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

I’ve been attending the Interactive portion of the South By Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. I attended a Core Conversation session called: Reduce MySpace Between Waist & Thighs So Wiki Live Longer. It was about using technology to be active. It got off to a rocky start, but ended strong. Here are my notes:

David Eckoff President, Revolutionary Ventures
Biray Alsac Health/Fitness Educator, FITTmaxx Institute

David Eckoff:

So many of us are plugged in all the time. Unfortunately, that comes at the expense of fitness and health. We’re not going to talk about theory.

Twitter: Follow DavidEckoff

Biray Alsac:

Biray is pronounced BEEReye.

She has worked on exergaming. It’s not just to do exercise, but the motivation is important as well.

How inactive are we as a country? She’s trying to scare us with all the CDC findings about obesity. HELLO! We came to this session for a REASON! I think we ALL agree that being fat is BAD!

Exercise 30 minutes a day. We all know this, yet 51% of the US does not move.

We tend to blame technology on that. Why aren’t we doing it?

David Eckoff: How can we use technology to its advantages?

Biray Alsac:

Stop calling it exercise. She brings up the OLD cliche of taking the stairs instead of the elevator.

Theory of Change: Precontemplation, Contemplation, Preparation, Action, Maintenance

Most technology focuses on precontemplation, contemplation and preparation stages.

She just stole the Weight Watchers speech from two weeks ago.

If you’re not an exerciser, you’re not around people who like to exercise.

Technologies that are good for exercising:

Gyminee.com You can track your workouts online. There are TONS of these kinds of websites and each one is different. Some are very social. Some are focused on athletic events like triathlons. With Gyminee: every time you complete a workout, it will cross link to Twitter. Then people can look at your workouts and see what you did. It spreads your conversation about exercise. It’s important to get people to start talking about being active.

MapMyRun will map your routes.

Fitizens Fitness professionals can hook up with the enthusiasts.

Exercise Friends Find a workout buddy

EC-Fit You put your workout schedule and it will call you or text you to remind you to workout. Or after your workout asking if you completed your workout. (Sorry, couldn’t find the link to this one and she didn’t have any visuals to give me a clue.)

Stickk.com You put out a contract on yourself and you put money down if you don’t do the goal. Not just for fitness.

WalkerTracker.com Works with your pedometer and posts a widget on your blog that counts your steps.

These all send a message that say “I’m doing something about being active.”

Twitter: Follow Befitt

Food Tracking:

Daily Plate

Utterli.com phone podcasting

Posting pictures of all your food and knowing everyone is going to see it, then you’re make different decisions about what you’re going to eat.

David Eckoff: If the tools make it convenient, then I’m more likely to do it.

Biray Alsac:

Fitness Podcasts: Nutrition Diva Podcast, Cardio Coach, Gymp3, Pod Fitness

Gadgets: Nike Plus, Heart Rate Monitor, Body Bugg

Twitter Apps: TWYE: Tweet What You Eat, Food Feed Twitter: @having a banana, Twit To Fit, Twittercise

David Eckoff: It’s good to be plugged in to people who are into this. It will be motivating. Surround yourself with people who are active and fit. Raise the standard of your peer group. You’ll become like your peer group.

Biray Alsac: Second Life There is a huge fitness community in Second Life. The have virtual classes where you can spin on your exercise bike on Second Life with their VOIP.

David Eckoff: We are in the first generation of exergaming. By the time the second and third gen of exergaming comes out, it will be so awesome.

Biray Alsac:

Wii Fit is a gateway game. It’s a stepping stone to REAL fitness.

100 Fabulous iPhone apps for health and fitness

David Eckoff:

Non Tech Things That I Do

Get Leverage: Associate pleasure with working out. Associate massive pain without working out. Ghost of the future. Imagine yourself at age 75 without muscle mass. Pleasure with working out. Put yourself through a mental exercise. Focus on what I’m grateful for. Flood yourself with good feelings while you’re working out. Trick your body to feeling good with the workout. It’s not intellectual. You need to actually FEEL it.

Schedule it: I schedule it in the morning because if I don’t do it in the morning, I won’t do it. Schedule it like a meeting. Protect that time.

Hydrostatic Body Composition Analysis: Body composition measurement. It cost about $40. I do it every six months.

Biray Alsac: Go to your local university and see if they have grad students who are willing to do this to you.

David Eckoff:

Self Identity: How do you see yourself? Think of yourself as an athlete. The most powerful force within the human body is to remain consistent with how we see ourselves.

Static Contraction Training: Who has enough time for anything? Least amount of time, most amount of results. Tony Robbins strength training.

Biray Alsac: We’re not doing enough. We’re going to pay for it in our health care. We’ll have to pay for it in the end. Think about the process of being active.

Eventually, she’ll post a complete list of online tools here:

• Be Fit With Biray | Tools

One of the founders of a new website called Nutritter, was at the session. He gave me two invites to the Alpha release. If you would like to try it out, contact me.