I've been tracking everything about myself

You carry a cell phone right? Use it to communicate too? Use the internet extensively? Those are the best tracking devices in the world. Your heart rate, the fact you eat burritos and exercise is relatively minor compared to the ubiquitous cell phone usage of the past decade.

I'm working on a detailed blog post about that. Some highlights:

• Running Django on Heroku • Coffeescript, jQuery • SASS • A lot of webkit transitions & some animations • A souped up version of pjax for loading pages • Getting the data from APIs from Moves, Runkeeper, Withings, Foursquare, Github, Instagram, etc. • The run maps are a set of coordinates passed to Mapbox to make the map tiles & Leaflet for creating the SVG line. • D3 has really nice geo stuff, I use their mercator projection to convert lat/longs to points on the map of the world

I have enjoyed lifting weights for years, but in October 2013, I took the plunge, bought a bench, some bars and some plates, and started seriously lifting.

When I started seriously lifting, I collected some bench marks. I collected my one rep max, six rep max and ten rep max in four different exercises. Then, I collected data on my pulse rate after doing a ten rep set in various exercises.

When I work out, I collect what exercises I performed, how many sets/reps, and what kinds of weight I lifted. And, I intended to check my benchmarks once a month, but in practice it has worked out to be closer to every six weeks.

Roughly nine months later and collecting that data has proven very beneficial. For example, with strength training it is too easy to get into a routine and then keep banging out that same routine every day. I always know what I did the last time I worked a muscle group, so I feel intense pressure from myself to either move a few more pounds, bang out another set, or add a few more reps to a set. And, I get to track how various lifestyle changes interact with strengh training.

For example, in December, I broke my right thumb cross country skiing and had to take some time off lifting. Weirdly, the time off actually increased my bench and shoulder presses because I was using my left (non-dominant) side significantly more often. Balancing my right and left sides made me significantly stronger.

Or, in May, the snow was gone so I started jogging again. Jogging improved some aspects of my lifting - for example, my heart rate after a set has dropped since I added in jogging. But, it has also hurt other aspects - for example, my gains in strength are actually slowing. Incidentally, monitoring my jogging showed me that my tendency to settle into a routine carries across into other forms of exercise. I realized that I was running the same route every single time in roughly the exact same amount of time. My body got used to a level of effort and then stopped getting better.

Just because the 'people you have met' use this as a distraction does not mean that everyone will. And, just because all the people you know eat well and exercise regularly, it doesn't mean that everyone does. Some people find that the simple act of tracking their performance keeps them motivated to continuously improve. Others have goals beyond 'be healthy' and need to monitor their progress if they have any hope of reaching their goals.

It is fairly easy to do such animations (if you talk about the animations) with jquery alone. A lot of simple fades in/out and background color changes compose the website as far as I have seen.

The site is slightly unresponsive, but this is probably due to all the traffic HN is generating. OP should consider adding loading animations, it would make the transitions more fluid in such a busy time.