This is Technology Bytes, Episode 7 for April 23rd, 2023.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share my brief insights on an interesting technology.
My name is Joel.
Enjoy, and here we go.
This week I want to talk about the Apple Watch in relation to health.
There’s lots of other things we could talk about with the Apple Watch and too much for one episode.
So this week I just want to focus on how we might use the Apple Watch and how I use the Apple Watch to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
I use the Apple Watch significantly in my life.
I wear it constantly.
There’s really not a time that I do not have an Apple Watch on my wrist.
That may sound a little crazy, but in relationship to health, that is what drives most of why I wear the Apple Watch, but not all.
Let me talk a little bit about how I use the Apple Watch to maintain my health.
One of the first things I started doing was using an app called Water.
I don’t remember the name of the app, but it’s basically an app that tells you to drink water.
I set it up to tell me to drink water every hour for so many hours of the day.
It doesn’t bug me when I’m asleep, obviously.
It only notifies me when I am awake and in the middle of a day, so sometimes between 8am and 8pm.
But it does remind me to drink water.
As we all know, water is a healthy consumption for our bodies and something we need and often don’t get enough of.
The other thing I use it to do is track my calories, mostly in the burning of calories and the daily use of calories.
For the calorie intake, I actually use an app on my phone, but it does talk to my watch, so they do sync up.
But in general, when I’m looking at calories, I’m looking at what I burn through exercise and just normal everyday life.
In the Apple Watch environment, I really use my rings to their full extent.
So I have the stand ring where it just wants you to be in motion at least part of an hour every hour.
Or the exercise ring where you want to get your heart rate up and do some form of exercise.
And then you just have your calorie or your, yeah, the calorie active, calorie burning ring on your watch that just lets you know that you are throughout the day not being sedentary.
And I close every one of those rings every day.
Sunday is an off day, so I turn them down just a little bit.
But I have them fairly high because I want to push my body to be a little bit healthier.
Now the other thing I use it for, obviously tracking exercise, but I also wear it when I sleep.
And it tracks my sleep and that’s a very interesting thing to look at because it kind of gives me an idea of how I slept and when I slept to the best of the sleep environment.
Often I know just because I get up and I may be super tired or I feel very rested, so I kind of get an idea.
But over time I can get some history from the watch by it monitoring me while I am sleeping.
And then in my little world, I have an additional benefit of my insurance company actually paying me real money to stay active.
And so I can earn $3 a day from my insurance company by having at least 20 minutes of intense workout.
And they define that, it’s not super intense.
At least 6 hours of movement where inside an hour I take at least 300 steps in 5 minutes.
And then in another hour, not 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock, it’s actually an hour from when the last set of 300 steps happened.
Then I need to move again, so I need to do that 6 times throughout the day.
And then I need to take, I think either somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 14,000 steps.
And then, so that basically means that I can make roughly $90 a month from my insurance company.
And every quarter then I can make about $270 and they put that money, cash money right into my account.
So my Apple Watch and my exercise and those things actually at the end of the day makes money for me.
So I think if you are interested in health, if you are interested in maintaining some form of health, the one thing the Apple Watch doesn’t do is it doesn’t make me eat the correct calories.
It doesn’t make me do that better.
That’s something I have to do on my own.
Maybe there are some apps I can look at.
But in general, the tracking ability that the Apple Watch has for knowing when you’re in motion, when you’re not, when you’re standing, when you’re sitting and how much time for those certain activities, it can help you be in motion and be a more healthy person just by tracking the activities that you do on a daily basis.
And maybe through the closing of the rings that they show in their health app, challenging you to be a more healthy individual.
If you have the money, sometimes they can be a little expensive depending on what you get.
But you can also get deals through insurance companies and those kind of things.
So you might check into that.
I would suggest that the Apple Watch is a great technology for helping you maintain a healthy lifestyle.
You have been listening to the Technology Bites microcast.
Until next time, continue enjoying your technology.
