Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

I’ve been gone from WW for about two years, and things have changed a bit. One of the more exciting changes is ActiveLink. It’s a little accelerometer that tracks your daily movement just like BodyBugg, except it’s WAY smaller.

The only reason I was enticed by it was because it promises to make things easier. I don’t have to figure out if my exercise was high, medium or low intensity. I don’t even have to log my workouts. All I have to do is remember to wear the thing all day long and then plug it into my computer at the end of the day.

But does it work with my computer? The stupid box at WW didn’t say what the system requirements are on the outside and I was told that I wouldn’t be able to return it after I plunked down the $40 for it. I couldn’t even find the system requirements online when I went home and looked it up. One member said that it worked on her Mac Mini, so I figured I was safe to use it on my MacBook Air, but there were no guarantees.

The website for ActiveLink, however, DOES tell you the system requirements:

• ActiveLink System Requirements

It just didn’t show up in any Google searches I did. For your benefit, ActiveLink works on both Mac and PC. Here are the minimums that you will need:

I am currently in the assessment stage, so I have no idea how this will work for me. I’ll post updates about whether I like it and whether it’s as easy as they say it is to use.

Update 05-05-13

I’m out of the assessment stage and I have to say that I LOVE ActiveLink! One of the reasons that I left Weight Watchers before was because I didn’t lose very much weight.

• Why I Left Weight Watchers

I went to every WW meeting and I followed the program for a year. My progress was minimal at best. I lost approximately ten pounds in that year, which is better than gaining that same amount, but it was a CONSTANT struggle to even have those minimal results.

Since I followed the program exactly, I was very frustrated that I was only losing minimal amounts of weight. I now know why. I am such a SLUG during the day, that I was over-counting my exercise points. What I would have counted as four points, is only showing up as two points with the ActiveLink because my workday is so sedentary.

I knew it MUST be something to do with exercise because when I didn’t eat my exercise points, I made a lot more progress than when I did. That’s because my calculation for exercise was completely wrong.

Now, I don’t even need to think about it. I just wear the ActiveLink all day long, try to get my butt out of the chair every once and a while and exercise a little harder (or longer) than I used to. I can completely trust the results when I pop my little gadget into my computer every day.

I just wish there was something like this for eating. What if I am UNDER-counting my food? I do my best to be accurate, but that was the case with exercise as well. I wish there was a little gadget that could analyze every morsel of food that I eat and record the points automatically. That would be one less place where I could screw up.