Alright, let me tell you about this little project I’ve been messing with called “followhealth.” It’s been a ride, let me tell ya!
It all started a few weeks ago. I was feeling kinda blah, you know? Just generally sluggish and not really taking care of myself. I needed a kick in the butt. So, I decided to try and build something simple to help me track my basic health habits. Nothing fancy, just a little something to hold me accountable.
First, I scribbled down what I wanted to track. This included:
- Water intake: I’m terrible at drinking enough water.
- Sleep: Aiming for 7-8 hours, but let’s be real…
- Exercise: Even just a 20-minute walk counts!
- Meals: Just a quick note about what I ate.
Next up was figuring out how to actually build this thing. I’m no coding whiz, but I know enough to be dangerous. I settled on using a simple spreadsheet to start. Yeah, yeah, I know, super basic. But hey, it works! I created columns for each category (date, water, sleep, exercise, meals) and just started filling it in every day.
The first few days were pretty good! I was actually motivated to fill everything out. I even added a little notes section for each day to jot down how I was feeling. But then, life happened. I missed a day. Then another. The spreadsheet started collecting digital dust. Classic, right?
I realized I needed something more… engaging. Spreadsheets are boring. So, I looked for a health tracking app. I tried a few, but they were all too complicated or too focused on things I didn’t care about (like calorie counting, ugh).
I started thinking about building something a little more custom, still simple, but more accessible. I began messing around with a basic note-taking app on my phone, created a tag ‘#health’ and started logging stuff there. It was surprisingly better than the spreadsheet! Way easier to just quickly type something in on the go.
This evolved into writing short scripts in Python to parse the data from my notes, nothing fancy but it allowed me to view metrics over time. I can now easily look at reports like:
- Average hours of sleep per week
- Days of the week I exercise most
- Daily Water intake trends
The biggest thing I learned is that it’s gotta be easy and accessible. If it takes too much effort, I’m not gonna do it. The ‘#health’ tagging thing is working pretty well for now. It’s not perfect, but it’s progress. Maybe someday I’ll actually build a proper app, but for now, this is good enough to keep me on track (most of the time!).
I will keep using the note-taking app method and create more complex Python scripts to parse and report data. It might turn into an actual app one day, who knows?!
