I Have To Be Fit

Sure, not only is diabetes a factor, but I need to lose weight in order to help keep the diabetes under control.  Losing weight and becoming fit.  Seriously?

OK, so after picking myself up I decided that I would make an effort to become more fit.  But what does that really mean?  What do I have to do in order to become fit?  Well, here is where a lot of research goes on, reading articles on fitness, reading information on different types of exercise and taking a look at what I have been doing, or rather not doing, for the past 5/10/20/30 years.

At the beginning I decided that walking was probably the thing for me that was probably most likely to be followed with regard to an exercise pattern.  Why walking as opposed to running?  Less impact on the knees, my right knee in particular.  Considering the "accident" at Universal Studios in 1999 my right knee has been weaker than my left and tends to become inflamed and very sore under stress.  Running would put a lot of stress on the knees and, to be honest, I would feel ridiculous running for, oh, 50 feet and then walking for 500 feet.

But how do I track the walking?  Do I count every step I take during the day and put it into a spreadsheet at night?  Or, considering how techie I seem to seem to be leaning with everything, do I go for a pedometer?  A high tech pedometer?  So I took a look at some of the more popular items:  FitBit, Nike and Jawbone.  Why these three?  Because there are apps associated with all of them.  My criteria were rather simple, but very effective in narrowing down the list:

• if it is to be worn on the wrist, it needs to fit my big wrists
• it needs to have a mobile app associated with it

Simple, but it tossed out the Fitbit Flex and the Nike+ FuelBand and the Jawbone Up as they all rely on being attached to your wrist.  I checked out the maximum size of the various bands and none of them were large enough to fit around my wrist.  All of them were too small by at least half an inch.  So, what did that leave me with?  The Fitbit One  It fit my simplistic criteria and, as an added bonus, it interacts with MyFitnessPal so that my calorie burn throughout the day is transmitted to MyFitnessPal and it tells me if I should be eating more calories or not.

Status for August 9th

• Weight - 353.5 lbs
• Blood Sugar - 9.4 mmol/L