Fitness | Darian Johnson's Favorite Things

Going from Skinny Fat to Fit: With a Personal Trainer

How working with a personal trainer helped me on my journey to get fit.

Training I don’t know why most guys have a stigma about hiring a personal trainer.

A few weeks ago, I got into a conversation with some of the neighborhood dads about healthy habits. We were all lamenting about how hard it was to make time for exercise and that eating healthy was a chore.

I mentioned that, for me, I had to make my health a priority. I changed my diet and I committed to exercising four times a week. That was received with a chorus of attaboys and goodforyous.

Then I causally added: “The biggest impact to my health my was decision to hired a personal trainer.”

Silence, followed quickly by “I just couldn’t do that.”

Silly, right? We hire people to help us with our taxes, our lawns, and our laundry, but won’t turn to a professional when we need help meeting health goals. For some, a personal trainer might be overkill, or not needed. For me, it was a necessity to getting in shape. Continue reading “Going from Skinny Fat to Fit: With a Personal Trainer”

Fitness Gear Review: Jaybird Bluebud X with Comply Tips

The Comply tips take a solid pair of Bluetooth earbuds from good to really good. A great steal if you can find them on sale… just avoid Jaybird’s customer service.

My Rating:

As I’ve varied my workouts, I’ve found myself hampered by my wired earbuds. While they served their purpose, they always seems to get caught on a machine – even when I snaked my earbud wire through my shirt (and forget jumping rope or doing stretching/yoga with them). Still, I refused to replace them; I just couldn’t see myself plopping down $100+ for a Bluetooth pair.

Unfortunately, I was forced into a decision when my workout earbuds stopped. I originally planned to purchase a better, wired earbud, but after some research, decided on a wireless pair.

I really wanted the soon-to-be-released Kaona buds, but couldn’t wait for the first batch (scheduled to be delivered in April 2016). Plus, I really struggled with the idea of dropping $150 for my first pair of wireless buds.

Given that, after reading a few reviews online, I decided to go with the first iteration of Jaybird’s Bluebud X earbuds. Walmart had them on sale for $80, so I considered it a steal.

Continue reading “Fitness Gear Review: Jaybird Bluebud X with Comply Tips”

Fitness Gear Review: Crossrope 2.0 Swift Set

A well-made jump rope system that can be used by experts and novices.

My Rating:

If I were to rank fitness exercises, cardio just beats out squats and deadlifts in my list least favorite exercises. I just have never enjoyed running or biking.

When I first started seriously working out, I only focused on weight training. After 3-4 months, my trainer suggested that I add cardio into my weekly workout plan. At the time he recommended sprints. I tried that for a few weeks, then told him we needed to find an alternative. That’s when he suggested jumping rope. I went only Amazon later that week and purchased a set from Crossrope.

Two years later, I’m still jumping rope with the same Crossrope weighted jump rope. While not perfect, it’s got a lot of good things going for it.

Continue reading “Fitness Gear Review: Crossrope 2.0 Swift Set”

A Fitbit Low Battery SMS Notification using AWS – Part 3

In Part 1, I introduced an app that sends an SMS notification when your Fitbit battery is low. Part 2 covered the Authentication Flow of the process. This post describes how the device status is checked and communicated to the user.

Fitbit-SMS-Sched2 The flow is as follows:

The CloudWatch Scheduler kicks off a Lambda job that pulls registered users from the DynamoDB table. This information is based to a SNS topic, which in turn…
…kicks off the Lambda function that obtains the Fitbit device info. The Fitbit api is called, and the resulting message is processed by the Lambda function. The device information is stored in and retrieved from the DynamoDB table as needed for processing and history tracking.
If the result was a success then the a message is sent to the SNS topic for the subscribed user – assuming that the battery status is low AND the user has not already been notified.
If a “Token Expired” error is returned, then the Lambda function passes the required information to the Refresh User SNS topic. The Lambda function again calls a Fitbit API; this time to refresh the token.
If the token is refreshed, then the information is saved to the DynamoDB table and passed to the Get Device Info Topic (starting the process all over again)
If a failure occurs, then a message is sent to the user, directing them to re-authorize the application to access their Fitbit account.

Continue reading “A Fitbit Low Battery SMS Notification using AWS – Part 3”

A Fitbit Low Battery SMS Notification using AWS – Part 2

In Part 1, I introduced an app that sends an SMS notification when your Fitbit battery is low. Part 2 covers the Authentication Flow of the process.

The flow is as follows:

User accesses the sign-up page (and by default, provides authorization via Fitbit.com). The request is passed through an API Gateway to a Lambda function. The Lambda function calls a Fitbit api to authenticate the user.
The Fitbit authentication returns to the Lambda code. From there: (3) the token is saved to a DynamoDB database, (4) a message is placed on a SNS topic, and (5) a success response is sent back to the webpage
The user information (access_token, refresh_token, and mobile number) is saved to a DynamoDB table
An SNS topic receives the mobile number as a message
A success message is sent back to the end user.
The SNS topic (step 4) calls a second Lambda function.
The Create_User_Topic lambda function creates a sns topic for the newly authenticated user.
Once the topic is created, a notice is sent to the user’s mobile device – asking to confirm subscription.
The user confirms the subscription.

Continue reading “A Fitbit Low Battery SMS Notification using AWS – Part 2”