Health Stack: Analyzing Your Body

I love data. I also enjoy staying healthy, so I’ve joined the two things I enjoy the most and put together a Health Stack for myself. And isn’t the most important “business”, your body? A healthy body and mind are essential to one’s well-being. Granted, the mind is a bit too hard to run casual diagnostics on, so for now I’ll keep monitoring and setting Growth plans for my body.

The setup I’m using and describing in this post are all beginner level and there are definitely better technologies out there, but as any Marketer, we can’t always invest in the top programs from the start, but will have to learn by trial and replace as we get along.   

Testing is in the fore-front of everything I do.

 

The Marketing Stack

A marketing stack is a group of technologies that marketers leverage to execute, analyse and enhance their marketing activities. A company’s chosen marketing stack is often quite different as each app/technology serves its own purpose that allows companies to reach their goals, and not all companies share the same goals.   

 

The Health Stack

Creating a Stack for your body can be just as troublesome as assembling technologies for a business. One of the main issues is down to perception and/or definitions of a given metric/action. The real challenge lies in finding the “One Truth”, that will allow you to accelerate your growth.  

Enough of the marketing talk… let’s get down the fun part. 

Here is the setup:

Garmin Vivoactive 4

When researching for a watch, my sole interest was from a data collection point of view and not for personal features. I was not looking for a SMART-watch, but I was interested in measuring my “health” and to see how I improved over time. Garmin was from the start a strong contender, but the watches I initially found started from £600. These were tailormade for athletes. I was no athlete, so looked at entry level watches for beginners. There was a lot of cheap watches out there with terrible reviews. I eventually landed on the Garmin Vivoactive 3, which seems like a good solid watch for a first-time user. Unfortunately, I was allergic to about everything on that watch and after contacting Garmin, they sent me a Vivoactive 4 instead. I did not complain, as this had recently been released.

The Vivoactive 4 counts;

• Heart Rate
• Pulse OX
• Stress Level
• Steps
• Elevation
• Hydration
• Body Battery
• Respiration

Renpho Smart Scale

 

Granted, this is a Smart Scale on the cheaper end of the spectrum. The data might not be the most accurate. However, this is my start setup, so it will do for now.

The Smart Scale counts (only listed some):

• Weight
• BMI
• Body Fat
• Muscle Mass
• Body Water
• Metabolic age

Wattbike Pro Indoor Bike 

I don’t actually own a Wattbike, but my gym happens to have one. This indoor bike syncs with Vivoactive 4 in real-time.

Counts;

• Speed
• Cadence
• Watts

And here are the Apps:

Garmin Connect

The amount of available data through the app connected to the watch, Garmin Connect, is absolutely great. This app is created for sport enthusiasts. Within the Garmin family this is close to the best you can get, but it is almost impossible to sync any external data to Garmin Connect.

Google Fit

Google is huge and therefore it makes sense that almost all fitness apps syncs with Google Fit. This is the only reason why I’m using it. All apps in my Health Stack can in one way or the other sync data with Google Fit, which makes this app the “holder” of all the data.

For now, this app is not used often, but I'll explore opportunities down the line.

Strava

Strava is the public dashboard that everyone has access to. Initially, I wanted to build everything around Strava, but realized quickly that Strava is quite limited in the way it shows data. While it’s great for sharing with friends and compare stats between ourselves, it’s not great for personal comparisons and development over time.

All activities through my account on Strava is provided through Garmin Connect.

Renpho (app)

The only data being synced from Renpho is Weight, but the app holds a wealth of information. 

Renpho -> Google Fit

Renpho -> Garmin Connect (manual entry)

Wattbike Hub

This app is actually not necessary for data collection. It does have the option within to sync to Strava, but I’ve synced the physical Wattbike with Vivoactive 4 directly. The watch will sync with Strava after finished exercise.

The reason why I’m still including this and using the app is due to the real-time data it generates. I use my phone as a live dashboard to monitor performance during the exercise. This helps me re-balance my output in each leg, as my left leg often pushes harder than the right and therefore is more prone to injury.   

Health Sync

All of these apps are good in their own way, but if they couldn’t communicate with each other, it would leave me with many “truths” about my performance development. The risk about many different conclusions is that it clouds the results. The Health Sync app does one thing only, but it does it well.  The app itself has one “dashboard” that shows in which direction the sync is happening. This app saves me the time to manually upload these data.

Duplicate data

Both Google Fit and Vivoactive count steps. The technology that counts steps for each app is slightly different, so the reported numbers from identical time periods are different. Google Fit is relying on the technology in my OnePlus phone. Garmin Connect is build for this purpose and does also count all my activities. 

For this reason, I’ve decided to let Garmin Connect deliver as much data as possible and turned off Google Fit.

Google Fit will solely function as a hub for all data, as this app has the most connectors available.

 

Manual data entry

The dreaded part. The part that should be eliminated, but in some cases, it is just not possible due to restrictions for some apps.

My Renpho Smart Scale syncs with Google Fit, but there is no connector to Garmin Connect. Garmin Connect can sync data with Google Fit, but not the other way around. This leaves me with not other choice (for now) to manually enter the weight data in Garmin Connect.    

A solution to this would be to invest in a Garmin Index Smart Scale. This will connect to Garmin Connect which will then sync to Google Fit though Health Sync. 

Next step?

I would like to analyse the data myself, so if time allows it, I would want to connect all data points to one dashboard. This will involve fetching data through each app’s API.

 

Disclaimer; I’ve no financial gain in mentioning any of the products or apps in this article. I’m in no way suggesting that this data should be used to diagnose health problems. My interest in this subject is purely from a data collection perspective.