appreciate specifically the apple watch for this because i think i mean it's a lot a lot of it is faith um because i don't know i don't i mean i did uh the treadmill stress test for some physical exam and it showed that i was healthy but v02 max was not among the metrics right you know but my watch telling me though that my health is better after i have some other physical literal evidence that tells me that it is better uh i apple for that that's pretty cool like do you think next year they'll come out with a new watch it'll have a v02 pro max that's it for you chose for thank you everyone it's their fault for common things this it's that's it's their fault v02 pro max so maybe series four is v02 mini like mini yeah yeah well i think the u.s apple watch is v02 mini right now uh yeah users stuck in america with your weird patent system or less profitable companies trying to get paid from apple oh my god well in general congratulations i'm so proud of you thank you so much it means a lot really keep you know keep it up thank you yeah let's let's hope so journey is long the journey is long that's the idea yeah yeah i'd like to still be around it uh i will say that like the the tech part of my brain uh the fan of the watch which i just spent 60 minutes saying i know understand his value but now it's like there's a part of me that wants to reward myself with a better apple watch when it comes out this year not even if it's so clear to me that i don't need it because this is everything i need you know but like maybe i should get the ultra because it won't die after 18 hours but that's just that's just that i think yes you chose boardly so i think so i i'll okay very very quick six months review of the apple watch series nine yes i feel like i purchased a new battery and more ram for my apple watch series five and they rewarded me by having almost every third party developer stop making apple watch apps uh that's been my experience so far yeah you're right though like that's that's the difference like it's you know um i don't like any of the new watch faces except for the snoopy app which is excellent um but i don't use it all that much like i i'll put the snoopy watch face on when like i'm going out and i'm not going to be using my watch too much but i kind of want to see people have people see the snoopy watch face because it's it's very delightful right right but i really hate this like scroll up to see little widgets thing that sucks um the double tap feature with the finger is the most useless ui input that apple has ever made um it doesn't nothing because it most of the time when i do when i'm like oh i'm actually doing this for a second i'm just gonna tap this most of the time the little animation pops up and it gives you it shakes it shakes its head at you and it's like nope not gonna do anything for you right now oh no like that stinks and i hate that they got rid of the like swipe left and right to change your watch face yeah i i was surprised about that like i someone complained and then they said they were gonna bring it back and it's april and it's not bad you know no it sucks because i really i before before watch os 10 i had sort of set up several watch faces with the idea that i'm just quickly swiping swiping swiping back and forth that was really useful to me and now this like you have to hold down the watch face then swipe then select it garbage hate it piss poor os update and i hate that apple pissed off developers enough that they were just like look at my gap watch apps for you anymore right so i i actually feel like if you bought the series five in like 2020 or whatever it came out or 2019 that year there was like 10 times more apps for the apple watch than there are today you know yeah so and like that like and they've added some sensors like the apple watch six seven eight nine they added stuff to each one and the battery is great and there's more ram in it so it's faster but it like it doesn't do as much no it doesn't it doesn't it sucks it sucks like that is lousy like that's like i don't know why that isn't in like people's reviews of this app like it it's actively doing fewer things right as a computer than it could right and it's like it's hard not to blame anyone else but apples a hundred percent apples fault because they you think you think yeah anyone is it's a hundred percent it's one hundred percent apples fault like like like it's here's a stupid thing but like facebook messenger used to be an apple in the watch and now they're not and that's that's not facebook's fault that's a hundred percent apples fault that they made developing for the app for the watch annoying enough that developers pulled out right yeah or or they sourd relationship with developers so they pulled out like one that's apples fault yeah yeah no you're right yeah it's someone was complaining about a friend who i was complaining about an ipad that worked perfectly fine but now can't do anything because it can't uh you can't download software beyond like iOS 12 or something sure and the apple fan me was like yeah but oh i know what that's fault that Netflix won't make you know i mean Netflix is the one that didn't make one that still works with iOS 12 right not apple right but uh you know i didn't say any of this this is just the the biases i have in me but you're right it's a thousand percent apples fault yeah that's it's they're it's both active and in like unconscious decisions that apple makes that leads to the stuff but the way they operate nothing is not active right they are you know they're like their size and their amount of money yeah it's oh i mean if you were to ask apple like oh why it doesn't my ipad run Netflix anymore it's only six years old they would go it's a six-year-old iPad but i knew it mhm mhm that's what they say that's an active decision yeah right yeah right so they're not making it obsolete yeah they're allowing you know so no i actually have like six years i think six-year-old ipads still work pretty good though i don't know he might be older than that this is like a thin year old ipad but yeah hardware was it was perfectly fine sure yeah there's nothing broken about it yeah yeah no even the battery was still alive like i was right right it just couldn't do anything else right tell them to put Linux on it well they're not the kind of people who would know so i think one day you either become the kind of person who just buys a new ipad every four years or you start putting Linux on your stuff right one or the other yeah i know i used to think nobody even put Linux on it i thought there's a there's a kind of person i thought i'd never be but now i'm not gonna say that anymore now you might start putting Linux on things who knows i mean i have one of these things now oh yeah we can talk about that definitely that's a real conversation yeah all right cool i will see you next time then i'll see you next time sauyaner thank you for this appreciate it good chatting with you bye