The 4 most important exercises.

There are likely thousands if not millions of various exercise programs out there. As fantastic as it is to have so many options when it comes to exercising and maintaining an active lifestyle, there can be a certain level of apprehension leaving many overwhelmed. Should I look into team sports or a fitness class? What about hiking? Should I buy equipment or sign up for a gym? Should try to link up with others or go it alone? Whether it’s been eons since the last time we deliberately did anything to improve our fitness, or if our current, workout regimen has just gone a bit stale, not knowing where to turn, what to add, what to remove and what to focus on is a common problem many face in the long-term.

At the core of exercise is performing any movement effective in increasing muscle strength, flexibility, agility, balance and all other aspects of a healthy physical body. The functional purpose of movement is my favourite way to simplify the wealth of exercise options out there. Not only does “function” create a practical element to, i.e., “what exercises will help me do the everyday things I need to do?”, but it also allows more muscle groups to be engaged at once, drastically reducing the types of exercises, and most importantly, the time needed. Reducing time is key since it’s well documented that on the whole, exercise is relatively ineffective for health, and while beneficial is not nearly as essential and doesn’t warrant nearly as much attention, to healthy living compared to food.  Primal Blueprint founder Mark Sisson emphasises this approach characterising the most basic movements as fitness plans even cavemen did.

These basic movements are pushups, pullups, planks and squats. As far as strength building goes, these cover the most whole-body, yet functional, natural physiological movements. Lifting heavy boxes, climbing trees, stairs or ladders, moving furniture around, or carrying babies engage all of the same muscle groups and involve similar movements as these four exercises. This is in contrast to other common exercises that are not nearly as practical such as bicep curls which are more about body building and appearance than the strength of a physiologically important movement. Add in sprinting once and a while, and moving frequently at slow paces and you have the entire gamut of essential exercise to base the active aspects of your healthy lifestyle around.

Pushups

Pushups, along with running represent perhaps the simplest and most “default exercise” there is. Everyone knows what pushups are, has tried to do them and has an understanding of their place in physical fitness. Whether they are elite competitive athletes, or people starting to exercise for the first time in decades, their program incorporate pushups, or moves that mimic pushups (i.e., the bench press). Simple as that.

When done properly, pushups engage your arms, chest, shoulders and core (abs and back) making them one of the most efficient and beneficial bodyweight movements there is. One of the other benefits in pushups is in the variety. There are many different forms of pushups allowing the movement to be adjusted for level of ability, pace, range of movement or even environment.

At their purest form, pushups are done lying face down on a flat surface, starting with your hands at shoulder height and just wider than shoulder width. I find that placing my hands at a width at which my forearms perpendicular to the ground when I’m I’m at rest (lying down) is the most comfortable, balanced and strong position. Feet placement can also very. The closer they are together the more difficult they are since wider feet make maintaining balance and a solid core easier, your trunk (abs, bank and hips) are crucial. You want to keep your whole body as rigid as possible. I have known people to place a broomstick on their back while they do pushups to make sure they remain solid. If you’re doing this, your heels or calves, butt, space between your shoulder blades and head should all be in contact with the stick, if not, odds are your trunk is sagging below. WellnessMama has a fantastic simple breakdown of the perfect pushup and many of the ways to modify the exercise depending on level of ability.

Pullups

Despite being a very basic movement in theory, pullups are commonly regarded as one the most challenging exercises there is for many reasons. Your body weight affects your ability to do pullups more than pushups, situps and most other basic movements since unlike those, with pullups, your entire body counts as the weight. With most others, only a fraction of your body is being directly lifted and with squats, your lower body is naturally better equipped and more accustomed to supporting your body, than your upper is.

Grip-strength in my hands wrists and forearms is what poses the biggest difficulty for me personally. This is why without pullup counterweight machines many find it difficult to begin them if they haven’t tried them in a long time. Another simple way to progress through pullups is to simple use your legs to lightly support your weight. By gauging the effort required, you can gently press your feet against the ground or bench if the bar is too high, and slowly stand, making sure your effort is targeted on your back, shoulders and arms to do their fair share of work.

These variations are where the beauty of pullups lie. As challenging as they can be for beginners, there is plenty of room to make them easier or more difficult depending on your level and all approaches are fairly common sense. The wider your grip is the more difficult they are. Personally, I’ve spent a lot of time building up the ability to do the easiest form - narrow grip, palms facing backward. As 10 become regularly achievable, I started to widen the grip.  Adding more weight to your body makes them harder, and adding more support to your body (a bench to stand on, a counter-weight machine, muscle-ups) make them easier. Slowing down is also harder, as being able to pause mid motion is a true mark of strength.

Planks

Planks are the outlier movement here as they are the only one which doesn’t actually involve movement. Planks are an isometric exercise which means it involves holding steady position for a set period of time. Isometric exercises are more effective for your core due to the prolonged tension - staying flexed for a very long time rather than for repeated short bursts. Research shows this prolonged tension promotes strength and builds muscle-mass which is essential for a stable core that can support movement and steady posture for the entire body.

The most common plank form with face down, with your body supported only by your forearms and toes on the ground - the rest of your body in the air. It’s incredibly important to maintain a straight body from head to toe - like a plank of wood. Similar to pushups, a broom stick should be able to rest along the backs of your legs, butt, shoulders and head. Once this position is started, the goal is then to hold it for a set period as the burn settles in. If you can hold it for a full minute 2 or three times with short breaks in between to rest, you’re in pretty good shape. Aiming for shorter times, or going with your knees on the ground, so that less of your body weight is active are simple ways to scale the challenge back if you’re just starting out.

Squats

When done properly squats engage more of the entire body than any other single movement. Of course, the primary benefactor here is the lower body from the glutes all the way down to feet, but maintaining balance and control requires an immense level of effort from the core, back, shoulders and arms, especially if modifiers such as extra weight, single leg, or explosive movements are made. Squats have a reputation for being dangerous, but if proper form and controlled progression is emphasised, the potential for injury is as minimal as with any weight-bearing movement. The risk-factor does rise quite quickly if you overdo though, so no loud, eyes-closed wiggling around to make sure you push more weight than you should.

The basic squat involves a starting position of standing with your feet greater than shoulder-width apart. I generally set mine as wide as possible without it feel like I’m stretching - still comfortably standing. Then ti’s a matter of lowering your body bending at the knees to a target of 90 degrees which brings your thighs parallel to the ground, then rising back up to standing just before your knees lock straight. The difficult part is to maintain an arched back. Holding your torso upright rather than hunching or leaning forward is the most important factor in preventing injury. I try to make sure my torso changes as little as possible from standing to squatting - look forward, ideally at my reflection, with the chin up, shoulders back and my back straight enough so I don’t have to crane my head up to look straight.

The other key point to remember involves preventing your knees from bending inward or outward laterally. Your knees should be above your feet directly, so that they are not any closer or further from each other than your feet are. In other words, conscious effort should be given to ensure your shins are perpendicular to the ground rather than leaning to either side.

Conclusion

This is it. Regardless of where you decide to go as you chase an admirable health-related New Year’s resolution, or where to turn to next as you fall out of love with cross-fit, as long as you remember to keep these 4 essential exercises as the foundation, your workout program will be effective, efficient and practical in the real world.

Primal Living Part 4 - A typical week in food

Last week in Part 3, comparisons were made between Paleo, Primal and Atkins. It's important to understand the similarities and differences between certain nutrition philosophies. I believe that the commonalities across various plans, research and ideologies can serve as validation of those principles. For example, while sentiment on legumes (+Mark Sisson, creator of the Primal Blueprint explains the issue with beans and legumes here), saturated fats and red meat may differ depending on what you're reading or who you  are talking to, you are very unlikely to find anything that advocates for sugar, highly processed, preservative loaded foods.

The Primal food pyramid according to +Mark Sisson, see MarksDailyApple, or Part 1 for more

I place an incredible amount of value in this idea. While "everything in moderation" may often apply, and although carbohydrate-rich food such as grains may have their value in small doses, reducing your intake of sugar, highly processed and preservative loaded foods as much as you possibly can, the better you will feel and the healthier in body, spirit and mind you will be.

There is no ONE Primal Lifestyle

This is the focus for this week's piece. My favourite aspect of Primal Living is the push for flexibility. As outlined last week, primal isn't a list of foods. It's a set of principles (a fantastic infographic can be found here), and although these may seem like rules, they are not as rigid, ad are instead malleable according to environment, climate, responsibilities and resources relative to each individual person. This may seem like a licence to break rules, but you have to remember that primal is built on Ancestral Health and, what worked for our ancestors thousands of years ago cannot be boiled down to one set of standards. 

A world map showing the origins of the world's indigenous peoples. There was never meant to be one rigid set of foods everyone should be eating.

The foods, levels of activity and sleep patterns varied greatly depending on region. It doesn't take much imagination to understand that the Inca people of South America probably ate differently than the Inuit native to Northern Canada, Scandinavian Vikings, Mongolian conquerors or South Pacific Islanders. All of these groups had different animals, vegetation types, temperature ranges and predators to deal with.So, although all of them had diets rich in animal meats and vegetables, and the occasional seasonal fruit, and spent very little time running at a moderate pace for prolonged periods of time, the specifics of how they lived, would have differed greatly.

This is why it's important to truly be honest and self-aware regarding what works and what doesn't. While it may be easy to use influences such as budget and time as excuses for living a less than optimally healthy life, they key is to genuinely try to make these principles work for you as much as you possibly can.

What a typical week for me looks like

I should preface all of this with a very brief rundown of my daily schedule:

• I wake up at around 5:30 and have "breakfast" around 6:30
• By 7:00 I’m leaving for work (which is about 1km away so I walk)
• I arrive at my desk at around 7:15am
• I’m a high school teacher so that involves a bit of walking from different rooms and buildings. I’m not entirely camped at a desk all day, but I’m not constantly on my feet either.
• Lunch, which is usually my true meal of the day, usually occurs at 11am
• I am usually anywhere between 4:30 and 5:30pm
• Dinner is usually at 6pm
• I try to sleep by 10pm

Most mornings I don't have anything for breakfast other than 1 or 2 cups of coffee. Once upon a time, the notion of skipping "the most important meal of the day" seemed terrifying. I thought for sure this would lead to me dying of starvation by 10am. Easily the most amazing thing I have learned from Primal is the value of fats and the destruction that carbs do in terms of providing energy in the morning. I find that if my meat and vegetables made up most or all of what I ate the night before meaning my protein and fat intake was up to scratch, I really wasn't hungry in the morning, and the coffee (with heavy pure full-of-fat cream) was more than enough until lunch time. 

I just love the inviting warmth of a smooth cup of coffee in the morning. Usually, all I have for breakfast is one cup - sometimes two at around 6:30am. Normally I don't eat until after 11am..

Earlier in the year, I tried a mini experiment on myself and monitored my hunger levels depending on my morning routine. I was literally astonished to discover that, when 10am rolled around, I was hungrier if I had cereal, toast or anything else loaded with carbs, than if I had nothing at all. Obviously, eggs and bacon (or dinner leftovers) eliminated hunger the most, but aside from just not having much time for it, I honestly started to feel full. It works, my body looks to fat for energy consumption and no longer calls for the quick boost carbs offer.  People often ask me, "how are you not starving if you skip breakfast?". To be honest, my answer is simply, "I don't know. I'm just not". Of course, I do know and try to explain , the problem is that it's apparently just too hard to believe for some people.

On days where I have an extra 20 minutes, little is better than scrambled eggs with cheddar and spinach, half an avocado and some free range local bacon rashers.

With breakfast (or lack thereof) out of the way, the rest of the day should be pretty simple to describe. Usually, lunch is the first actual meal I have for the day, and it usually occurs at 11am. I genuinely am a bit hungry by then, but not starving, and on the occasions when I end up having to delay eating another hour or so, it's not really a big deal. Contrast this with people that pound away high-carb foods like cereals, granolas, crackers, biscuits, cookies, noodles, and the like. From my observation, it's pretty common for these people to express extreme hunger even if they've just eaten maybe 2-3 hours prior. Here's an Ancestral line of thought. If our cavemen brethren need to eat something every 2-3 hours, in order to avoid feeling sluggish, headaches, and growling stomachs, would they really be able to survive their historic period?

Anyway, for lunch I usually have a salad made with cos lettuce and spinach, plus a couple of other chopped vegetables - usually cucumber, cherry tomatoes, or capsicum (Australian for red/green/yellow peppers). For protein I chuck in some canned tuna, smoked salmon, or pieces of leftover dinner meat. Dressing will be in the form of some whole-egg mayo, olive oil and various seasoning (dill, or just salt). I also always chuck in a handful of nuts. If I have leftovers from dinner, I go with that, but usually I don't have any leftovers.

A "Big Ass Man's Salad" for my first meal of the day. 11am. Lettuce, spinach, capsicum, cucumber, almonds, cheese, whole egg mayo, crushed garlic, olive oil, avocado, smoked salmon. The 600ml water bottle is just there for perspective.

Dinner will always be some form of meat and vegetable combination. The usual rotation consists of:

- Steak, pork chop or chicken cutlet with boiled vegetables

- Meatballs in marinara sauce with sauteed vegetables

- Chicken and vegetable stirfry

- Steak, pork or chicken cutlet and salad

Steak, zucchini. garlic, coconut oil, butter, macadamia nuts, capsicum, silverbeet and avocado fried in a wok

You may be able to tell from that list, but I'm not much of a cook. I don't care much for hours of prep and slow cooking roasts. I've never baked anything in my life that wasn't a nacho dish that took at most, 10 minutes.

The important thing isn't how food is prepared, but the type of food we have available each meal. Our general grocery list follows the lines of:

Meat: steak, chicken wings, meatballs, chicken, bacon and pork are our primary varieties (lamb or veal are ok, but not our favourite). We go through a tonne of tuna and salmon

Vegetables: Broccoli, zucchini, carrots, spinach, lettuce, silverbeet, bok choy, cucumber, capsicum, tomatoes, avocado

Fruit: Bananas, and whatever is in season

Nuts: Almonds and macadamias

Herbs and spices: Whatever. My favourites are dill, garlic, generic barbecue, celery, basil and tumeric.

Other: cheese, pure cream, greek yoghurt, wine (I have a couple of glasses week), dark chocolate, olive oil, coconut oil

Irregular add-ons depending on tastes and sales: ice cream, nachos

Occasional garbage I have maybe once every couple weeks: McDonald's, Hawaiian Pizza, Fish n Chips

Good oil

The foundation is what matters most

As you may notice from above, I follow what is hardly, the strictest of diets.  The salient point is that Primal isn't meant to be a restrictive list but a solid foundation of principles. In general, I have  very few carbohydrates and load up on protein and fat via animal meat, plus all the colourful vegetables I can eat, and I make sure not to forget that I don't have to eat if I'm not hungry. For everything else, I roll with the punches. As far as concrete, deliberate rules go, I just try not to have carbohydrates if I don't have to. I don't step out of my comfort zone to avoid them - if it's someone's birthday, or someone just brought cake in for work I will happily share and appreciate, but given the choice, I'll opt for a salad rather than bread roll.

Taken from MarksDailyApple.com and used in Primal Living Part 2 - Ancestral Health

It may be only anecdotal, but I can personally vouch for the "Weight Loss Sweet Spot"  I discussed a while back. One thing I have done for years which may be considered pedantic is weigh myself every day - or most days. Over the years, I have learned that whenever I made a distinct effort to reduce my carb intake by holding off on pasta, rice and bread, the weight dropped even if this was all I did. I didn't need to workout at all, just swap some roasted veggies in for rice or choose not to add noodles to my stir fry, and I could be a kilo lighter after a week. The absolute foundation to all of this is to listen to your body and take stock of how it reacts to what you put in it. I started learning this long before I heard of paleo or primal, but the fact remains it was still crystal clear.

These days, I have a few years of reading, experimenting, and adapting under my belt. I look forward to registering for the Primal Blueprint Expert Certification Course, but I don't think I will ever be one for exact measurements. Nevertheless, I'm positive I stay within the Effortless Weight Maintenance zone of just over 100g of carbs per day. It make sense since I'm not putting on weight, and feeling healthier than I ever have despite working out the less than I ever have. In 2010 I ran around 70-100km a week so I could successfully complete the Gold Coast Marathon. Today, my dedicated exercise occupies maybe 3 hours a week. It may seem hard to believe, but I'm absolutely healthier, stronger, more relaxed and generally happier now than I was 5 years ago, and I have much more free time.

This just about covers what a typical week for me looks like in terms of food. Again, it's not too complicated. Next week, I will go switch gears and go over what my fitness regimen looks like. For now though, I'd love to know what you think? What is your week like? If you've been living primally yourself, how similar is your food week to mine? If this is all new to you, do these principles seem like reasonable adjustments you could make? Let me know in the comments below or on Google+.

Primal Living Part 2 - Ancestral health in the modern world

Last week in Part 1, we introduced the key principals of the Primal Lifestyle -- namely, what to eat and how to exercise. This week, it may serve helpful to discuss some of the background of the Primal Blueprint and where it fits in with life in the 21st century. In doing so, we examine the analogy of "Ancestral Health" by which we mean, emulating the habits of our ancestors whom existed for thousands of years without any of the "lifestyle diseases" plaguing us today. The goal is to understand how to adopt these principals and live primal in the sedentary, highly processed, over-worked world the majority of us live in . 

Ancestral Health

A common misconception about wanting to live like our paleolithic counterparts is that it's about actually turning back time. It's not. Being paleo or primal isn't about camping in your backyard, producing all of your own food, or hunting stray animals. The idea is to use what we know about evolutionary biology through the use of modern science and marry it with the principles and concepts of our ancestors that evolved and lived in optimal physical condition for hundreds of thousands of years. Now, I've explained this to a few friends and the usual question is “isn’t life expectancy much longer now than it was for cavemen?” While the logic behind this question may be understandable, it's still misguided. Yes today, odds are, we will live pretty long lives - much longer than people did 5000 years ago. However, this is because we don’t have to worry about dying from the flu, an infected cut or the shock of a broken limb, not because we are more physically fit and healthy. Plus, we don’t have to worry about being attacked by bears, hyenas, snakes or crocodiles as much as we once had to. What we do have to worry about is obesity, heart-attacks, Alzheimer's disease  and strokes.

Our declining health is absolutely the most important wide spread societal problem there is. Public health care budgets are ballooning so much that it's becoming general consensus that in 30 years such support will cease to exist. Billions of public and private dollars are funneled to providing health care. What makes this worse is that all of these leading conditions creating this drain on facilities, professionals and resources are generally agreed upon to be preventable. The problem is that most people have just been given the wrong information. Fat-free, carbohydrate rich foods do not make up a healthy diet.  The truth of the matter is, outside of the last 300 years, the modern western diet wasn't even possible for our species to survive on - let alone thrive on.

Sugary foods at the base of the pyramid? Crackers healthier than Broccoli? This is crazy. 

The reality is that our ancestors simply didn’t regularly  have the carbohydrate heavy foods that have become the basis of the modern western diet. Rice, bread, corn syrup, pasta, sugar and fruit weren’t routinely eaten because they were incredibly difficult to gather and produce (impossible in some cases depending on the region). Animal meat and fresh vegetables were the staple foods that have sustained humans for hundreds of thousands of years. Fruits were seasonal, in tall, difficult to access trees  and competed for with more nimble animals and thus only available in relatively small amounts. Even honey was protected by bees. Where today we can have something sugary sweet whenever we want in large amounts, foods full of glucose and fructose were a rare treat for our primal brethren. Nevertheless, thanks to a combination of poor science, selfish economics and shortsighted governance, we have the USDA approved Food Pyramid above. Odds are, anyone who went to school after the 1960s learned this as the key to a healthy diet. I bet I didn't even need to include the image, everyone knows it. How could we have been so wrong? Not only is it backwards in term of carbohydrates, but look at those tiny little white triangles representing sugar. How on earth can the foundation of a healthy diet include sugar? If you want to refresh your memory, click here to see the Primal food pyramid. The one that is actually good for you. 

Eat less carbs, be more healthy. This is the most important rule people need to know.

This chart shows the simple relationship between the bodies natural ability to burn fat efficiently, which is what we all want and need to be able to do in order to maintain good health. It also shows the disruption carbohydrates do. Generally, and if we're speaking entirely of weight control, there is a range between 100 and 150g of carbohydrates per day that the average person can eat without gaining any weight. Any more than 150g and you enter the "Insidious Weight Gain" zone. Here, your carb intake is high enough that your body looks to them for all energy conversion rather than fat. If you train hard enough (60 minutes of intense daily workouts), then you can offset the insulin boost. If not however, any carbs not used are converted to fat and packed away, leaving a trail of sugar behind. 

Most of us aren't performance athletes

If you love it, go ahead and train like a marathon runner, but if your goals are just to look and feel good, and fight off disease, it shouldn't be that difficult. 

The reality is that food and activity are the cornerstones of any approach to improve health and the Primal way is no different. What is unique, is the principles of what you eat and why, and the significance this has on overall health. It’s a common belief that living healthy is mostly based on what you eat relative to how much you exercise. Most diets and workout plans will say this. Primal Living uses a ratio of about 80:20. Why is it then, that so many people spend 45 minutes to 2 hours of painful, boring and expensive time exercising on most days just to be healthy? Is that really necessary? If you’re a competitive soccer player or triathlete, all the power to you, it’s commendable that you have a passion and are so dedicated to it. Most of us don't have that passion. Most of us just want to feel better, look good , and reduce our chances of having a stroke while we still have a mortgage. 

Another big benefit with Primal is that I can miss workouts pretty regularly without feeling any effects. Sick, tired, busy or just not feeling like it isn't a detriment to my weight, energy levels or performance. 

Besides, this is isn’t about the triathletes. This is about the everyday worker that has a family history of heart-disease and wants to be able to play with their grandchildren. Why do they need a a carb-boost every 3 hours? Just so they can workout every afternoon? Or, do they work out every afternoon so that they can eat that jam bagel every morning and bowl of pasta every night? Is the point of eating and working out to ensure that we can and need to do both, or is the point of both to live a healthy life that satisfies us? Personally, I know I'm pretty lazy. Whether it's because of work, entertainment, leisure or rest -  I don't want to have to spend 1 hour a day exercising just to be healthy. I also don't want to feel like a failure and put on weight if something happens and I can't work out for a few days or weeks. It shouldn't be that hard and it doesn't have to be. 

Next week, I will discuss some of the similarities and differences between the other noteworthy high-protein/low-carb diets - Paleo and Atkins. I will also  try providing some insight into my personal habits and daily routines for those that may want a practical, real-world picture of an average person and how they go about maintaining their health long-term without trying very hard.

For any more information, or the scientific research behind any of this, head to MarksDailyApple as a starting point. On that note, just so we’re clear, this is heavily backed by current and increasing bodies of academic research based on health, nutrition and evolutionary biology. What I’ve tried to do is provide a very simple, layman's description of what this all entails.

Help me choose a Fitness Tracker

Fitness trackers seem to becoming common ground these days. Thanks to the capabilities of the modern smartphone, GPS tracking, activity sensing and the communication across all devices, keeping statistics on your steps, movements, distances and sleep both easy and robust. At least for those that aren't elite athletes, these these affordable and somewhat stylish fitness accessories may be the personal trainer and assistance many of us would love.

Choosing between options from +Fitbit +Jawbone +Garmin and +Runtastic is proving to be a big challenge for me. Here is a basic breakdown of the most highly touted fitness trackers I've found, and would love your insight on experiences you've had with them. 

I've been doing my research, and speaking to those that have one for about a year now in trying to decide on whether or not it would be a good purchase and if so, which one to get. My big fear is that all of that activity tracking may end up being gimmicky after a few weeks. Readings do suggest that that app activity and usage drops a fair bit after 6 months. This seems reasonable to me. People have a very hard time sticking to and caring about going to the gym or their latest running program for the long term, so it's not hard to imagine getting apathetic with this. How long could people actually be interested in knowing about their steps and calories each day? I really could see myself not caring to put it on after a couple months thinking to myself "I think I know, there's no real need by now".

That being said, the price of these is quite reasonable ranging from $80 to $200 depending on the features desired. A quick scan of comparison models and prices are as follows:

Option	Price (AUD)	Image	Features	Positives	Negatives
Fitbit Flex	$130		Steps Calories Distance Sleep	Looks good Reputable Brand Very highly rated Comfortable Unintrusive	No display
Jawbone Up	$90		Steps Calories Distance Sleep	Looks OK Highly rated	No Display Stands out more than I’d like Doesn’t wirelessly sync
Jawbone Up24	$180		Steps Calories Distance Sleep	Looks OK Highly Rated Wirelessly syncs
Garmin Vivofit	$120 (+30 for heart rate monitor)		Steps Calories Distance Sleep	Display Garmin is a top GPS brand Understated design	Bulkier than I’d like Not very stylish
Garmin Vivosmart	$200 (+30 for heart rate monitor)		Steps Calories Distance Sleep HR	Very stylish Hidden display Minimal design Garmin brand	Expensive Touch display may be annoying
Runtastic Orbit	$150		Steps Calories Distance Sleep Waterproof	Runtastic is my favourite running app Potential as app evolves Display Can be worn on wrist or as a belt clip	Doesn’t look very good.

Information and images for Garmin and Runtastic come from their respective websites. All other product information comes from retailer JB-HiFi. 

This table pretty much covers my lines of thought with these devices. My number one choice would probably be the +Fitbit Flex I like the design and seems to work very well considering the reviews and following. I really want a proper display on anything I wear on my wrist. I really do not like the idea of having to wear an accessory in addition to my watch. I could go without a watch, but I'm not doing that. I'm a watch guy. A display would also relieve me of the urge to pull out my phone to check things out. I would really prefer to be able to make a quick glance at my wrist to see things. 

The preference for a display has me leaning towards either of the Garmins or the Runtastic Orbit. The Garmin Vivos seem to be useful as a running watch at the same time, something that none of the others I've looked at can say. The minimalism of the Vivosmart is very attractive in my opinion. I do not want something I feel would be garish and draw a lot of attention from people. As before, I really like the ability to easily glance to see the time, distance or steps I've tallied throughout the day. I have seen people with Jawbones that admit that they now have yet another reason to look at their phone constantly. In a roundabout way, this may mean the Fitbit Flex again is the best one for me. The LED indicator does express information, but it wouldn't be very detailed so it wouldn't be intrusive.

+Runtastic is my running app of choice. and therefore going with the Orbit, an accessory made by them seems like a natural move. The display-issue is covered, with most of the information easily accessible without the need to pull the phone out of the pocket and draw too much attention away from what else I'm doing. The biggest flaw is the design, it seems really big and bulky. Perhaps this is why there's an included belt clip accessory. 

At the end of the day, I am confident that this isn't exactly a life and death decision. Across the board, none of these options will break the bank and they are all so similar there won't be much risk of making a poor decision. I suppose I am really just grappling with how much use I will get out of this. A display to me is important because I would like it to be a watch I wear constantly since wearing it constantly seems to be the most beneficial. That being said, if I wanted to wear a normal watch, it might be odd feeling like I have two watches on. In which case, a non-display minimal option may be best. 

What are your thoughts on this? Do yo have a fitness tracker you love? Do you have one you no longer have much interest in? Based on my comparisons and your own knowledge and experiences of these devices, which would you recommend? I'd love your hear your two cents.