Week 1 - Day 0
And so it begins
Current Stats: 124.7 lbs; Body Fat Weight: 26.7%
It took me a while to figure out how exactly I wanted to approach this experiment. There were several issues I had to figure out first:
What was the best way to prompt the AI into making it understand what I wanted?
How long should I do this for?
What end goal was I trying to achieve?
The best way I could come up with solving the first problem was, I would start up an AI chat presenting it with the situation and figure it out from there. The classic “hope for the best” solution. The way I’ve been using AI thus far was, asking it whatever came to mind in the same way I’d talk to a friend and seeing what happens. This has worked well in the past, depending on the problem. Since I couldn’t think of a better solution, I figured that was how we’d approach it.
The second was duration; how long should I do this experiment for? Because, even now, this entire thing is an experiment. I have no idea if it’s going to work or be beneficial to me in any way. I do know that I want a healthy sample size to figure out it’s success or not. So, I settled on 6 months. If in 6 months I don’t see any improvements, we’ll stop.
Finally was the goal, because what’s the point of doing this entire thing? My very general goal was to “get healthier” but that can mean a lot of things. What’s healthier to me? How can I judge that? Is it just eating better or something else? It was a lot to think about.
To most people, I’m pretty healthy and active in life. I usually walk 10,000-20,000 steps every day, if not more. In fact, I had accomplished a goal of mine back in September of walking 100,000 steps in a single day (that sucked by the way). I was exercising 3 times a week, but had stopped for several months due to work and stress. I also try to only eat 1,200-1,500 calories every day which means I’m not over-indulging. Overall, probably not the healthiest, but given where I live, I’m doing ok.
This led me to the problem of what’s “healthier” to me? Well, I thought of all the things I really wanted to accomplish fitness wise and what I thought a healthy person would be able to do. This led me to the goal of running a marathon. I figured this would be the best judge of the experiment.
So, I had a goal in mind and a time frame to accomplish it. I’m going to have AI help get me into shape to run a marathon in 6 months.
The Prompts
To quote IBM, “AI is technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem solving, decision making, creativity, and autonomy”.
The AI I’m using is known as a chatbot, basically an AI program that can process natural language to create humanlike dialogue. With it’s ability to remember information I provide it, I knew that it would be able to provide me a week-to-week training schedule. The only question was, how accurate and effective it would be. This led me to my first prompt:
AI Prompt -> Hello my AI Life Coach. I was wondering if you could help me for the next 6 months on a health journey. My overall goal is to eat better and get in shape which will end in running a marathon. I will need you to provide meals and recipes, exercises, and any other kind of information along the way. Can you do it?
The response actually wasn’t what I had expected. When I had used AI in the past, it gave me many paragraphs about whatever my prompt was relating to with some suggestions about where to go from there. This time, it actually requested more information. It asked about current fitness levels and dietary preferences or restrictions.
Shocked, but intrigued, I gave it my height (5ft), weight (125lbs), and gender (female) as well as my average step count and my lack of exercise in the past few months. Based on past research, I knew exercises could be different whether you’re male or female, so I wanted to make sure it knew that information going forward.
The response I got was only in regard to the first month where it wanted me to build a foundation. It wanted me to focus on basic strength training, flexibility and balanced nutrition. Finally, it asked if I wanted it to start with some meals and workouts for the first week.
The exercises were great. I didn’t see anything obviously wrong with them at first glance. I did, however, think they were a little on the small side as I had remembered an old friend of mine setting up a workout routine for me that consisted of 9 to 12 exercises, not 3 to 4. But, it doesn’t matter what the past me did, I want to follow what my AI Life Coach is telling me now.
The meals, on the other-hand, I realized I had screwed up. It only gave me 2 recipes for breakfast, 2 recipes for lunch, and 2 recipes for dinner. Now, I can eat things over and over again, I have no problem doing that. I can also force myself to eat things I don’t particularly enjoy, if need be. However, I knew we were going to have a problem if it was going to make me eat avocados and Greek yogurt for breakfast everyday. It also gave me ingredients I had never heard of before (like quinoa) and meals that I knew no one else in my household would eat. We had to change the prompt.
Remember when I said I use AI like I’m talking to a friend? Well, I try to be as polite as possible because it’s not it’s fault I screwed up. So, I corrected it as gently as I could:
AI Prompt -> Those meals sounds great for 1 or 2 days, but can you provide a full week of meals to eat?
This is the thing I love about AI. As polite as your are to it, it is just as polite to you, as well as give you what you need. It was pleased that I liked the meals and then gave me a full week plan full of them. Now I had 21 meals to choose from, as well as several snack options.
The last thing I needed to know was when to do all of this. I like a strict schedule to follow, so I was looking for timestamps and what exactly to do. I’m also an early bird. I wake up at 5:30 AM every morning (mainly because of a demanding cat), so I knew I had plenty of time in the morning to get some of these things done before work. Luckily, my AI Life Coach knew exactly what I needed and provided the following daily schedule:
Daily Schedule
5:30 AM - Wake Up
6:15 - 7:00 AM - Workout
Aim for 30-45 minutes of exercise
7:30 AM - Breakfast
Eat a substantial breakfast to replenish your energy post-workout
10:00 AM - Morning Snack
A small snack to keep your energy up
12:30 PM - Lunch
A balanced meal
3:00 PM Afternoon Snack
Another small snack to avoid energy dips
6:00 PM Dinner
Eat a light but nutritious meal
9:30 - 10:00 PM - Bedtime
First off, bless it’s heart for giving me 30 minutes to lay in bed and look at my phone. I also laughed when I saw the 9:30 - 10:00pm bedtime. That’s not happening anytime soon. However, I really enjoyed this schedule. It seemed easy to follow and gave me different times to eat throughout the day which I had been missing.
All that was left was on me. I had to figure out which meals I wanted to make this week, go grocery shopping, and start Day 1 off. So far, I’m pretty pleased with how my AI Life Coach is handling things.
