My Technology

Fitness technology has come a long way since the dawn of the digital waterproof watch.
I have always been technically inclined and jumped at the opportunity to bring technology into my gym workouts.

It's been a long known fact that professional athletes and those serious about sport and training do so with the aid of a heart rate monitor. I researched a lot of the available models out there and have found this neat little model called the Polar WM41.



What makes the WM41 better than your standard heart rate monitor are it's Weight Management functions. It can track your weight, food\calorie intake and even the number of calories you burn in your workouts. It even plans your diet according to your weight loss targets and automatically adjusts itself based on your performance. All of this on top of the regular heart rate monitor functions like training zones and alarms.


In addition to my WM41, I'm going to be using GymTechnik. GymTechnik is an application interface that runs on my Blackberry Bold 9000. It is designed to be a sort of digital personal trainer which keeps track of the exercises and workouts I have scheduled and performed, as well as the weights used and frequency of the workouts.



It has handy stuff like images showing you the specific workouts you should be doing as well as functions to record and graph your weight and fat loss over a period of time.

I'm still pretty new to using this application but will soon break into some of the more advanced functions like customized exercise design; for now I'll just be sticking to the pre-programmed workouts.

Probably the most basic yet important pieces of technology I am using is a Soehnle digital bathroom scale.



This tool gives me my Weight, Body Fat %, Water % and Muscle % all in a quick 10 second reading of my bare feet. This helps as I can maintain a healthy level of hydration as well as not getting freaked out by muscle gains being mistaken for fat gains. I will be using these scales throughout my mission, accurately recording my progress toward losing 20kg.

First Post - Introduction

I thought that if I was going to do this, I would like to share how I actually did it.

My goal is to lose 20kg of fat from my body by myself, with no hired help from Personal Trainers, Nutritionists, Dieticians, or Doctors; I am going to do this all by myself.

I am approx 101.7kg (175cm tall) at the time of starting this blog. I know it's not morbidly obese, but fat enough to not be able to fit into the clothes I'd like to wear, fat enough to stem a few male pregnancy jokes and fat enough to make budget airline seats slightly uncomfortable.

Being fat does have it's advantages at times...take water slides for example: Fat guys on water slides = insanely fast speed. You simply haven't gone down a water slide properly until you have shared a tube with a fat guy. Also in 3rd world countries, being fat is a sign of wealth and prosperity - a lot of the time it's the biggest fattest guy who gets the most attention from female suitors.

Though it's okay for me to be a bit chubby I feel that I am through with my time being fat; approaching the age of 27 I should do what I can to get into shape before father time takes it's toll on my body making this task harder as I get older.

Throughout the course of this blog I will post regular and irregular updates outlining my weight loss methods spanning such topics as Workouts, Diet\Nutrition and Technology's role in assisting with my goal.