Gadget overdrive

September 23, 2021

I’ve been absent recently, team, but I will soon make up for it, with loads of new silly stories of me trying get healthy and lose weight and not to lose my mind in the process LOL.   By the time you get to this message – I’ve been filling the void with my past diary drafts – so by now it’s just a catch-up, and you probably haven’t felt the gap.  I have. Only the date at the top is likely to give away the break between the posts.

I’m writing now, because I have something to write about again.  Well, that and I finally have some time to keep up with myself and exercise, after work eased off a tad, and my life settled again. No more house moves, tell you that.

Anyway, the latest health subject that’s been on my mind – smart-tech.  So, until fairly recently I had a FitBit, one of those 1st/2nd generation gadgets, that only ever counted a step-count.  That worked fine for me then, and certainly trying to get to my 14k steps a day, was fun – or not at times.

Well, the fit-bit broke, as these things have a habit of doing.  I wanted to replace it with a similar one of simple functionality, only to read through some blogs that FitBit as a company has a tendency of disconnecting their older models, so one cannot get an update any more, things stop working, and thus you’re forced to buy a new one.  Money spinner – nothing made to last, everything made to make more money.  No wonder the world is drowning in its own garbage – literally.  Digressing to environmental issues – but what do you expect from a tree-hugger like me.

So, whether it was a smart decision or not – I’ve branched out from a FitBit recently to – yes, I’ve sold out to yet another unscrupulous corporate giant, that’s probably state sponsored and monitoring my every move – I’ve sold out to Huawei.  But, I don’t care. I’ve nothing to hide. My new toy is a watch – with a step-counter, with a stress counter, with F…K…. what else counter.

It has certainly been interesting using the new gadget over the last couple of weeks.  Nearly gave myself a heart-attack thinking I’m having a heart-attack, by monitoring my heart-rate and not understanding anything about it.  Google search soon fixed that.  Who knew one’s heart-beat can be 20%-30% slower during sleep.  Well, I didn’t. I mean why would I even I didn’t pay attention in biology in school, and had no interest in my personal health until recently.

It’s the stress-measuring element that got me really interested though.  Not sure exactly how accurate these things are, but the way I figure, even if it’s not 100% or 90% accurate – it’s still a good indicator of how one is doing – and boy my stress levels, daily through the roof.  I…… was shocked.  I have to admit it.  I consider myself to be a fairly relaxed, chilled out person, generally unbothered.  Apparently my body thinks otherwise.

Apparently the only time my body organism is anywhere near relaxed / unstressed – is during sleep.  And even then, it’s not really relaxed.  

I suspect, each one of these gadgets may work slightly differently – but mine has 4 levels of stress:

• Relaxed
• Normal
• Medium
• High

I haven’t measured in the Relaxed parameters since I got the watch.  In fact, stats show that I’ve spent 31% in High level parameters, 69% in Medium level parameters – and whatever there was in Medium (and 0 in relaxed), has been dwarfed by the higher levels of stress.  Whilst I think we all appreciate some level of stress and pressure is good for us – this, well this has me worried and surprised. I mean I was taking the measures during a week’s holiday, and even then the numbers were high. 

This has me thinking – can I do something – no idea what – to bring down my level of stress.  I don’t want to give myself a coronary or stroke. I think as well as a challenge to get to my next weight goal – more on that in future updates, eek – my next challenge will be to reach Relaxed stressed parameters, at least once for now.

I suspect I might be raising my stress levels in a meantime, just to get them really low.  LOL

Actually not funny, but what must I do, to get complete relaxation state.

Oooh, maybe that’s that cue for a spa day………………