We are coming up to the end of the year and closely following that is everyone’s New Year’s resolutions.  The most popular resolution that people make is to lose weight and be healthier, and for good reason – it helps to extend lives and make quality of life better too.

We come across a lot of tech products aimed to help people get and be healthier and also to lose weight, so I wanted to have a crack at using them to help myself lose some pud before the plum pudding season.

My backstory

I am a former competitive bodybuilder, and although I wasn’t very good, I lived, ate and slept the bodybuilder lifestyle.  Now, 25 years later, I have genetically high cholesterol and diseased coronary arteries (heart arteries – the ones that cause heart attacks when blocked).  

I had been on top of that and my weight for a few years now but in the last six months, I have had injury after injury (51 is too old for basketball, it seems), and as such, my weight has ballooned from a comfortable 88kg to very close to 100kg.  My doc wasn’t pleased with me last time I saw him, so there is no time like the present to start healthy habits and try to get back into shape and be healthier.

As you would expect from a tech writer, I plan to use a few tech gadgets to get my fitness and health back on track.  So what are they?

Fitness products

I have always been the default tester for fitness products at EFTM and I love it.  Fitness has been my passion since I was 20, so when I get a chance to try something new, I jump at it.

I have settled on a few different products for this fitness kick:

Surely with all these products, losing weight will be simple?

I’ve reviewed most of the above products already so you can easily follow the links to them to see why I’ve chosen them but here’s a quick synopsis:

Renpho MorphoScan Nova | Smart Body Composition Scale

It’s obviously essential to track your weight, and not just weight, but your body composition.  Many people may gain muscle while dieting, thanks to improved nutrition and new weight-training exercises and thus the scales may lie about the actual effectiveness of a diet or fitness regime.

The Renpho Morphoscan Nova body composition helps with that by measuring your weight and body composition, including stats such as body fat percentage (subcutaneous and visceral), muscle percentage, bone percentage, and body water percentage – everything you could need to know, all from the comfort of your own home.

It connects to your phone via Bluetooth, making it easy to compare your new measurement to your older measurements.

Renpho LYNX Smart Ring | Wearable Health Tracker

As with most smart rings, the LYNX Smart Ring offers a lot of health metrics, all from a simple, easy-to-wear smart ring.  With it, you can get metrics such as heart rate monitoring, sleep analysis, activity monitoring, mental stress and more.

I like the smart rings because they are easy to wear, unobtrusive and provide decent basic health and fitness metrics.  A broken finger and a new love of golf have meant my previous smart rings are no longer feasible.

WHOOP MG

This is the king of fitness and health tracking.  You will see many pro athletes using them, even while performing – I saw it on many golfers’ wrists at the Australian Open last weekend, Ben Stokes wore a white one on his wrist while fielding, and I even saw the great Steven Smith wearing one using a bicep band (on his front arm) while batting.  

You will see many athletes with them on if you look closely while they are being interviewed etc, and there’s a reason why – the metrics they provide offer them the best possible chance of performing at their peak when they need to.  So why should we, the average Joes and Jills, take advantage of this?  We should be using everything at our disposal to be healthy, so this is where WHOOP fits in.

Zwift Ride with Kickr Core

Gym memberships are great but sometimes you just want to do a quick 30 minute session and by the time you drive 10-15 minutes to the gym, do the workout and then back again a good hour or so has been used.  For these sessions, I prefer an in-home exercise – a ZWIFT bike.

Zwift Ride is extremely popular among cycling enthusiasts and professionals alike, but it can also serve as a basic fitness tool.  Zwift offers a multitude of rides you can perform to get your cardiovascular exercise in, or you can make your own.  Personally, I usually use one of my own creations, but the option to try something someone else has made is a nice change of pace.

Renpho Active+ Thermacool Massage Gun

I may be over my injuries but I am now 52 years old so warm up and recovery are especially important to prevent any further injuries.  The Renpho Active+ Thermacool Massage Gun is perfect for that – not just a massage gun but one with heating and cooling attachments.  

If you check out the review, you can see that it has all the usual attachments that come with massage guns, but it also has a massage attachment that applies heat or cold to the area being pounded.

Where to from here?

I’m going to diet and exercise as I should have been doing all along and every two weeks I am going to update you with my health metrics and how each product has helped me – if it has. 

In the end, I want to check out these products and see what their best uses are and whether we average Joes (and Jills) can benefit from them.  There are so many products out there, and it isn’t easy to know which you could/should use in your new, healthier lifestyle in 2026.  

Hopefully, I can help a bit with that.  Stay tuned.