HOW I TRACK MY EXERCISE
I track my exercise with Fitbit Versa “fitness watch”. It doesn’t share its data with Apple Health and the exercise categories don’t match, so I came up with a workaround.
When I start exercising, I run “Exercise” (Treeni) shortcut, which:
- Asks what kind of exercise I’m about to do.
- Starts a new timer at Timing app.
- Logs to my “Time management” (Ajanhallinta) base that I’m starting exercise.
- Reminds me to start exercise in Fitbit.
- Sends a Pushcut notification that says “End Exercise” (Lopeta Treeni) to wait for me to stop the exercise.
When I stop the exercise, I first end the exercise at the Fitbit and then click the “End Exercise” notficiation Pushcut sent me earlier (because it’s easier for me to find it from notifications than anywhere else).
This runs a shortcut called “End Exercise” (Lopeta treeni), that:
- Runs a shortcut that stops the Timing timer/tracker that was running and asks how I’m feeling (the same shortcut I run in mornings – how good/focused/energized I feel, what feelings I experience and a comment about my feelings/mood).
- Shows a Pushcut notification “Export Exercise” (Vie treeni) and opens Fitbit app on my phone, so that I can update the exercise info from my Fitbit Versa to the app and Fitbit cloud.
When Fitbit Versa has updated my exercise info, I click that Pushcut notification “Export Exercise” and it starts a scenario in Integromat.com 1.image1632×1294 169 KB
Here’s the whole scenario in Integromat:image2268×946 182 KB
The Integromat scenario is triggered by Pushcut. Then it queries Fitbit API for the last exercise. Then it finds the record ID for that day’s Daily Summary record (to be added to exercise record to link it to Daily Summary table). If the exercise was Walking, it takes the “lower route”, if it was something else it takes the upper route that doesn’t deal with kilometers. (I don’t run, bike or swim.)
The rest of the steps are written on this image:image1632×1632 375 KB
When the Intergromat scenario has saved my exercise info to Dropbox as json-file, it triggers a Pushcut notification on my phone (and iPad) that tells me that I can now export the details to Apple Health. I tap on the notification and start “Exercise to Apple Health” (Treeni Apple Healthiin) shortcut.
In the pictures the ones with English are from my iPad that doesn’t have Apple Health app, so there’s one screen capture in Finnish from my iPhone to show you what kind of things I log to Apple Health.
Since Apple Health has different health categories than Fitbit, the shortcut asks me to choose a new name for the Exercise.image1632×859 210 KBimage1632×1161 228 KB
So here’s how my exercise info looks like in Airtable. Notice how the exercise info is appended with my comments (Kommentti) and feeling/focus/energy rating from “Feeling” Shortcut. Those are also logged to “Fiilikset” table where I have all my Feeling-records.
