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Go wireless for weight loss 2013-05-29 Author: Richard Singleton |
By now our regular readers will know that I’m a big technology nerd. My son would place the emphasis on the words big and nerd. In that order, I’m sure. Nerd? Okay. I’m not Star Trek-certified, but love a good “Trouble with Tribbles” moment. I don’t have the force with me, though Yoda was really one cool little green dude. Big? I could stand to lose a pound or 50 for sure!
I might have found help for both feeding my technology hunger and addressing my need for slowing down the warp-speed gut. First, the tech stuff. I’m the giddy owner of the latest and greatest toy coming out of the Samsung labs. The GALAXY S4 rests just inches away as I pound away on my aging keyboard and as I stare at what, up to yesterday, I thought was a dazzling desktop monitor. It’s the first time in my tech-loving-timeline that I’ve actually wished my phone screen would replace my computer screen. She’s a beaut!
Well, there’s that and the 1.9 Ghz Qualcomm quad-core Snapdragon processor, the 2 gigs of RAM and the 64 gigs of expandable storage so I can fatten up this phone with everything from Rocky Mountain vacation pics, to HD movies (I can neither confirm nor deny that there will be a “chick flick” or three on there) and a wide assortment of eclectic music. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, so I’ll just leave it at that.
I’m going to be doing a lot of gazing at my lovely 5” Full HD Super AMOLED display in the coming weeks. So, the only thing that’s going to get more bloated than my phone’s SD card is my aforementioned waistline! What an irony! The lighter and faster my phone becomes, the heavier and slower I become. I think it’s an unexplored law of physics or something – a distant and far more lassitudinous cousin of Moore’s Law. My wife would probably dub it Snores Law.
You get the picture. And, yes, I do apologize for that. But, maybe there’s still hope.
You see, my phone’s not just packed with all kinds of hardware bells and whistles. It’s also claiming to want to take me on a journey to better health – “S Health” to be precise. The marketing magicians say this: “The Samsung GALAXY S4 understands how important your health is. It can help you achieve your fitness goals by monitoring your fitness levels during workouts and throughout the day.” Clearly, they haven’t seen the work that’s cut out for them. Oh well, put me in, Coach, I’m ready to play.
Actually, I’ve already been playing that game and I didn’t need a snazzy new phone to play it. Maybe you’ve been playing it, too. Last year I started using the LoseIt app and website. I’m eager to report that yes, I did lose it – my motivation, that is. Some of you are likely using MyFitnessPal, Get Running (Couch to 5K) and the list goes on.
From my research – and by research I pretty much mean what I see from my overly talkative friends on Facebook – a lot of folks out there are using these apps to help move off the couch and into better health. I personally think it’s wonderful.
I’m a pragmatist at heart and if wearing our iPhone, Android or Windows phone on our arms and stuffing a really cool set of Beats by Dre ear buds into our ears gets our caboose off the couch, hey, I’m all in.
It’s summer! The race is on to have a cool gadget to keep the kids from anarchy on road trips and keep the swimsuit shopping trip from having to be prefaced by a trip to the therapist. Increasingly, it seems, we can get those two goals taken care of all wrapped up into one nice, tidy package…for a fee, of course.
There’s a cost to everything. Far more important than the price of your phone upgrade and the amount you’re willing to shell out for headphones that cost more than the gadget they’re plugged into is the value of your family’s health.
Whether we need a shiny gadget to get going or whether it’s just a new set of sneakers and a shocking look in the mirror, there’s no time like the present to try to find ways to use technology to our advantage. What’s to lose? If a novel new gadget to help motivate us to exercise and eat better doesn’t work, I guess it will be just some added gadgetry junk in the trunk…no pun intended, of course.
Richard Singleton, MACE, MAMFC, LPC, is the executive director at STARRY in Round Rock.
