You Should be Able to Take Your Data With You
As you may be following, I’ve lost a lot of weight in the last year. See more about my journey and process here:
How I lost 70 pounds in one year through a fad diet and a much simpler, more sustainable way
One of the major keys to my success was TRACKING.
Tracking involves inputting data.
I tracked my food, weights lifted, exercises done, reps, max weights, bike rides, walks, weight, and progress pictures, which you probably don’t want to see.
Over the last year and a half, I’ve been meticulous about tracking things. I use an iPhone and things are synced to Apple Health, as I know I can export it out of there if I want to.
I made a fatal mistake in not tracking some things outside of an app, and it bit me.
I was using a white-label version of Trainerize with my fitness coach. My time with that coach expired, so I needed to shift to something else. Unfortunately, when that expired, I lost all my weight-lifting-related stats and progress pictures.
This example really frustrates me because it comes down to a bunch of different beliefs about the internet, technology, data, user experience, and more.
There are a few different ways I could have handled this, but let’s define a couple things first.
What Am I Paying For?
The old adage that if it’s free, you’re the product is true.
There’s another aspect to this, which is what it is that you are actually paying for when you are paying for something. With my trainer, I was paying for two things:
- Community
- Workout routines The community is by far the thing I was paying the most for. But I also really wanted to have to NOT think about what I would do for exercise every day. I wanted someone to tell me what to do and I didn’t want to have to think about it beyond that.
They loaded the exercises up in their white-label version of Trainerize, and then every day, I would look at what I had to do, and just do it. I really liked that simplicity.
But by putting all of my workouts into Trainerize, when I left my trainer, I lost all that data. I lost the historical values, the routines (which, if that is what I was paying for, that makes perfect sense), and I lost my progress pictures.
Again, not the end of the world, but frustrating nonetheless.
Walled Gardens
Trainerize is a walled garden. Walled Gardens are places on the internet where access is limited. Sometimes this is a good thing.
For example, Strava is an app that I use for tracking my cycling, and sometimes running. I give that app permission to READ workouts from Apple Health, but not WRITE workouts to Apple Health.
Strava is also a walled garden, but I like it that way, because I know that all my cycling is saved there (and some runs) so I can see how I did on a 31 mile bike ride in 2012. Also, I use a bike computer to track these rides, and it uploads to Strava automatically, and it writes to Apple Health. I don’t allow Strava to write to Apple Health, because then I would get duplicate entries.
Sometimes, walled gardens are nice. Other times, they are not.
Trainerize’s app doesn’t write weight lifting stats to Apple Health because it is too complex. It just records time and heart rate.
Whose data is this anyway?
When I entered all that data into Trainerize, I made a commitment to them that they could house my data and that my trainer could see how I was doing and that I would have access to that data. Every week, I could look back at what I did the week before and know how I should increase the weight. I could see historical data that helped me make better decisions about lifting.
I thought that was my data. I painstakingly entered it in every day for 18 months.
I did the work, and I want to still have the data that is mine.
The workouts, part of the product I was paying for, aren’t really mine, and I’m ok with not having access to those anymore.
But all my logs, those are mine, or at least should be mine. I should be able to take them with me when I leave that particular app.
One of the things that is really important to me is to be able to take my data with me when I go somewhere.
Small example. I have taken simple, text-based notes for well over 15 years. I still have notes from my first non-teaching job, including this one on Project Management. That file is still easily accessible, easy to read, and I know I can still access it. This is how our data should be with all these tools that we use.
Where we’re at now
Thankfully, after some working and phone calls, I was able to get access to the data, but my challenge is still getting the data that I want out of that system. It’s pretty much impossible. Well, I can go through each little bit individually, but it’s certainly not worth the effort.
So, anticipating this day would come, I started working out with an app called Strong. It has export functionality, and this is what the export looks like:
Full Body Saturday, February 24, 2024 at 7:10 AM
Cable Pull Down Set 1: 45 lb × 20 Set 2: 55 lb × 20 Set 3: 65 lb × 20
Seated Overhead Press (Dumbbell) Set 1: 110 lb × 12 Set 2: 110 lb × 12 Set 3: 110 lb × 12
Incline Bench Press (Dumbbell) Set 1: 110 lb × 12 Set 2: 110 lb × 8 Set 3: 110 lb × 8
Deadlift (Barbell) Set 1: 135 lb × 12 Set 2: 135 lb × 10 Set 3: 155 lb × 8 Set 4: 155 lb × 8
Kellebell Sumó Deadlift Set 1: 70.5 lb × 12 Set 2: 70.5 lb × 12 Set 3: 70.5 lb × 12 Set 4: 70.5 lb × 12
Squat (Bodyweight) Set 1: 100 reps https://link.strong.app/avjotwhh
Look how nice that looks! Simple, clean, easy. I can see my weights, reps, and sets. Perhaps a CSV would be better. That’s just for a single workout.
The good thing is that since it is my data, I can get it.
If I want to export all of my data, I can do that also, and it does export in csv, which means that I can then take it somewhere else, or include it in my own tracking.
So, what?
So, who cares if I can track my data or not? Well, I do. The way these tools are designed, we should be in charge of our personal data, whether it “matters” or not. PII (Personally Identifiable Information) is data that is supposedly closely held, but the seemingly weekly data breach notices that I receive show that my data is probably not safe.
But perhaps my consolation is that most of these companies are so disorganized they wouldn’t even be able to understand my data if they had it anyway!
Have a Good Life.