Target weight! ”eHealth motivation”

Last year, In June, Google Health was closed, after being up running since 2008. Some said then that Google as many times before where ahead of time but that they did a poor job reaching out to a now growing ecosystem of developers aiming towards what we can call Personal Health Records (PHR) and that they did not manage to involve the GPs enough to promote the service to their patients. I totally missed out on Google Health. But In June this year, I downloaded similar app called ”Målvikt”. In short, an app where I put data on weight, height, waist circumference, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, training and more along with the target weight I want to reach. The app provides a plan for the amount of calories each of my meal should contain and an estimation for when I will reach my goal based on the accumulated data.

In my case I started at 89-90 kg with a goal to go down to 78. It has gone surprisingly well.  Using the app motivated me a lot in changing some of ”for my own health not so good habits”. In the course of using the app I have become more aware of my own health and perhaps most importantly established a sense of what is ”normal”.

If I stick to my plan, I will in the two months I used the app have lost about 10 kilograms, this only by eating less and giving myself a bit more daily exercise. I have for sure  established some new daily routines. You can track my progress in the picture above, which also is one of the features of the app worth mentioning; it is possible to share your data with whomever you like. It might also be worth to point out that the flat line in the graph shows this year vacation weeks when most ”digital things” deliberately was avoided. The tipping point concerning this digital device was its ability to motivate me,  provide health awareness and that it offers a daily learning activity. I will in a couple of weeks have a ”40 year health check-up” at the primary care center down town, and I am really looking forward to compare ”my data” with the ”data of me” that their tests will give.

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Embrace the Remix

I have given a summer course with the theme openness on Internet now for three summers in a row. It is fun. The students produce excellent work and I always meet interesting views on both old and new topics. This year we replaced Lessig’s earlier book Code with the slight newer one Remix. Today, I stumbled on this talk on Remix by Kirby Fergusson, who produced a series of four short episodes on the on the topic Everything is a remix. One of his arguments is that the elements of Remix, i.e. copy, transform and combine, is the core elements of creativity. Both his talk and his series provide a lot of interesting and striking examples of creative work, or to quote, ”We are not self-made. We are dependent on one another. Admitting this to ourselves isn’t an embrace of mediocrity and derivativeness, it’s a liberation from our misconceptions”. It is well worth a watch.

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