Kyle Seth Gray

Kyle Seth Gray's blog. Usually writing about tech, personal experience, but now leaning more towards health and fitness.

Health Status

This year begun with me focusing on being more active, and maintaining a healthier life style. It was one of my goals to be a healthier person, alongside some fitness goals such as running my first half marathon (which I did 3 times), running my first marathon (postponed until my leg gets better).

I’m surprised in myself at how far I’ve come. Last year around this time, I was very inactive, discouraged from exercising, and ate mainly whatever I bought at the grocery store. It wasn’t super unhealthy, but seeing how I now react to different foods or just trying to hit calorie goals, I am amazed at the progress I’ve made. I'm glad I got off that route as well, because I definitely could've ended up being a 180 lb 22 year-old, going through that "oh hey... I can't eat whatever anymore" phase that everyone always talks about.

I also had started tracking caloric intake in April of this year, and have been somewhat on and off with it, but I definitely am more able to make better decisions with my diet. I’m way more active, thanks to buying a bike in August, and using it to commute to school 6 miles away, 2 times a day, 5 times a week. And I feel great.

One of the biggest thing I realized, especially when trying to keep my same Activity Goals on my Apple Watch, is how easy it can be to find places to exercise, and find time for it. I could never imagine the Me I knew 3 years ago to actively try and find a working cycling machine to use on vacation, or trying to find a gym to go to when I visit home in Arizona, but here I am. I’m trying my best, and I feel like I’ve succeeded, in not only maintaining a healthy way of living, but making sure to be consistent. And I credit a lot of that to my Apple Watch, but I’ve also made a lot of progress in my own mind and when I think about different aspects of being fit.

One Year with the Apple Watch

I thought that with me owning my Apple Watch for 1 year now, I would add up some totals regarding how much I've done.

  • Overall, I've walked 4,471,695 steps.
  • I've walked/ran a distance of 2219 Miles.
  • I cycled 156 miles. (Hoping to up the ante on this during summer)
  • I burned a total of 172,131 Active Calories. (That's 662 glazed Dunkin Donuts)
  • Ruined 5 pairs of headphones, including two EarPods
  • Took out 2 iPhone 6's, I'm on my 3rd right now. First one got dropped on a mountain, second one got ruined by sweat. (My current iPhone is signed by Carly Rae Jepsen)
  • Still rocking the same Apple Watch I got last year.

    Day one with my Apple Watch Day 366 with my Apple Watch

As for running on its own, I've ran 530 miles total, and dropped my pace from 10:24/mile to, at my fastest, 8:20/mile. Again, this is something I really think I'll improve on, especially since I've gotten a lot better at training in other ways besides just running. I'm also making sure to focus on strength training as well, although it's a little hard because it isn't as automatically tracked.

I'm down about ~20 pounds since a year ago, and I'm way more fit in general: I don't get tired at all on hikes, and I've been able to stay awake a lot easier, and overall just feel better.

Running was the easy sport to get into, and I've talked and tweeted and instagrammed ALL about running, but other workout routines and just getting in shape have helped me a lot too.

Previous to my Apple Watch, I just had an old Fitbit flex. While that motivated me to get my "10,000" steps in every day, it didn't do much beyond that. I know now that their app has updated to include more activity goals as well as exercise, but for a while the development of it seemed to be stale and just drill into your head, "10,000 steps. Yay!". No pushing goals, no upping your limits, just the 10,000 step goal. With the Apple Watch, it'll bug you if you don't hit your calorie goal, as well as showing you that, you know, steps aren't super important, nor do they actually add too much to your active calories, which in my mind are what matter now.

I'm looking forward to what kind of fitness devices and more features come out in the future. I'm glad I got the Apple Watch and I believe it kicked me into gear when it comes to making sure I'm more active, as well as helping me become fit and more willing to exercise. Here I am a year after I got it, and I feel healthier and look great, and I'm making and breaking records I've set for myself.


Lastly, I thought I'd share my totally radical running playlist that I use most of the time with any and all my workouts. (It does have some explicit songs, just a warning)

Complaints about Complaints: The Watch

It’s been two weeks since I got my Apple Watch, and although I don’t think I’ll be writing a review of it anytime soon, I felt like I should post some thoughts I have about the device.

The Apple Watch has been a great and fun device. It changes a lot of things, helps you manage notifications just a bit better, and the fitness tracking aspect of it is great. When I had my Fitbit, there were some of the same “goals” with the device: Move a certain amount every day, and make sure some of that amount is exercise. With the Fitbit, however, it seemed any consecutive activity over a few minutes was counted as exercise, whether it be walking for ten minutes, or actually running for twenty, either of these counted toward the “globally recommended 30 minutes per day”. To me, it just seemed too easy, and although it did encourage me to be more active over the two years I had the Fitbit, it seemed like I was able to make that goal every day.

Enter Apple Watch and an actual heart rate monitor. The Apple Watch does the usual ‘count your steps’, like every other fitness device, but it does it differently. It doesn’t focus on the 10,000 steps as a goal for you to obtain, rather, it focuses on your active calories, and your minutes spent actually exercising. These encourages me a lot more than the simplicity of gaining a certain amount of steps in a day. The best part is how the exercise ring actually challenges you. I think it calculates your VO2max from the personal data you enter, and uses that to estimate what your heart rate should be for exercise to actually count. Personally, I love this feature; it pushes me more than my Fitbit ever did.

This is where I’ve seen a bunch of complaints. A lot of people seem to think that anything like walking, jumping up and down, or putting a lower effort in should be exercise, or that the Apple Watch is inaccurate because it doesn’t count a long walk as exercise. These complaints, to me, seem unwarranted. I bought the Apple Watch so I could be more active, not drag along and think that the regular things I did every day would help count towards the exercise goal.

And yes, in this next little bit I’m going to complain about some other complaints people have had about the Apple Watch. Sure, I’m an “Apple Fan”, an apologist, and have no opinion. Cool.

But some of the complaints I’ve seen along twitter have just been ridiculous. I’ve seen people complain about the Stand function bugging them, when, it only bugs you if you haven’t stood, and you can easily prevent that, or turn it off. I’ve seen people complain that the Watch didn’t “automatically” track their run or bike ride, when it never said anywhere that it does so automatically. People complain about the straps, the small screen, or how there’s certain features that don’t seem to benefit them therefore shouldn’t exist at all. Or how the Apple Watch use/UI paradigm should be changed completely to fit their needs.

And the biggest thing I’ve seen is people complain how much the Watch isn’t like their phone. How buttons may be different, or the home screen isn’t a home screen, or the fact that the Human Interface Guidelines for a device that goes on your wrist aren’t similar to the Human Interface Guidelines to the pocket computer that has a ginormous screen.

It’s a different device. It’s a new platform. It’s not an iPhone on your wrist, it’s meant to be something different.

I am ok with the fact that it’s a different device. I knew when I bought it that it would take some getting used to. And I’m okay with that. It’s just such a weird thing to see people, and most of these people fans of technology like me, refuse to try and learn about a new platform, or think that it needs to change for them. (Spoiler: it probably won’t. I’m sure many people complained about the iPhone home screen layout, yet here we are.) Apple never forced you to buy this device, and if you won’t learn how to use it, or RTFM, Apple won’t care.

In conclusion, I get that it’s a new device, and Apple is some super amazing company that never does anything “Un-Apple Like” (Which they do, like all the time. Who even defined what is Apple-like and what isn’t anyway?) Things change, and just like the iPhone wasn’t similar to the Macintosh when it came to many of its features, the Watch is meant to be different than the iPhone, simply because it is a new, and completely different device. But just because a device doesn’t function how you want it to doesn’t mean the device is a failure, or that it’s “extremely difficult” or Un-Apple. It may just be the user.

Shop on Amazon - Support my random blogs