TECH can’t solve all of our problems – but it helped me shed nearly four stone over the summer, so I can’t complain.
I’m The Sun’s technology editor so I spend a lot of time testing gadgets, but I didn’t spend enough time moving it turned out – and I was ballooning without realising it.
Then I stepped on the scale one day and, suddenly horrified, I vowed to trim the fat.
In February 2024, my weight had crept up to 15st, nearly 210lbs. I was a men’s large clothing size, and my BMI was officially overweight.
Seven months later, by the end of that September, I’d dropped 50lb to just over 11st – 160lb – and could fit comfortably into a men’s medium.
It wasn’t all tech, of course. I ate less food and moved more. But I’m convinced it would’ve been way harder without gadgets.
The thing about losing weight is that it’s simple, but definitely not easy.
We all know how it works: burn more calories than you consume.
But in a world where inhaling a slab of cake is much more tempting than getting up for a 6am run, the calories often win.
As it happens, I love cake and I don’t love running, so I was already on the back foot. And my back foot was getting heavier by the day.
I also wasn’t about to squirt Ozempic into my thigh or book a flight to Turkey for a nip-tuck.
So here’s how I got the weight off… with a little help from technology.
GADGET #1 – AN APPLE WATCH
First up is the Apple Watch. Important note here: it doesn’t need to be an Apple Watch.
But it does have to be something that tracks heart rate and calories – not just steps.
I used an Apple Watch Series 9 (and then the Series 10 when it came out in September), but any decent Fitbit, Garmin, Samsung, or Google watch with a heart-rate monitor will do.
The Apple Watch Series 10 starts at £399, but there’s a cheaper Apple Watch SE out for £219. And you can bag some Fitbit models for even less.
It’s that heart measurement that allows watches to make a fairly decent guess at how many calories you’re burning each day.
I found this massively useful for two reasons.
Firstly, knowing my calories burned let me work out how many I could comfortably eat. Yum.
Secondly, it’s bloody motivational. The Apple Watch does a great job of this with its “Move” ring that monitors how many calories you’ve burned throughout the day.
If you stack this on top of your basal metabolic rate (BMR), which is how many calories you burn simply by existing, then you have a total number for each day.
Eat less than that big number and the weight goes down.
How quickly I was losing the weight would depend on the gap between what I was eating and that big number.
Looking back, I was probably losing in the region of 1lb to 1.5lbs a week, which is about right for healthy weight loss.
Trying to close your Apple Watch Move ring is great fun, and basically turns movement into a game.
And you can set your target of how many calories you want to burn as high or low as you like.
I started out with it set at around 500 calories, but I’ve since bumped it up to 750 now that I exercise more regularly.
You’ll work out pretty quickly what a reasonable amount of movement is for yourself. If you’ve got an active job, you might already be well on your way.
The good news is that almost everything you do adds to the ring, even just walking to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Brilliant.
GADGET #2 – WITHINGS SMART SCALE
I also had a little help from France. No, I didn’t start guzzling entire bottles of wine in the hope that grapes would sort me out.
There’s a French company called Withings that makes health gadgets – including “smart” weighing scales. For your body, not baking.
It’s difficult to eyeball how much fat I was dropping (if any), so a scale was essential.
Part of the faff of weighing yourself is having to take note of it.
You can write it down or manually log it in an app, but I found even that was a pain.
What’s great about the Withings Body Comp scale (£179.95) is that it beams your daily weight straight into your apps for you.
So it’ll pop up in the Withings app, and then automatically sync to the iPhone’s Health app too.
If I’m putting in all of this effort, I want the freedom to be as lazy as possible with monitoring it.
What’s great about these scales is that they also measure your body fat percentage.
That’s a record of the percentage of your body that’s made up of fat (versus muscle or bone or water).
DON’T JUST FOCUS ON WEIGHT – TOP TRAINER REVEALS STATS TO WATCH
The Sun spoke to Ollie Thompson (@olliethompsonhealth), one of the UK’s top personal trainers and founder of Welltolead, who revealed how weight isn’t the only stat worth watching…
If you’re like most people, you probably focus too much on the number on the scale when it comes to getting fit.
But weight alone doesn’t tell the full story, and obsessing over it can hide the progress you’re actually making.
Instead, grab a fitness tracker and start paying attention to a few other stats that reveal more about your fitness.
Stat #1 – Body fat percentage
This shows how much of your body is made up of fat compared to lean mass.
Tracking it is a great way to see which way your body composition is going, whether you’re building muscle and gaining some fat or purely losing fat.
The gold standard of tracking this will be something like a DEXA scan, but you can also use fat calipers or a smart scale to give you a number to work with.
Stat #2 – Resting heart rate
A lower resting heart rate can be a sign that your heart is getting stronger and more efficient.
This crucial stat is easy to track with a smartwatch or fitness wearable and can provide you with a clear measure of your cardiovascular health.
If you’re doing your cardio, you should see your resting heart rate (RHR) gradually drop.
Stat #3 – Heart rate variability (HRV)
This measures the tiny variations in time between heartbeats, controlled by your autonomic nervous system.
A higher HRV shows your parasympathetic system (the ‘rest and digest’ side) is active, meaning you’re well-recovered.
A lower HRV can signal stress, overtraining, or poor recovery.
Sleep, nutrition, and hydration also impact HRV, so it’s more than just your workouts.
You can track it with a smartwatch, but don’t compare your HRV to others – it’s your personal baseline that matters.
Focus on the trends over time to gauge your recovery status.
When I started, it was about 24.5%. These days, it’s between 12% and 13%.
Whether it’s bang-on accurate or not doesn’t particularly matter – because all I really needed was to see a rough trend of it going downwards.
Maybe I’m actually now 11% or 15%. The actual number isn’t the point. I just know that the line was pointing down and not up.
It’s worth noting that weight can shoot up or down depending on a load of things: the water I’ve drank, the food I’ve eaten, and even whether I’ve been to the loo.
So day to day, it wouldn’t really look like much was happening on the scales.
But then when I would step back (figuratively, by changing Week to Month on the app), I could see a clear downwards trend for both weight and body fat.
It was reassuring, and very motivational. I was on track for fitness greatness. Or at least a new pair of jeans with a smaller waist.
Aside from logging your weight and body composition, the scales can also check up on the health of your sweat glands and even the condition of your arteries.
That’s great but one health crisis at a time, please.
GADGET #3 – PELOTON BIKE
I can’t tell you enough how important riding on my gym’s Peloton Bike was.
Sure, I dieted – and you absolutely can’t outrun (or outride) a bad diet.
But the Peloton got me moving in a consistent way like never before.
It is genuinely an incredible machine. If you’ve struggled to enjoy exercise previously, go try a Peloton and come back to me. Please. It might genuinely change your life.
If you’re not familiar with Peloton Bike, it’s basically an indoor cycling machine with a big touchscreen attached.
You’ve got a big red knob in the middle that makes it harder or easier to pedal.
And the screen is filled with a friendly (and uber-toned) cast of fitness instructors who will guide you on your workout.
Maybe it’s a beginner ride, a ‘90s pop classics climb, or a high-intensity interval session set to thrashing death metal.
There’s seemingly no end of genres and ride styles, with thousands of classes to choose from.
The instructor will tell you which way to turn the knob to set the resistance during the ride.
And then you’ll follow instructions on how fast to pedal, which is logged as cadence on the screen.
WEIGHT A MINUTE...THIS IS GREAT!
STAYING motivated is hard, The Sun's Sean Keach writes, even with the help of gadgets…
The problem with gaining unwanted weight is that it usually doesn’t happen all at once.
It’s a slow thickening over months and years – until one day you realise you’re now very thick indeed, and have a lot of work to do.
That’s daunting. I remember the sinking feeling. I was 210lbs at 6ft, giving me a BMI of 28.5 – firmly in the “overweight” category.
And if it took months to gain, it was probably going to take months to lose, I thought.
But I had to remind myself that it wouldn’t just be six or seven months of pure misery. There would be wins along the way.
Thankfully I was right. I felt stairs become easier to climb and brisk walks could be brisker still.
Jumpers and shirts that were just a little too tight suddenly looked how I’d hoped they would.
Once-tight jeans were now loose, giving me a nice excuse to buy a fresh pair. They were knackered anyway.
All of this – plus taking regular progress pictures and tracking the pounds – was fantastic motivation.
So whether you’ve got weeks, months, or years ahead, just remember that there’s plenty of joy to be had on the journey – long before you hit your goal.
You can follow leaderboards on the panel if you like, or just swipe them away and cycle alone.
There are also scenic rides with no instructors, if you prefer. I’ll often slap my AirPods in with a bit of dance music and pretend that I’m cycling through the Alps or even the streets of London.
It’s immensely addictive.
For a start, it’s just good fun. Sometimes it can feel like you’re just dancing – but without the faff, cost, and deep next-morning regret of going to a nightclub.
But it’s also very easy to see how you’re progressing. You can tell you’re getting better. And you get better pretty fast.
It was shocking to see how my resting heart rate fell through the floor once I started using a Peloton.
That might sound bad, but it’s a good thing. It means my heart isn’t having to work as hard to keep me alive.
Before Peloton, my daily average RHR was about 63bpm. Now it’s around 49-50bpm each day. You’re welcome, heart.
It’s also low impact as a type of exercise. I don’t hate running, but I’m not obsessed with that smashing feeling in my knees as I heave my body weight into the ground over and over again on a treadmill or the pavement.
For most of the time on Peloton, you’re just sitting, moving your legs in a smooth rotation. Sometimes you might stand up and ride for a bit, but it still feels less physically brutal versus sprinting around the park.
I’ve never been chased by a dog on the Peloton, either. Or rained on.
Of course all of the calories burned get logged via my fitness tracker and then onto my phone.
So it’s very easy to tell what I’ve done that day and work out whether I’m on track.
The problem with the Peloton versus the other two gadgets I used is the cost. A Peloton Bike will set you back £1,599, which isn’t cheap.
You can knock a bit of money off by buying a used one, which comes in at £1,299.
And there are pay-over-time options if that’s easier.
The thrifty option is just to check if one of your local gyms has one.
But you might find that you’re better off paying monthly for a Peloton Bike instead, because then you don’t have to leave your house and you can always flog it if you get bored.
Another cheap option is to snap up a regular indoor bike and pay for a Peloton subscription to run your workouts. It won’t be as synced up, but it’s a nice way to save. And if money is really tight, you can find plenty of free guided workouts on YouTube.
What the Peloton Bike has done for my health feels, to me, almost priceless. I now use it almost every day. It’s so fun that I easily burn hundreds of calories per ride without an ounce of misery.
Of course even with all the gadgets in the world, you’ll still need to watch what you eat to shed unwanted weight.
But these gadgets made it so much easier to move in the right direction that I think it probably would’ve taken twice as long without them.
Think of all the cake that I would’ve missed.