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Exercise. IoT has made great strides in measuring physical exercise
activities. Many wearables can synchronize exercise data to various websites.
It is fair to state that a small set of wearables enables a typical user to record
an accurate picture of their exercise activities. In this context, we would like
to point out that in most people’s lives, there are clearly identifiable periods
when meaningful exercise takes place. As such, for large portions of the day,
these sensors do not produce meaningful data.
Diet. In most people’s lives there are identifiable events when food
and drinks are consumed. Just as with exercise data, we are interested in
developing a picture of when, how much, and what kind of nourishment
a person consumes. Unlike exercise data, when it comes to entering diet
information, much of the data entry is manual at this time. Similar to exercise
data, diet information comes in bursts. Even if we were to read off data
continuously, the data is meaningful only during certain times of the day,
i.e., when people actually consume food.
Websites such as “myfitnesspal.com” take advantage of the fact that
many people are creatures of habit. They simplify the data entry process
by giving the user the ability to select from prior entries rather than having
to re-enter detailed information about a food dish. Another way to automate
the process of maintaining diet information is by tying a meal planner to a site
that maintains information about a person’s diet. Websites such as “yummly.
com” offer diet information associated with a recipe. We imagine that res-
taurants, by way of an itemized bill augmented by nutrition information, will
soon enable the automatic entering of diet information by uploading it to diet
management software. For this to occur, think of augmenting “expensify.
com” with diet information and a plug-in for your “myfitnesspal.com”
account.
Fitness. Given diet and exercise data, one can now track whether a tar-
geted balance of exercise and diet has been reached (Fig. 7.2). Websites such
as “myfitnesspal.com” keep track of past exercise and diet activities and
use various graphics to indicate the degree to which exercise and diet are
balanced. While one can create a basic model of a person’s physical fitness,
these models are passive; they merely report fitness data.
We believe that in the future, we will see applications that, in addition to
compiling an accurate real-time model of a person’s fitness, are authorized to
act to maintain it. For example, in an increasingly wired world, a fitness appli-
cation could refuse to pre-approve a meal in a restaurant that is judged as not
fulfilling set dietary goals. Alternatively, the fitness application may suggest a
walk or bike ride instead of the use of either a car or public transportation.