Warren Cammack

When I was about 15 I had a notebook that I would use when training, writing down the weight and how many reps of each exercise I could do. This still happens today and in the gym I still see a number of people with the sheets their trainers have given them and they do what I did 15 years ago.

Times however have changed and there are a number of gadgets and apps that make the measurement of health and wellbeing much simpler and much more accurate than before.

In 2005 I started using a Polar Heart Rate Monitor  to see how hard I could push my body when training – using the limit alerts to tell me when to speed up (and slow down) took the ability to know  how hard I was training to another level. The technology even allowed you to put the watch onto a fat USB pad and transfer the data to my PC for further analysis – the start of my journey into the quantified self.

In 2009 I started using an app called Endomondo (World of Endorphins!) and it took measurement to a whole new level – every run could be broken down to each step’s elevation and pace. As the app evolved it talked to my heart rate monitor and a “coach” could tell me how I was going compared to my last run and whether I was on track to hit my desired fitness level.

In 2010 I took part in my first Global Corporate Challenge (GCC) which is a great initiative to get people in corporates moving and helping a great charitable cause. From a QS perspective the GCC requires the participant to wear a pedometer for three months and as part of a team ensure that they take enough steps to walk around the world in that time. This was the first time that the competitive element of movement and measurement kicked in for me as I could see a leaderboard of how the team were going and this pushed me to rev my teammates up as well as looking for opportunities to maximise the number of steps each day. In 2011 I was lucky enough to be in Beijing during the GCC and took the opportunity of a free day in the city to do some sight-seeing but instead of using public transport I decided to walk everywhere – I covered 40km that day. My feet were bleeding at the end of it but this didn’t matter as I managed to exceed 50,000 steps that day.

jawbone-up

In late 2011 the Jawbone UP was released and shortly followed by the  Nike Fuel band was launched and I was intrigued by the concept of wearing something that was able to measure so much more and be permanently part of you. As Nike had the horrible reputation of child labour I leant towards the UP however within months the reports of its instability and failure to maintain charge started to hit the Internet. I was hopeful they would sort out the problems and signed up to the wait list to buy one when the 2.0 version was released. This took nearly a year and despite signing on to the wait list I never received an email to buy one (note to self: if a company can’t follow-up with prospects who want to buy their product then avoid them like the plague!).

I was in San Francisco in early 2013 and the UP 2.0 was yet to be released in Australia so I bought one for myself and my significant other. Wearing it and loading the app on my iPhone immediately brought back the feeling of being part of the GCC and the need to maximise my steps each day became part of my routine. In addition the measurement of sleep duration and quality gave a whole new way of looking at health. Unfortunately I’ve subsequently had problems with the UP and having returned it about three months after buying it (and waiting 2 months for a replacement) it’s again just died and I’m not sure if I’ll bother using it again or switch to something slightly more reliable.

23andMe

About three months ago I became interested in looking at the genetic side of health and came across 23andme, a US company who have opened up genetic testing to the masses and enabled an understanding of how who we are will determine what we will be in the future. It’s a slightly scary concept particularly if there’s something nasty predicted – Pandora’s box anyone? Unfortunately 23andme (and others) are not allowed to provide interpretations of the data due to FDA regulations however there are a number of resources on the web that will enable you to take the raw data and load it into something that will give you the insights you’re looking for.

About the same time I went to a conference (see Wired for Wonder in earlier posts) that made me think more about how happiness relates to health and productivity so I started measuring how happy my team were. I already capture a lot of data about how productive they are and now that I have a reasonable sample size I will crunch the numbers and generate the insights to determine what we need to do differently (or not change a thing). We’re planning to roll out a health and wellbeing programme across a much broader group in the coming weeks so it will be great to obtain a greater sample size and understand how happiness affects a broader group. It was very interesting to hear from Creel Price how he measured the happiness of his company each day via a simple question every time they logged on to their computers in the morning.

So onto 2014 – I’m training for an ultra marathon in May and I’m looking for every way to make myself as likely to finish as possible. One of the things I need to do is drop some weight – I’m about 8kgs off my peak weight and when you’re running 50KM every extra kilo counts! I’ve been using an app called Lift for about 4 months which has been a great way of embedding good habits and yesterday they launched Quantified Diets. This is a crowd sourced scientific study to determine which diet will help to lose the most weight. I’ve opted for the sleep diet…let’s see how we go!

The other QS method I’ve signed up to use is ubiome which measures the microbiome in your body – this can have a massive impact on any number of things from how you absorb vitamins to your mood. I’ve only just ordered the kit so will have to provide an update once I’ve sent the sample back and obtained the results.

Finally, there are a whole load of other companies that provide blood analysis – one of the more popular ones is insider tracker, send them a sample of your blood and they’ll send you a load of marker results that enable you to determine what foods work best for your nutrition and recovery as well as more fundamental insights such as whether you are just pushing it too hard.

Not sure I’m ready for the multiple blood tests just yet but there’s a whole load of data that I’ll have in the next month that will help to make sure I perform as well as I can in the ultra marathon in May – and hey, if I survive that then I may look into the other tests to see how I can make sure my quality of life when I hit 100 is as good as it is now!