How can technology help me get healthy?

big Yeah. Of course that's you know, it's the beginning of the year or early in the year, so some people are trying to uh follow through with that new year's resolution and pounds. Yeah, and uh and of course we're we cover text stuff obviously. Um. One of the interesting things about technology isn't supposed to make our lives easier, but one of the drawbacks is that by making our lives easier, we tend to adopt a more sedentary lifestyle.

I can't imagine what you would mean. You know, I'm comfortable sitting at my desk for eight hours a day staring at the monitor and then going home and playing four or five hours. If we first unleashed It's funny you had mentioned the Wei. Yeah, yeah, that we actually Nintendo is really good about about tackling this problem. They you know, when they designed the Wei, they came up with an idea that they wanted to, uh, to target

this to sort of non traditional gaming communities. When you think about video gamers, you often think about those guys who have the headsets on with the microphone up and they've got the control in their hands. They're leaning forward and they're yelling obscenities into the mic as they gunned down their friends online. And I mean, I know that's how I am. But that would be the Xbox Crew.

That would be the Xbox Crew, and I you know what represent But uh, Nintendo decided what they wanted to do was stop competing with those guys and to create a system that appealed to a broader audience. And so that's wherein the we came out. They were like, you know what, we want to concentrate on gameplay. We're not concerned with being the most graphically advanced. We're not concerned with having the best sound. Uh you know, we don't care so much about all of those kind of elements.

We want to make a system that's fun for everyone. To play, whether they have been playing video games since they were three or if they're seven years old and had never played a video game before. And they were very successful with the Wii. In fact, it's still hard to find a we sometimes. I mean you go to these sometimes. Yeah, well once in a while you'll run

across one, but that's they're pretty rare. Well, they came up with another great idea, which was this wonderful little pad called the we Fit, and it's a it's a combination of this, um, this this pad, what's really kind of a console most uh that hooks up to your we UM that has sensors in it, uh and some exercise software and um and boy did that take off off. As a matter of fact, I own we Fit, so

yes it you, Yes, I do. It's tell me that the balance board is pretty cool because, um, when you unwrap it and it requires its own set of batteries and it sinks with the we using Bluetooth. Um and uh, it's really kind of funny because what I didn't realize when I first, you know, pulled it out of the box and set it up, it's got a scale at it, which you know, then one of the very first things you do and we fit is you, you know, basically put yourself in the game. You know, say this is me,

and it says, well, you know how tall are you? Well, you know what kind of clothes are you wearing? Um? And then it you know, it takes your weight and uh it says well, and it gives you read out of how heavy you are. And then it gives you an idea of how you know your b m I, which is the body mass index, which is theoretically, uh reasonable facsimile of how healthy you are based on your weight. And it also will make your me pudgy if you

happen to be carrying a few extra pounds. And we'll also make your very small children worry about their weight, as I'm finding out from personal experience, because I'm not sure that they took young children into uh consideration, because you know, you know any well, yeah, well let's just say that that Mimi could substitute as a bowling ball. So, um, that's not that violate. You're turning violent violent, It's not that bad. I'm not that out of shape, but I'm

carrying around a few extra pounds. Uh, And um, you know I haven't even created one on my we yet because my wife and I are actually in the process of converting our guest room into a digital exercise room. Really yeah, and the we Fit is playing a major role in that, in that uh plan. And so we got we got a new plasma TV and we got a the weef has a small plasma TV. We didn't go out crazy. Actually I'm sorry, it was an l c D. We couldn't afford the plasma. We went with

the l c D TV. Yeah yeah, um, so anyways, an HDTV of any comming. It's pretty. And so we got the We've got that. We've got the we Fit, and then we picked up an extra Xbox, the old Xbox, not the three sixty, so that we could hook up and blow people away. No, no, we we have the Dance Dance Revolution game pad as well, so it gets you moving exactly. So you know that the we Fit really is was designed specifically from the ground up as a game and system that would allow you to exercise

and practice healthy habits. Um it's really you know, it's just like any kind of exercise regiment. It's just part of what you need to be doing in order to have a healthy lifestyle. No, one should ever expect technology to solve all their problems. It's going to take a lot of work on your end to do it as well. That's true. I mean, we Fit has a pretty decent selection of yoga um in the game UM, which really doesn't require you to you know, do a whole lot.

You do the yoga poses, which is very good, you know, but so that's one part of it. And then it's got some other things too where you can work on your balance and posture. UM. All kinds of games like walking on a tight rope or trying to get a marble in a hole sort of like in that the old Marble game where you had yeah or um, the kind that the physical game where you had the two different dimensions and you're trying to, uh to make the ball roll down through the maze and into the hole

where you actually part. Yeah, I didn't go an a long sorry um and uh, essentially you have to lean a certain direction and it does help you with your balance. But there there's a long distance running game and uh, okay, let's be honest, you're basically jogging in place, UM and it's not like you are going out and running a ten k in real life or you know, or anything like that. But again, sort of like D d R. You do get up, you do get moving, maybe get the heart rate up a little bit, right, So I

mean we're not talking. Yes, you don't get your heart rate up a little bit, it's not bad. And uh and they also have strength training as well. True, that's done a little bit of that as well, not that you could tell, but um so yeah, So going back to the Dance Dance Revolution, now that that was a game that was just sort of designed. It is this fun interface where you know, you you follow the instructions on the screen and try and you know, make sure that you hit the pad in the right spot at

the right time the rhythm game. Um, but they also have an exercise mode where it keeps track of how many calories you're theoretically burning, assuming you're doing everything that the screen is telling you to do and not just sitting on the ground and hitting the pad while the arrows come up. But um, the issue there is, you know, do you get your heart rate up high enough and sustain it long enough for it to be considered aerobic exercise And a lot of people say not really, Um,

it's better than sitting still. Don't get me wrong. You know, if if you're gonna be sitting still instead, it's better than nothing, But it's it doesn't replace real exercise or you know, or you know, like jogging or something like that. UM. And some people will tell me, hey, you know, the way I play Dance Dance Revolution, my heart rate gets racing,

and that that could be true. I'm talking about kind of generalities here, UM, so that those are like, you know, you can actually use video games to help you stay healthy or even get in shape. But that's not the only tech we can talk about, you know. Actually, UM, it's not even the only WE game. Uh. We Fit It's not sorry, not Dance Dance Revolution. We Fit is not even the only WE software that helps you with

or attempts to help you with your fitness level. UM would be soft has a whole series of might fill in the blank hare coach um. You know, they have my word code, my Spanish coach UM, but for for the Wei, they have my fitness coach UM and it's got a similar kind of feel to it. UM. It helps you work on weight loss, upper body, lower body strength, your flexibility, cardio fitness, and it offers um, different kinds of activities like yoga, pilates, kickboxing, UM, strength training, and

a weight loss routine. And they even have one for the Nintendo DS called My Weight Loss Coach and it even works with It comes with the pedometer to get you walking and uh basic based on your nutrition and your physical activity. It kind of helps you. It kind of gives you some guidance trying to to work on weight loss. Right it becomes a virtual personal trainer. Really yeah yeah, and um, that actually reminds me of another

product that you mentioned to me. And Uh, I don't know if you've had a lot of time to to look it up, but the body bug remember that. I do remember that. Yeah, I haven't had chance to look at it at all. I heard what it's supposed to do, and I was immediately curious and a little skeptical. Well I can understand why when I actually went to the site to look at it. Um, it's a it's a an electronic device by Apex Fitness, and it it monitors

the calories you burn. Um, it's actually a little thing that you wear in your arm, and electronic device you wear in your arm, and uh, it's got an accelerometer in it. It measures your heat flux and your galvanic skin response and your skin temperature, so it's a biometric device as well. Essentially, yes, it's UM. It's calculating how much you're sweating, how warm you are, and the accelerometer

is is judging how much you're moving. UM. So if you can, you know, get your arm wet and warm and then move it around a lot, it will think you're losing weight. So if you were to say, step outside in June in Atlanta, it would think you were losing weight. I'm making jokes because I don't. It's actually gotten some ray of reviews UM, but it's actually more than just that. Really, there's a there's a service, UM, a web program that has UH that where you log

your food, what you're eating. UM. You tell it basically your age, your gender, your height, and your weight, and based on the information that you get back from the arm monitor, it can sort of give you an idea of a you know where you are, how much you're actually using as far as you know you're supposed to have, for example, a thousand calories a day and you're taking in twelve calories a day and you're only burning eight hundred. Well you're gaining weight in that situation. Um, so it

can kind of give you an idea. It's like, yes, you are burning calories, No, you're not burning calories. Um. And it will also if you sign up for a subscription, a six month subscription, you actually get to talk to somebody. You get a phone session with an expert who can kind of help you through the process. They even have they had three basic levels. You can buy the you can just get the web program without any of the

digital stuff. The gear itself for nine dollars. That's the six month subscription, and then um with the arm man it's two forty nine. And then there's even a digital wrist monitor that gives you an idea of what's what's going on at ending given time so that you don't have to you know, I guess download the information. Uh. But that's um almost three fifty so it's uh, it's not inexpensive, but you know, if it works as well as the reviews say, it might be something worth looking into.

I mean, especially if you're actually going out and getting some exercise and not as we were joking about, trying to fool the monitor into believing that your exercise. Yeah, what's the point at that point? Yeah, would be like if you spent three on a wristband and I hope you're not trying to cheat it. Well, that would be like the we fit and doing the running long distance running thing. Really all you have to do is shake the remote upside, you know, up and down, and you're

fooling it into thinking you're running self. That it really kind of defeats the purpose I made it think I lost weight by putting my checkistile terrier on it and saying it was me. I'm not very healthy. Apparently I've lost everything but my head. But you, but you work like a dog. I do. I do. I like one too. So um we well that that's a pretty expensive way. But let's say that you already have um well, let's say that you were one of those people who bought

an iPhone. There are several iPhone apps that are geared geared towards weight loss. Um, I have a few, actually, I can mention there's a several that are more about you know, your nutrition and what in your diet. For instance, Restaurant Nutrition is a free application that you can get. It has information nutritional information for foods, from various restaurant chains, so things like RBS and McDonald's or Chilies or whatever,

big nationwide chains. It has information on the basic foods you find there, so you can kind of get an eye idea of you know, should I really get that whopper? UM this will tell you no, No, you shouldn't, but I could come in yeah. But there are other ones. There's the livestrong dot com calorie tracker that that logs calories um and uh it will tell you how many. It's kind of similar to the what you were talking

about with the body Bug. Um it lets you log calories, tells you how many calories you would lose through exercise. If you know you you tell it how much you've exercise that day. Um so essentially tracks your caloric intake and tells you whether or not you're taking in more calories or you're burning up more calories. It's a good way to kind of keep track of how you're doing from that perspective. But there are other ones as well.

There's um Eye Fitness that lets you create and organize a workout routine so that you can target whatever body parts you specifically want to target when you're working out. Um Jim goal Light, which is another similar UH application. It also lets you create workouts UM. And then there's run Keeper, which some of the people here at our office probably would like. We've got some marathon runners in

our office. UM And run Keeper uses the GPS and the iPhone to keep track of your location when you're running, so it can tell you how far you ran. It can kind of give you an estimation of how fast you ran. It can even create a map of your route the route that you ran, including things like elevation like if you went up hills and things like that, and it can tell you kind of all this information

give you a complete rundown. Now, that could be very helpful for someone who is training for something like a marathon, you know, especially if you're you know the route of the marathon ahead of time, and you know, hey, you know what, there's a mile and a half long UH stretch where it's a slight upgrade. I need to train so that I hit an upgrade at that time, so I know that my body is ready to go through that kind of torture. So run Keeper can actually help

you out with that. Speaking for a personal experience, that's really important to remember whether or not they're hills. Yeah, I would imagine, so I don't run unless someone is chasing me. Yeah, every other day. I was gonna say it's probably fairly often. Yeah. UM. You'll notice that that a lot of these have similar themes, basically tracking what

you eat and exercise. Really those are those are going to be something that you'll find in virtually all of these products, and UM, you know, I think one of the advantages that some of these things have, UM, is that they make it fun to to work on your way. I mean, we're you guys who are listening to us, UM are tech people. So you're the kind of person or you're the kind of people who like to to

mess with gadgets and software and things. UM, if you're the kind of person who wants to lose weight, looking into something like this might be good because if it can make it more enjoyable for you to stick with the program, you're probably more likely to uh to actually lose some weight and get into a healthy routine. And that's that's what virtually all of these is is about. Yeah, it really helps your with your motivation. Like we said before,

a lot of this actually most of it depends upon you. Um, so if you bring it, they can help you out. But I have one other tech. I'm betting that because I was going to mention it too. Yeah, there's your particularly involved with sitting at your computer, and right, there's one gadget that we would be remiss if we did not mention it when we're talking about getting in touch, and that is of course, go ahead, Chris. The Hula chair. Yes,

the Hulu chair, also known as the Hawaiian chair. If you have not seen the videos, go to YouTube, type in Hulu chair and h don't drink anything at all when the video comes up, because you will lose it completely. Um. I'm not really convinced that this does anything other than give your anyone who looks at you full immunition to make fun of you for the foreseeable future. But um, and I mean this as a compliment, even to the manufacturer.

It's really funny. Yeah, it's The entertainment value cannot be overstated. There's no way you could go beyond. Is it even better than the the virtual bowl riding thing? C. S two thousand eight Pletni Long day at Ces. We're looking around, we come to this uh booth that's filled with massage chairs, which kinds of massage, and they were very, very enticing at that point of the day. But they also had a saddle, an electronic saddle, yeah, like a mechanical bowl,

but without the bowl, just the saddle part. And the idea is that you sat on it and then you would try and stay not not like trying to stay on it, because it wasn't going to try and buck you off, but that you try to keep your you know, artical base, try and stay upright, and that that would work your muscles. Um. Really it was. It depended on who got up there, whether or not it was really funny or you know, you felt uncomfortable watching. I'm just

gonna leave it at that. Well, that's a great discussion about tech getting in shape. So I would like to invite our listeners. If you want to us to talk about specific topic or you have comments on something that we've already addressed, please write to us. We have a great email address just for us now. It's called tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, and we would love to hear from you. We really enjoy when we

get to cater these to our listeners. Otherwise it's just me and Chris sitting around saying Hu, why do you think to be fun to talk about? So? Uh? And if you want to learn more about a lot of these items, we have information on many of the things we've talked about already up live right now at how stuff works dot com. And we'll talk to a again soon. Now, let's let's go exercise the hit the track all right,

all right. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you