It's totally insane. You have to see it to believe it.
I created a new bot in Grok Bot. I called it CoachBot. I seem to like putting bot in the name of my bots.
What I wanted, and this is something I've been working on for quite a while, is just trying to keep up with health and fitness and weight. A lot of you out there probably have the same problem. It just gets out of control.
Before I had twins, I was doing three hours of sport a day. It didn't really matter, because I was burning off so many calories. Lately it's been very, very difficult to get back into that. Trying to get 20 minutes of sport in has been hard enough as it is.
I know you need to walk 10k steps. Sometimes I manage it, sometimes I don't. I eat pretty healthy because I'm gluten-free and I cook a lot of my own food. I don't really eat a lot of fast food or takeout. But for some reason the weight just keeps piling on instead of coming off. That's very frustrating. My age is all against me. My body is literally just fighting against me.
I've tried to research all this. I've listened to podcasts, watched videos, read blog posts, read tweets. Nothing seems to be working.
So I decided to create a bot called CoachBot, in charge of my nutrition and what exercises I should be doing to get the most benefit. It's a hard one, because when you watch a video or read a post, nothing is particularly aimed at you, at what you have and at your lifestyle.
The garage gym
First I showed it a picture of the gym equipment I have in my garage. So it now knows exactly what I have and what we're working with.
I told it my weight loss goals, how much time I can dedicate a day, and that sometimes I forget because I'm too busy on the computer. I asked it to nudge me and say, "Hey, get out there and do some sport." And a couple of other things, like what I'm eating.
Protein
A lot of what I've been reading lately is about protein. All of you who do a lot of sport and weights will say, "You got to eat your protein, protein, protein." I hear ya. I do not understand what y'all mean when it comes to how many grams of protein. I have absolutely no clue.
I thought I was eating enough, because I'm eating like twice the amount of things I think are protein. Today I learned it's just not at all. Everything I ate didn't even meet the minimum my body would need, not for weight loss, but for building. Building muscle, building strength. To do strength training we need protein, and oh my god, for me it seems so hard to eat protein. I'm just not a protein person. I thought I was. I'm so not.
I ate breakfast thinking, yay, there's soy milk in there, there's protein in there. Damn, it's not good enough. I had fish for lunch. A whole fish. I was like, that's so much protein. It's so not. I had like two fish. Still not good enough. I had some bolognese and then a Greek yogurt. No, that yogurt doesn't have enough protein. I'm like, what?
I've been chatting to my coach the whole day. Just saying, this is what I've eaten. So it now has a whole idea of everything I've eaten. It told me to add a couple of spoonfuls of chia seeds into the yogurt. That would make it a little bit better. Tiny little things. Little improvements as I go along my day.
It's also quite nice because coach told me it's only the first day. You didn't meet your protein target, but don't worry, there's always tomorrow. It's also told me which yogurts I need to buy that have more protein, so I can change my shopping. I can even ask if it should go and order it for me, which is quite cool.
That's the food thing. I learned a hell of a lot today, and I think I'm better prepared for tomorrow.
The exercises
Then the exercises. It gave me a whole list of strength training stuff for the gym. Do these reps, and I'm like, oh my god, I can't follow a list of text. I need to follow along. I'm that type of person. I need a video.
So I was doing a full body with dumbbells YouTube video and it was great, or so I thought. I really liked it. I did it for 20 minutes, then I said to the bot, okay, I've done this, and I sent it the link. I said, give it a watch and tell me what you think.
CoachBot watched the video. It listed out all the exercises, then told me it wasn't good enough because I only have five kilo dumbbells, and that's just not enough for strength training for the weight that I am. There's me thinking I'd done 20 minutes of great exercise because I was sweating. It said yeah, you got your cardio up a little bit, you got your heart rate up, but you didn't actually build any strength.
I've been doing these exercises for like two months and now I'm stabbed in the heart. Very cool that I learned this now and I can improve it.
It said you have a TRX, so go ahead and do these instead of the dumbbells, because my body weight with a TRX is more strength than the dumbbells. That's something I didn't even think about. I don't really use the TRX, so I'm not really sure how to do those exercises right.
I still can't follow a list of stuff. I asked, can you find me a video I could follow with all the things you've just told me to do? It went off and sent me a video. It told me to do that on Wednesday, and if it's too easy it will find another one. I'm just blown away.
I started looking through the video and I see what it means. Same exercises I was doing with the dumbbells, the same movements, just using the TRX instead. Oh my god, this is so cool.
I used to always go to a gym. With kids, life has changed. I can't go to the gym. I've built myself a little home gym. I have no idea what I'm doing, and now I feel like I've got some help. Somebody who knows what I want, what I have, and can tailor a program for me.
I have no idea if this will work. If I'm going to lose weight, build more strength, eat more protein. I don't know. But on the first day we've worked together, and I spent a lot of time with CoachBot today, I feel pretty confident I'm actually going to move in a better direction than I was.
I'm pretty impressed. I think you should all try it. Build yourself a little CoachBot, a nutrition and fitness coach, to get a program tailored to you and learn the nutritional needs that you need. It is insane. It is amazing what can be done. I'm just so blown away by this.
On that note, it's given out to me because I haven't done enough steps today. So I'm going to hit the treadmill and get those extra 2,000 steps in, because otherwise my bot's going to be angry with me.
Top comments (0)