An App a day keeps the weight away?…

Who would’ve imagined 30 years ago when mobile phones first came on the scene, the type of technology that we have today with smartphones? I remember my first job in London in the mid ‘80’s working for an Oil broking Company and we were among the first to get mobiles – if that’s the right word for them, the battery was the size of a car battery and I was forever on the phone to BT complaining about bad line connections (well some things don’t change!).

Our cell phones have become part of our lives – we basically don’t leave home without one – and if we do we often freak out! Some may say we are too dependent on them, but nevertheless they are an amazing piece of equipment. We now have Apps to help us with every aspect of our lives, from games, to music, photography, to money matters… even finding a partner! 

There are also now incredible Health & Fitness Apps to really help assist and motivate you to reach your goals. I have looked areas such as Nutrition, Cardio and weights and come up with a few recommendations for you to look at -some of these are free so definitely worth a try, others have a small fee, but may be of a better quality – I’ll let you decide!….

Nutrition:- 

#Traffic Light, Food Tracker – FREE  it can be hard to read lots of food labels, now you can find out for yourself a red, amber or green rating for the food you buy by inputting values of sodium, sugars and fat (total & saturated) to give you more idea on you should be omitting from your shopping bag!

#The Carrot – (track your life) FREE this is kind of an all rounder and apart from a fab name it will help you track things like food, medications, exercise, blood pressure and even (apparently) sexual activity! (not sure how they do that..big brother?!) Here you can keep a food journal, track calories eaten but also burned in your cardio exercise, this could get addictive, but in a good way by creating competition with yourself.

#Taste! – this is a nifty little App, where you get 100’s of healthy recipes all right at your finger app – i mean tip! You get the ingredients, the method and the calories to boot – great if (like me) you need a little help in the culinary department!

Cardio:-

#itreadmill – $1.99 much cheaper than a pedometer which this App basically is. All you need to do is pop your phone in your pocket and it will track your steps, distance walked, AND the average speed, you can even employ a beat ticker to walk to speed! Great if you’re just starting an exercise regime with walking as it is so important to measure your progress!

#C25K - $2.99 I have talked in previous blogs about adding running to your exercise regime, and this App is a great way to help you as it will actually give you a 9 week program! All designed to improve your endurance in sessions up to 40 mins – an audio prompter will tell you what to do as your going -what could be easier?

Weights:- 

#GymGoal -Free (or upgrade for $4.99) Like the Ab workout, this is a great home w/o plan, or it can be used to give you more ideas and variety to use at the gym. It contains over 280 exercises, & 52 actual routines (with animations) AND different levels, you can also calculate target heart rate, BMI & body fat %. If you don’t have your own PT, you can simply write out a routine and change it every 4-6 weeks – this way you will get optimum results, by changing it up.

#iFitness – $1.99 similar to gymgoal, the difference here is the 100 instructional videos, special constructed routines by fitness professionals, plus the ability to email routines, graphing technology, and stop watch timers plus you can log your results.

#Daily Ab Workout – Free, or upgrade for $0.99 this is great if you prefer to workout at home or in the park and especially if you need visuals, as there is a little video how how to perform the different moves, but you also get written instruction plus you can program in the time of the workout and customise if you wish, so you don’t have to think about it at all, just get down & do it!

YOGA -various options, some are free others cost up to $9.99 depending on your requirements it may well be worth it though. If you’re a beginner perhaps just try a free one to start, e.g  “Yoga Relax” or “101 Yoga poses” (with ads mind you), but a lot of others are only a couple of dollars, so well worth the investment. I have often blogged about the many advantages of Yoga, both for the body AND mind. For those who are keen to really develop their skills try the “Hatha-Yoga: your portable yoga studio”, comes with pre-set or customised classes, a beautiful voice showing you through the poses.

So if you feel like you need a little extra motivation to get you up and running, why not give one or more of these a go, it could be just the push you need to get you over the line. A lot of them are free, and it may just focus you more on your actual goals by tuning your mind into what you are physically doing – and like I said in my recent blog, the mind very well could be the key to your success!