Tag: Google Fit

As we roll the calendar forward to 2018, many of us will be looking to the new year as a chance to start living a healthier lifestyle.  In fact, “weight loss” and “exercise” are among the most common new year resolutions that people set for themselves.  It is said that it takes 3 weeks of doing something before it becomes a habit which makes the month of January critical for the success of your goals or resolutions.

For me, living a healthier lifestyle started in June 2009.  At the time was weighed in at 285 lbs (129 kilos) and was making every poor food and exercise decision you could make.  Fast forward to December 2009 and I was 210 lbs.  As of January 1, 2018, I tipped the scales at 199 lbs.  That’s nearly 10 lbs over my ideal weight of 190 lbs but now you know one of my goals for the new year.

Fortunately we live in the future.  There are dozens of apps out there to help you achieve these healthy goals both for Android and for iPhone but like so many things, it is a question of which one to use.  That’s where this article tries to help.  I’ve compiled a list of apps that I use to help me maintain my diet and overall health.  This is by no means an exhaustive list nor am I suggesting that these are the best of the best.  These are the apps that work for me and they have worked a long time in some cases.  Hopefully they will do the same for you.

While there are dozens of health & fitness apps available for Android, Google’s own Google Fit has slowly but steadily been growing up.  The app was very basic in the early days but as Android Wear 2.0 was released earlier this year, the Fit app became far more useful and helpful in tracking not only your fitness goals, but getting injected data from other apps like Sleep for Android and MyFitnessPal.  It also gained things like tracking your heart rate (assuming you have a compatible Android Wear watch) during workouts as well as elevation changes for certain types of workouts like running, biking or skiing.

One of the best features of Google Fit is that you can setup multiple goals within the app, track them, and even have them as a widget on your Home screen on your phone.  It is a feature that often goes unnoticed but it is powerful as you can keep track of virtually any goal you desire to meet your own health and fitness goals.

In this How To I will show you how to create multiple goals within Google Fit and how to add them as a widget to your Home screen.  My assumption is that you have Google Fit installed so if you don’t, go get it from the Play Store before continuing.

Google’s health and activity tracking app, Google Fit, saw a minor update yesterday but it contains a big fix for users.  To be clear, this is not the update that brings a lot of new features to the app to support Android Wear 2.0 devices.  That update is expected once the 2.0 devices get out there, which starts on Friday, February 10th.  So for those of you who have Fit installed, don’t expect to see a lot of changes visually.

The big change is a bug fix that had to do with mileage estimates from the app.  When you were on a walk, run, biking or I’ve found it even in skiing, there were times that the mileage estimates were off.  Sometimes they were off by a little bit, sometimes by a lot.  This update appears to address those issues based on an evening walk I made last night after updating.

Sleep is a critical part of any healthy lifestyle.  Getting the proper amount of restful sleep not only helps with your psychological wellness but also has other health benefits when it comes to general well being and fitness.  Sadly, most Americas struggle to get the proper amount of sleep each night or have poor quality of sleep.  Sleep as Android is an app that allows you to measure your sleep, the quality of that sleep, and integrate that data with apps like Google Fit.  By having the app running on your phone next to you as you sleep, it will track your sleep cycles, see trends and even record noises as you sleep to see if you are snoring or, worse, suffering from Sleep Apnea.

Sleep as Android, however, is so much more.  It can serve as your alarm clock, can play soothing sounds to help you relax and get to sleep and gently wake you up in the morning.  It is an all-in-one app for your sleeping.  I’ve been using the app since the beginning of 2017 as I am focusing on making sure I get the right amount of sleep each day.  It has been an eye opening app for me and has become a daily part of my life as I try to live a healthy – and rested – lifestyle.  Here’s my review.

Google Fit, Google’s fitness tracking app, has received a major update that brings an all-new user experience.  For all intents and purposes, the whole app looks completely new with far more detail on the main page of the app along with more granular historical data.  Gone is the large circular indicator of steps and exercise and replacing it is a cleaner UI with your active minutes, distance, calories burned and steps across the top of the page while more detailed information is found in sections below.  This information not only shows you which days of the week you hit your step count goal, but also your activity goal and a clean, easy-to-read graph of your weight with a trend line.