Time to cop to it in public- I gained a lot of weight while living up in the Bay Area.  Part of the root cause was simply taking advantage of the amazing San Francisco restaurants/food trucks/eateries, and another large part being the reduced amount of daily activity I engaged in after fast-tracking myself into the technorati circle. Although I worked from home a few days a week, it usually meant work spilled into home more than home was enhanced by a ‘on-location’ work environment, and I ended up working a LOT more than when I’d just keep office hours downtown.  A lot is said about the convenience of telecommuting and decentralized workplaces, but all I can really say from my experience with them is that:

a) Working globally at Silicon Valley pace will rapidly erode your available workout/activity time across a 24-hour span!
b) The long hours at a keyboard encourages your body to accumulate fat just as rapidly without a strong, bulletproof exercise regimen (my biggest problem).

Personally, these two points combined with my newfound urban environment to dissuade me from the regular outdoor exercise I used to get when working down here in Carpinteria last time (for MetaCreations in the mid-to-tail 90’s). Gyms have never appealed to me as the social aspect of exercise isn’t my bag, and if I can’t just go run/bike/etc out of my front door on real dirt – anything but pavement – then I’ll rapidly lose the motivation to move my butt.  Knowing we’d be moving back to Carpinteria – and I would be nearly guaranteed a healthier life just because of the context – I did some research into how a geek like me could ante-up the process a bit and make it more efficient.  Surprise!  Between hardware, software and the marriage of the two, getting (and staying) healthy is incredibly wired these days.   Here’s what I’m using today to help me keep that extra 25 pounds off.

Hardware

My choice: After looking over several monitoring options from the vanilla digital pedometers to the Nike+ Fuel Band and a whole range of biometric monitors that didn’t really apply, I ended up purchasing the Fitbit Ultra tracker, and it’s corresponding Fitbit Aria digital scale.   Reasons?  They covered not just measuring my general level of activity day-to-day but did it in metrics that made sense – calories, inches, pounds, et al (what the hell does a ‘Fuel Point’ mean anyway, Nike?).  I can track not just movement time, but my caloric intake, weight, body measurements, specific activities and rationalize them all daily – and both are network-savvy so all I have to do is use them and in return they sync seamlessly behind the scenes and I now have beautiful graphs I can check out online at fitbit.com to measure my progress.  Without opening Excel.  Downside- the pair cost in the $250 range together, but they work so well and simply I’m hooked and haven’t missed a measurement/update in over 6 weeks now.

The Nike Fuel + band, at least for me, was a bit odd.  It measured your progress/activity in a rather obscure metric – Nike ‘Fuel Points’ – which may be handy within the Nike world but didn’t really help me track the actuals, and/or use the metrics with other systems to measure, predict and improve my progress.  However, I’ll admit- Fuel Points are a dramatically simplified way to look at this which are a lot more interesting if you’re being social about your workouts and simply want motivation and challenge from your friends without sharing all the REAL statistics.   I’m more for the plain truth, frankly.  But my wife will likely gravitate towards the Fuel Band for exactly this reason- she doesn’t care about the details, just the generals.  Which the Fuel band does quite well, and if that’s your inclination, it may be a better choice.

I used to have a good Polar heart-rate monitor, but it became the odd-man-out once I switched to the Fitbit and tracking my stats got so easy.  With everything else saved by the Fitbit hardware into my fitbit.com account, there wasn’t even an easy way to track heart rates over the span of a workout, and I was just pulling the average BPM into a separate Excel spreadsheet… which lasted about a week until I gave up and stopped entering data entirely.   I’m currently evaluating a good HRM to use with this system, and it’s probably going to be the Polar H7 low-power Bluetooth monitor, which works fantastically with Runkeeper.com (more on that in Software below).

Software

There are only two to rule them all now on my iPhone 4S, Fitbit and Runkeeper.com.  I believe Android apps are also available for each, FWIW.   Alas, both apps are absolutely necessary for my needs as I’ve not found a good way to share data between the two, only one-way – Fitbit data is tracked and synced over on Runkeeper.com, but not in reverse.   I love Fitbit’s graphs on my stats/intake/etc, but Runkeeper is a better exercise tracker over time (as I ride a mountain bike and run as my primary sources of cardio) and keeps great maps showing my routes/paces/etc.  If it ever becomes possible for Runkeeper.com to share it’s exercise data back to Fitbit.com then I won’t have to track both separately – but currently I need to duplicate my exercise data back into Fitbit in order for the exercise to be graphed alongside my stats/measurements (which to me is critical).  Particularly as heart rate – a biometric I’d prefer tracked in Fitbit – is only available in Runkeeper with a supported heart rate monitor – and one of the most critical metrics for health/exercise effectivity in my opinion.

Anyway, that’s what I’m doing to amp up my fitness now that I’m back in the land of trails and big waves and not quite as tied to a desk 24-7-365.  How are you using todays digital tools to help keep you fit?   I’d love to hear some other stories from the trenches and compare notes – please leave a ping below if you’re so inclined.