I remember standing in my Aunt Barbara’s kitchen eons ago, and how she dismissed the idea of ever owning a microwave oven. Don’t need it. Don’t want it. Several years later we were in that same kitchen, complete with a microwave — and the unspoken acknowledgment of an eternal truth:
When life gives you a cheat code, take it.
Once I got out of college, I saw wristwatches the same way Aunt Barb used to see microwaves. Who needs one when you have clocks at home, in your car and at the office?
Two months ago, for the first time since Jimmy Carter was president, I bought a watch. It might be a cheat code, too.
It wasn’t to tell time, of course — hell, I can use my microwave for that. It was because I wanted something like this staring me in the face a jillion times a day:
If you’re more normal than I am — and who isn’t? — an Apple Watch can also show you traditional faces and all sorts of variations from family photos to Mickey Mouse, but I usually have mine show health stuff. That’s why I bought it.
My health has a Jekyll and Hyde quality. I walk 5 miles a day and my cholesterol is great, but I also had a small stroke in 2013 and have prediabetes. The watch warns me if my pulse is doing anything goofy. (It’s not.)
So where’s the possible cheat code? If you buy a watch or other Apple products, you get three months of Apple Fitness+, an app that regularly costs 10 bucks a month. Almost anyone can get a free month, and you might find it motivates you more than a health club or New Year’s resolution.
Don’t get me wrong: The best exercise is almost always with a friend — walking, tennis, basketball (and yes, sex counts) — or a group of friends (sex still counts, but you might be really sore the next day).
But many of us can’t coordinate schedules enough to exercise regularly with friends, and it’s easy to lose steam when you’re going it alone. Others avoid gyms because of shyness, inconvenience, cost, boredom, body issues, whatever.
That’s where my watch face comes in. Besides telling us that my pulse was decent, the weather was cloudy and the watch’s battery was fully charged, the 7:09 screenshot above shows that I’d burned 74 active calories, did 11 minutes of brisk activity and had 2 hours when I’d stood and moved for at least a minute.
Those three colored rings start to fill out as you approach your day’s goals. If you wear the watch when you take a Fitness+ class, the screen shows the progress you’ve made in closing those rings.
If you have even a dormant competitive bone in your body, those rings can be an extra motivator. Suppose you set your activity ring for a pretty minimal 30 minutes a day and you’re falling short. Maybe that nudges you to walk around the block or spend 10 minutes on strength training or take a 5-minute core class. Then maybe you up it to 40 minutes a day, giving your body a little more Jekyll and a little less Hyde.
Hundreds of video sessions have everything from Pilates to dance to interval training, plus biking, hiking and rowing. For walkers like me who want a little departure from podcasts, there’s episodes of Time to Walk, when a celebrity goes for a walk, talks about some aspect of life for 20 minutes or so and shares a few pictures, then offers three songs that matter to them.
I heard Hannah Waddingham describe a single mother’s crisis, Draymond Green talk about overcoming failure, Camila Cabello discuss impostor syndrome and mental health struggles, Brendan Hunt explain the personal significance of “Hey Jude” and Dr. Jane Goodall share how she put aside fears for the sake of her work. And the songs ranged from “Ava Maria” by Luciano Pavarotti to “Wichita Lineman” by Glen Campbell to “Suge” by DaBaby.
There’s also Time to Run, where a coach narrates a jog in various places around the world, including a few pictures from the route and a bunch of songs to pump you up. (No, you don’t really have to run in those spots — or even run at all.)
I did two (alleged) runs through places I’d been before, reminding me of the natural beauty and wildlife of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the architectural beauty and joie de vivre of central Paris. Here’s a photo of two tourists vying for a table on the Champs-Élysées.
You don’t need an Apple Watch to use Fitness+. It just measures your activity better. Maybe you’ll do a free trial, look at it on your iPhone and decide it’s a colossal waste of time. A cheat code is worthless if you don’t want to play the game.
But I know enough older people (ahem) who get all their exercise from walking when they should also be doing strength training, and enough people of all ages who know how easy it is to develop bad habits and how impossible it feels to get rid of them. It doesn’t take much to turn Gen Zer into geezer.
Maybe you’ll buy one and it will become a three-dimensional version of a health club membership, destined to sit on a shelf next to your Pet Rock and your Furby. Maybe you’ll toss it in the microwave and let god sort it out.
All I know is that I’d buy mine again. In a heartbeat.
Murphy Slaw
Something old: If you love dogs, you’ll love this video on Pepper’s Senior Dog Sanctuary in Littleton, Colo. The video below has some extra background.
Something new: A breakthrough on the COVID front. The New York Times reports that the total number of Americans dying each day from any cause is back to a normal level. During the worst days of COVID, overall U.S. deaths were more than 30% higher than normal.
Something borrowed: There’s a couple of great factoids in this Billboard story about Taylor Swift being the first living artist in nearly 60 years to have four albums in the top 10 at the same time, so let’s make two trivia questions out of them. Who was the 1960s artist who last did it? And what deceased artist had five in the top 10 more recently? The answers are at the bottom.
Something blue: This sweet article in Alphy describes how the Jumbo grocery chain in the Netherlands is offering free coffee and slow-moving checkout lines for older shoppers who also want to talk, part of a government push to ease loneliness.
Trivia answers: Herb Alpert did it in 1966. And Prince did it posthumously in 2016.