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Going for Green - Turning Your Health Circle Green
Your health circle (2nd button push) is composed of 3 segments - heart, energy/calories, and health/progress towards your goal. If you are on a weight loss or lifestyle improvement goal, you may get quite frustrated trying to get these lights to go green. It is not easy!!
The first week you wore the M2 it was easy. You probably had everything green all of the time. Well, now it has switched from learning about you to coaching you - pushing you to reach the goal you have set. The M2 is not just a pedometer. It is a smart, personal coaching system. As you show it you can achieve targets it sets, it will raise them on you. It is trying to get you to the level of exercise needed to meet the goal you have set for yourself.
If you are lucky enough to be in a maintenance mode and your lifestyle level is stable, then your calorie and heart healthy targets are probably stable also. You should not be having much difficulty getting green. For you, wearing the M2 is kind of like weighing yourself everyday. We know the best way to keep weight off is to never to let more than 3 lbs accumulate before getting rid of them. By wearing the M2, you are making sure that you are staying on track and keeping up with your heart healthy activity.
If your goal is to lose weight or increase your lifestyle level, you have a much greater challenge. You may find it almost impossible to get green on your health circle. You really need to just focus on your daily gauge (the first button push) and try to make that go green every day. If you are like most of us, you will find that your activity level goes up once you start to wear your M2. Just pushing to get your daily circle all the way green is enough to keep you moving more than you were before you put on your M2. That is accomplishing your main purpose, even if you do not get your health circle green. Don’t get discouraged by the number of stars by your name or points being shown. You have no idea what other people’s goals are, so you don’t know if their stars mean they are working harder than you or not. Just focus on your daily gauge and your results.
But all that said, let’s look at what it takes to get green on your health circle:
OVERALL RESULTS: This chart shows you a rolling average of the 7 previous days. It does NOT include today’s results. So if you look at your energy chart, ignore today’s bar and average together the results of the previous 7 bars. For your health circle lights, this information is always "one day late" in it’s helpfulness. You can meet your target on this page and not turn your lights green.
ENERGY/CALORIES: The light for energy is using the rolling average of the previous 6 days plus today’s results so far. It is comparing that average to TODAY’s target. If the average is 70% or less of TODAY’s target, you will get a red light. If the average is between 70% and 100% of TODAY’s target, you will get a yellow light. Only if your average meets or exceeds today’s target will you get a green light. You can see that if you are on a weight loss goal and the M2 is bumping up your target every 2-3 days and you are keeping up with it and it is comparing your past 7 day results to its new target that it could be virtually impossible to get green here. The more you do, the more it will ask. Think about it like a carrot hanging just in front of your face. You keep going for it but you can’t reach it because as you move it moves. Green should be fairly easy to achieve once you change to a maintenance target, but first you have to get there.
HEART: The light for heart is using the rolling average of the previous 6 days plus today’s results so far. It is comparing that average to TODAY’s target. Only if your average meets or exceeds today’s target will you get a green light. You can see that if you are keeping up with your caloric targets that you are automatically raising your lifestyle level. As you raise your lifestyle level, you are raising your heart target. The good news is that you will max out at the competitive level. The highest target it will ever set for you is 60 heart healthy minutes, so if you can get your heart healthy minutes up to 60 per day, you can turn this light green and keep it there. If you are on a maintenance target and are keeping your lifestyle level consistent from day to day, you will also have a stable heart target and should be able to achieve green fairly easily just by focusing on heart healthy activity. See the heart healthy segment for help here.
HEALTH: The light for health is using a complex formula to predict where you will be A WEEK FROM TODAY IF you keep up the activity level you have shown over the past 7 days and continue to meet the goals it sets for you each day. Obviously, if you are on a loss goal and it is upping your targets every day, your last 7 days of activity is not going to cut it when compared to your expected activity for the next 7 days. Once you switch from a loss goal to a maintenance goal, it should become fairly easy to maintain green here.
SUMMARIZING: You don’t know what other people’s goals are, so you can’t get worried that they have more stars by their name than you do. The fact that you have less stars does not necessarily mean you are working less, it may just mean you have farther to go on you goal. Forget about stars, forget about points, and focus on your daily gauge. DID YOU TURN IT ALL GREEN TODAY. GO FOR THAT GREEN!!
Accept that if you are on a loss goal the M2 is a personal coach and it is going to keep pushing you to meet your weight loss goal and because it keeps pushing you to do a bit more, you are probably not going to see green. Go for yellow on the health circle. Let it push you as far as it can. If you have issues that you just can’t go any further, pick a level and stay at that number of calories each day until you can go for more. If you do not keep up with the targets it sets for you, it will dial things back a bit.
On the health circle, whether you are getting all green or all yellow, you have to admit, you are moving more than you were before you put the M2 on. Use your charts, get yourself moving EVERY day. Use the M2 graphs to keep yourself honest about what you are or are not doing. Own your results and don’t worry about what other people think about your lights/stars/points.
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