Apps for Weight Loss Part 2

10 Dec

Finally! The second Weight Loss App blog review, I know you were all just diiiiieing for this! 😉 lol

This app is so much fun it makes me want to go to the gym just so I have an excuse to use it, talk about weird motivation to work out lol This app is:

Gym Goal

Because you’re wondering, it is free. I’m pretty sure there is an upgrade option so you can get it without ads but that would undoubtedly involve money and I am cheap…and poor… 😛

When you open it up the home screen gives you options to look at your workout routines, your history, a list of exercises for cardio and strength training, a body map, your measurements (eek!) and tools. There is a 4 step process that the main page tells you to follow, which I have partly done…hey, I said it made me want to go to the gym and workout not that I’d had time or the ability to get to the gym and workout lol It wants you to enter your workout routine (you can custom make one or tell the app what you want to focus on and accomplish and it will create a routine for you), place the routine into the front page schedule, log your workout and use the history button to track your progress. Fairly simple.

At first you might be all, so what? I can put in my measurements and it can help me design and track a workout, big deal, I could do that!

Here is the fun part!

It has videos showing you how to do all the different exercises, er, the weight exercises that is, not the cardio…if you can’t figure out how to run by now, well, I worry for you and not about your fitness level…

Soooo, if you hit Body Map it brings up a picture of a guy but it’s a muscle view, not a look-he-has-skin view, then you pick a body part and it brings up a list of exercises for that muscle. It gives multiple options for the same exercise, by that I mean for arm curls it gives you the option to choose arm curls with: barbell, cable, cable one arm, dumbbell incline, dumbbell seated, dumbbell standing…it continues on with different types of curls (ex. concentration, preacher etc) but I’m sure you get the point. 🙂 From there, I can select any of the versions of the exercise I am interested in and it will take me to a video that shows a guy (with skin and clothes this time!) performing the exercise you chose. The video plays in a loop until you tell it to stop and the dude moves decently slow so you can really see the form, there is also a written description of what you should do which will also help you get the right form.

There are also little things like daily tips, one is a Fit Tip, one is a Muscle Tip (well,  today anyways, I can’t remember if the tips are the same topics daily, guess I’ll find out tomorrow lol) todays tips are both things I already know but having knowledge re-enforced can’t be a bad thing, right?

In the tools section you can do all your backing up to server stuff but you can also read articles on how to work out to build muscle, how to work out to rid yourself of fat and information about protein…all good types of info to have access too. 🙂

In the measurements section you (obviously) can put in your measurements, not just for the normally measured body parts but also things like your neck, shoulder, forearm, wrist, calf…probably more important if you are looking to build muscle but also good if you are looking to lose weight cause if you are tracking not just via a number on a scale but by inches lost this will give you a better picture of where you are losing. There is also a lil camera icon so I’m thinking you can take a pic of each body part to help with the tracking of progress. A little lower down that screen you can put in your One Repetition Max, Target Heart Rate, Body Mass Index, Basal Metabolic Rate, Total Daily Energy Expenditure and Body Fat Percentage. Some of these provide you with information on how to officially get the data, like the target heart rate it says to get the Max Heart Rate you should ask your doc for a cardiac stress test, it also says if you want to do it yourself get a doctor’s ok first (I’m thinking because you’re kinda killing yourself to get this info and I guess if you fall off the treadmill cause you’re having a heart attack they don’t want to be liable lol). Some of them you just have to enter info and it will calculate for you, so, for your BMI you put in your height, weight and age OR your weight and body fat percentage and boom! BMI right there on your screen. Easy peasy!

This app is a lot of fun to play with, and when I discovered the videos showing the different exercises I was psyched, that was when I got all I wanna go to the gym now! The reason? Simple, my form when using free weights is always something I worry about so having the written description and the video to help me with that makes me want to go to the gym with my phone and see if I can perform the various exercises the way the information says too lol. I guess  I want to compare myself to the dude on the screen, *rolls eyes* go ahead, call me a geek, see if I care lol 😉

I tried the option of letting the app pick a work out routine for me, I told the app I wanted a full body workout, intermediate level, with free weights and I liked what it came up with. Most of the exercises it picked I know how to do and I agree they are what I need to be getting back to doing. There are a couple I am not familiar with but that’s good I think, I get to learn something new and I’ll be working muscles that I was possibly overlooking before…ok, to be honest I don’t think I was overlooking them cause the exercises it chose that I haven’t done work out muscles that I work out using different exercises, but like I said, change is good. 🙂

This app has a lot to play with and I’d recommend fiddling around with it for a couple hours or so to fully understand it and be able to utilize it to its full ability, or as full of an ability as you want to lol. I know there is a timer in there so when you’re working out it can let you know how long to rest between sets, I’m thinking I’ll find that when I actually you know, work out and tell it I am working out lol

There we have it, the two apps I am going to be using in an effort to get myself back on track with my weight loss and physical fitness. They are both fairly easy to use, informative, fun-ish and if you actually work out and use the apps I bet they will both be helpful…I can’t claim that yet though since I haven’t ya know, been using them all that much yet…oops? 😉

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Loss

7 Dec

I had a great post for today, inspiration came to me last night for the topic and I was all psyched to write it but today I got sad news and now I’m having trouble organizing thoughts in my head let alone write a coherent blog post about what all of a sudden seems so trivial.

Someone I know died, not today, one day ago, but today is when I got told. I didn’t know her an exceptionally long time, almost six months, but I don’t think the depth of our feelings towards someone always need an especially long time to form. Sometimes you just happen to meet someone you connect with. She was older then me, had lived a long and full life, spent the end surrounded by those who loved her and took care of her even while she managed to maintain her independence. She was a character, someone whose personality is so large you always notice when she enters a room, it’s amazing how large of a presence she has considering she is such a tiny lady…I guess that should actually be how large of a presence she had considering she was such a tiny lady…past tense sucks.

It’s not like this is the first person I know whose died, nor (obviously) will it be the last (unless of course I die in my sleep tonight before anyone else I know has a chance to beat me to the other side but odds are doubtful since I’m fairly healthy). I’m unsure of myself with this mourning process, when I got told I didn’t cry, I didn’t all of a sudden have to sit, I didn’t have any reaction other then a softly said “oh no” and a quick shutting down of all emotions. I was in public, at work, at the beginning of my shift, an outburst of emotion would not of been appropriate so I shut it down before I had a chance to feel anything. Now, hours after my shift ended I keep thinking about it, it revolves around and around in my head, my memories of her.

I don’t pray, I have no rituals to get me through this, no fake comfort to draw on, no one to turn to, it is just me, sitting with thoughts of her in my head, thinking about how I didn’t get to say goodbye and how our last conversation wasn’t anything special, just an ordinary short conversation. She most likely didn’t even realize how fond of her I was, I hope she maybe had an inkling, a tiny hint of how great I thought she was, every time I saw her a huge smile came to my face and she always had one in return, maybe she knew from my smile? I don’t know. I’ll never know.

She went from healthy to a little health scare to dead in a week and a half, how does that happen so quickly? Not giving anyone a chance to say goodbye. Not that I wish she had a long lingering death but maybe just one more day of health so I could have seen her and talked to her once more, and how selfish is that of me? Thinking of myself when I only knew her six months, how much worse this all must be for her family, those who knew her their entire lives, who had memories going back fifty years or more. How do you accept and adjust your life to the loss of someone you knew for so long? I had trouble each and every time someone I knew died, but for the most part those people weren’t daily or even weekly fixtures in my life so my day to day existence didn’t register a change, but her daughters who saw her all the time, talked to her on the phone everyday, how do they rearrange their thoughts to accommodate this change? I guess they just will, not like they have a choice. And while they grieve, loudly or quietly, in public or private, with others or alone, I hope they realize that others also mourn the loss of this wonderful woman, this lady who brought a smile to people’s faces, who took her own approach to life and screw anyone who tried to judge her, who was fearless and funny and quirky and who will be missed, even by those who show no emotion to the news and who in public anyways will seem utterly unaffected by her absence.

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Different People Different Portions

6 Dec

I find it interesting how who I eat a meal with can affect what I think a proper portion of food is. I know that all food can be measured out and the “real” proper portion size found but that doesn’t usually happen when eating in a restaurant or at a friends place or when a friend is eating at your place…in fact, there are a lot of situations where you can’t actually measure/weigh the food so you have to eyeball it and hope you are sorta right. Usually in those instances I tend to eat less just to be on the safe side, after all, I’d rather go a bit hungry and know I didn’t eat a ridiculous amount of food then feel overly full and wonder just how many calories I consumed…but that is not how everyone approaches food.

I ate lunch out today with three friends, my credit card was very happy that it was considered a “working lunch” so one of the guys paid for everyone so he can write it off in his taxes, go taxes! lol The group of us went for sushi and there I am reading the menu, my eyes being immediately drawn to some of my favourite dishes and trying to decide what to order. My first thought was I’d get some agedashi tofu (spicy of course!), sashimi and a sushi roll. Thank god I didn’t order first! The first person to order got a mango and avocado salad, now, we all know a salad in a sushi restaurant is not like a salad in say, Original Joe’s, her salad was super duper tiny, just some slices of fruit piled on top of each other with some sprouts underneath…not my idea of a salad but oh well. Thing is, when I heard her order that and only that I was all “oh crap, I can’t order three things, I’ll look like a freakin pig!” The next person to order got two sushi rolls and some miso soup, that made me feel a bit better, least she got two things (three technically cause she got two orders of rolls but she got the same kind twice so it doesn’t feel like it should count somehow…) My turn! Big breath, I can do this, I can order without looking like a pig, right??? I got an appetizer sashimi and one sushi roll, phew, that’s not so bad, go me! 🙂 The fourth person ordered two rolls I think…so, except for the person who just got the tiny salad we all got roughly the same amount of food, and of course in the spirit of sushi we all tried each others – don’t you love that about sushi? 😀

Afterwards though it really got me thinking, some friends I know would have looked at what we each individually ordered and been appalled at the lack of food. They would have ordered 3-4 items for themselves and expected everyone else to do the same, and even then they might still order a second round of food later because to them, that is normal portion sizes.

All foods are like this, not just sushi, people have different ideas of what is a “normal” amount of food to order or cook and it can be hard when eating with someone who has a drastically different portion size in mind because either someone ends up feeling starved or someone ends up feeling obligated to eat more then they want…neither is a good spot to be in. You’d think people could just be happy with letting the others at the table eat the amount they are comfortable eating but nope, generally that doesn’t happen…why can’t that happen??? *confused face*

I can actually divide the people in my life via portion sizes ordered/eaten at restaurants. It’s kind of funny, and really indicative of what career path that person has chosen. Everyone I know who acts orders small, just like today at lunch. We are all actors, we all have to think not only what do we look like in real life but on camera and so we all tend to order small. I think actors also tend to be more cautious about what they will eat in front of other actors just because you don’t want to be judged or thought negatively about because you ate too much. Hey, it’s a visual media, it’s just how it goes, shrug. But my friends who don’t act tend to order/cook larger amounts of food. So, when I am with my non acting friends if I am not careful I tend to match how much I eat to how much they eat which in the long term? not a good way to go. In the short term though, sooooooo nice to order a pasta dish and not ask for half of it to be automatically put in a to go box and to get a salad with dressing (even if I do put it on the side lol) I love going out to eat with my friends who aren’t going to look at my plate and judge me because I ate everything on it, or who might raise their eyebrows at me because I ate carbs, or used dressing or whatever. At the same time though, some people I know push food at me and it makes it really hard. If food is pushed at me I tend to eat even less of it because I don’t like having someone trying to force me to eat an amount of food they think is right. If my stomach holds less than yours, or I am less willing to overeat at a meal or eat a meal sized portion of something that is bad for me I don’t want you demanding, forcing, cajoling me in to eating more then what I say I want. Just respect my food limits and maybe I’ll stop judging you for eating what I think is way too much food. 😛

Sorry, this turned in to a bit of a rant and I didn’t mean it to, food is just a sensitive subject with me and since I’ve been trying to get my food balance back lately I’ve been more aware of just how out of whack it got due to the influence of others. Not cool. 😦

I know some people say eat whatever you want as long as you work it off, that is a myth and not a healthy way to live. Stuffing your body is not good for your body, it over taxes your system, you store too much of the food as fat (even if you don’t look fat you can have health issues related to obesity because you are a skinny-fat person…hey, totally a real thing!) and to top it off over eating messes with the chemicals released in your brain and your energy levels and all kinds of things. I know under eating isn’t good either but that’s why I am trying to find my food balance again, I used to have it, in the old apartment, when I had my eating plan and exercise routine all worked out…I’ve really got to get back to that because this up and down way of eating I am doing right now isn’t any better for me then under eating at every meal or over eating at every meal. Man, it sucks that food can be so hard sometimes, sigh.

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Wordless Wednesday – My First!

5 Dec
What I opened my eyes to, so cute!

What I opened my eyes to, so cute!

 

My oh so healthy breakfast; tea and a Clif Bar!

My oh so healthy breakfast; tea and a Clif Bar!

 

 

Shopping with a friend, man this store is dangerous lol

Shopping with a friend, man this store is dangerous lol

 

Lunch - waaaaay too much food!

Lunch – waaaaay too much food!

 

 

What I wasn't able to eat...

What I wasn’t able to eat…

 

Dinner, a yummy Tuscan Tomato and Basil Bisque and of course my diet coke.

Dinner, a yummy Tuscan Tomato and Basil Bisque and of course my diet coke.

 

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Fully Baked

4 Dec

No, not me! eesh, like if I was I’d blog about that?? 😉

The potato I had for a late dinner tonight, it was baked, in my oven, in my new apartment – the first thing to get put in the oven since I moved here, yah me for cooking! Well, ok, it barely counts as cooking, just like boiling some pasta and throwing a jar of pasta sauce on top of it doesn’t count as cooking either but hey, it’s the little steps! lol

It’s weird, I used to cook everyday, but since moving in to this apartment I barely use the kitchen, and when I do it’s to make tea, Mmm tea 🙂

First it was because when I moved my stuff in I blocked off the stove and could only open the fridge wide enough to squeeze out a small bottle of diet coke. You’d think I’d move the stuff in the kitchen so I could access those two appliances fairly quickly, but nope, not me, didn’t see the point. For the first week or so of living here I survived off of Clif Bars and diet coke, so healthy huh? Then I got some food in, actually wait, did I? Huh, no, I actually didn’t. I ate at work or grabbed take out or ate with friends and brought back left overs, but didn’t stock up the kitchen. I take some sort of weird pride out of my almost empty fridge, like the less items I have on the shelves the better. I don’t know where that mind set came from and really, I don’t care enough to track down its origin within my brain, it is just there, shrug.

But the other day I went grocery shopping, I was actually going specifically for milk for my tea (Mmm tea! lol) and while I was there I meandered on over to the produce section. I wasn’t really in a shopping frame of mine, well, food shopping, if it had been shoes or clothes or that ring I saw on ebay I really want then I’m sure I’d of dived right in to the shopping experience, but food? Nah. On a whim I decided to get a potato, I’d gotten the image of a baked potato in my head earlier that day and I guess it stuck enough that I was still semi-thinking about it when I was in the shop. Well, if I am going to bake a potato I need toppings for it right? Right! I already had cheese but I required maple flavoured baked beans to make this meal perfect. Don’t make that face! I can practically hear you making a cringy face and going “maple flavoured baked beans on a baked potato???? gross!” to that I say “don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!” 😛

I love anything maple, yummmm! and maple baked beans are a particular favourite, they are made by Heinz, go Heinz! lol They have other flavoured baked beans if maple isn’t your thing, but, well, how could maple not be your thing? *confused face* It had been so long since I baked a potato (I wasn’t allowed them on my most recent meal plan and they have remained on my personal list of “don’t touch that food!”) that I actually had to google how to bake a potato, lame. Luckily, I found a great site, not like baking a potato is hard *rolls eyes* but they had some ideas I hadn’t heard of before and I quite like how the potato turned out. Basically, oven at 425F, scrub clean the potato, stab potato, rub potato with olive oil, sprinkle some salt and pepper on it, place on tin foil that is on a baking tray, stick in oven. It takes 50-60 minutes in the oven, remember to turn the potato every 20 minutes and occasionally stab it to check on its progress. Easy peasy!

My addition of course is to heat up the baked beans so when the potato is done I can cut it open, put some cheese on it, drown it in baked beans and then settle down to a nice cozy yummy dinner. 🙂

The result had a nice crunchy skin and fluffy inside. 🙂 I think I will skip the salt and pepper next time though, I never use salt in anything, seriously, never. I am not that person who feels salt needs to be added to every freakin dish to provide some flavour. I generally like how foods taste when they taste like themselves, not when they taste like salty versions of themselves…this seems to be something not many people agree with me about, ah well, it’s good to be different lol.  I found the salt and pepper taste to be quite strong and I didn’t use all that much, I guess it is because I so rarely use pepper and never use salt that my taste buds notice them quite easily. For the most part though I could drown out the salt and pepper flavour by making sure some cheese and baked beans were on the spoon with the potato.

I suppose I should get back in to the swing of things cooking wise. Don’t really have the excuse of not being able to access my fridge or stove anymore but, sigh, I got so used to not cooking that the idea of doing it again, on a daily basis, *groan* is enough to make me take a deep sigh and contemplate living off of Clif Bars again. 😛 Well, Clif Bars and maybe a multi-vitamin or something…

😉

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The Skinny on Juice Diets/Cleanses

3 Dec

Ok, let me warn you right off I have no solution for this debate, the end of this post will not reveal the amazing truth about juice cleanses and if they are actually good or bad, this is really just me yapping about them and trying to figure out just how good or bad they might be…

The idea of doing a juice cleanse/diet came to me when out with a friend last night, she had read up on one (I’m not sure which specific one) and was saying how she was going to do this for a month or so just to get rid of that final bit of weight. Now, she is not fat, nowhere near! But like me she acts which means there is even more pressure to be super thin then what the average non-acting person feels, which is pretty freaky when you think about how much pressure the non-acting person feels, especially women, but that is a topic for another day! 😛

So, she’s talking a bit about this and it got me thinking, maybe that is what I need, something drastic, something I have never done, something that will get me over that bump in the road, and hey, even if it doesn’t work no damage done right? Welllllll, maybe not “right”, maybe, depending on which article you read, maybe really wrong! Oh dear.

I’ve read a whole wackload of articles, checked out a bunch of websites (that seem to be run by fanatics from one or the other side of the juice fence) and have ended up confused. What the hell? I am an educated, decently smart, grown woman, and yet, I can’t figure out which articles to put more faith in, which side to give my vote for, how is this possible?

Well, it’s possible because nobody seems to want to give an unbiased opinion or refer to unbiased research or references. The topic of juice cleanses/diets really seems to bring out the fanatics and everyone knows you can’t trust them, anyone who claims anything is all good or all bad and has no wiggle room and isn’t open to listening to other opinions is not giving you the whole truth, how can they be when they are blocking it even from themselves?

Which means, brace yourself for this, I’m on my own when it comes to making this decision, *dun dun dun* This is not a good place to be! If so many of the articles I read hadn’t said that doing a juice cleanse doesn’t only slow down your metabolism but can also stop it almost all together (a sentence that made my blood run cold!) and that your body starts using your muscle to feed itself (which means all that weight work down the tubes!) aaaaand that you only lose water weight which you will of course gain back once you start eating like a normal person again (or as close to normal as you get…although, with how obese North America is what is normal and do we want to be eating that way? hmm…) well, then I’d be jumping on the bandwagon no problem. I have no issue doing something that may be considered an unhealthy way to lose weight, I’ve done the healthy route, I lost a bunch of weight that way and am keeping it off (which is awesome) but I’ve been stuck at this weight for a year and no matter what healthy route I try nothing happens (or what does happen is so tiny of a change and reverts back if I even so much as look at a cinnamon bun) that there doesn’t seem to be any point, sigh. The problem with healthy routes to weight loss is that they are intended to get you to a healthy weight, well, I am technically aiming for being underweight (hey, don’t judge me, that is the industry I am in) and I’ve finally come to the conclusion that to get to a weight that health people say is unhealthy (I’m only talking like ten pounds underweight people so don’t go freaking out or anything as you read this) I’m going to have to do something unhealthy. I don’t know what took me so long to come to this conclusion, why I didn’t see the logical route to my goal a year ago, but I see it now. 🙂

The articles still don’t help me though…I am so pumped full of health and fitness information from all the books, articles, websites etc I researched and studied since starting my weight loss journey that I read the deets on a juice cleanse and all I see are the ways in which it is bad for me *rolls eyes* All that sugar, ugh, no protein, hmm, fruit and veg have lots of carbs, oh dear…and what about food groups? and portions? and sustainability? (by that I mean, can I do a juice cleanse everyday for the rest of my life? uh, by the way, the answer is no!) How is this a good option? What weight I do lose won’t be “real weight”, it’ll be water weight and loss of muscle mass, which means as soon as I start eating again, even if I eat super duper healthy my body will be so happy to have food in it again and so worried I might turn in to an evil dictator and force it to survive on just juice again that whatever I do eat will be tucked away as fat and held on to for dear life. Erg…

But! My brain keeps thinking, if I can manage to lose even just 5 pounds doing a juice cleanse who cares where the weight came off it’s off and surely there is some way to keep it off, extra gym sessions or cutting back on calories or something…

I keep circling around the same pro and con arguments in my head, I know logically why the juice route won’t help me long term, but I also don’t care about long term, I care about now and right now I need to lose ten to fifteen pounds and this seems a quick route to do it…yin and yang, up and down, black and white, I could argue both sides of the juice cleanse/diet for hours and still be nowhere…told you I wouldn’t have a solution for you! 😉

Lil sidenote, something I found entertaining, an article I was reading that was listing all the reasons juice cleanses/diets are bad had an ad on the side for some pomegranate drink that will apparently make me look better naked…gotta love the health/diet industry, even while they are saying a certain system doesn’t work they are making money from that system via advertising or whatnot. 😛

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Fitspiration

1 Dec

You don’t get it by

Fitspiration from Nike

Fitspiration from Nike

Staring

You don’t get it by

Wishing

You don’t get it by

Drooling

You don’t get it by

Hoping

You don’t get it

Easy

You get it by

Getting off your ass

Working for it

Every second

Of every day

For the rest of your life

-Nike

I didn’t have a chance to play around much with that second app I am going to review for you guys an gals so I thought I’d do a fitspiration post today instead.  🙂

Fitspiration, what an odd trend, I wonder if it is something that was always there and I just didn’t notice or if it really is a rather new phenomenon (which is how it seems to me). I read an article talking about the negative effects some of the fitspiration images can have, how they are showing unrealistic expectations for how fit us average folk can really get and how if you look at a lot of the women in the fitspiration images they are still being sexualized and not just shown for their fitness levels. I guess there might be a point to all that but I figure I am able to distinguish between something I might be able to accomplish and something that is unattainable and even if I wish I could reach the unattainable level I am well aware I will not be going around my whole life being photoshopped sooooooo no real damage done if I look at the unattainable images and use them to motivate me, shrug.

I decided after I had typed out the fitspiration message I would also add the poster so you could see the image paired with the message, I think that is a fairly attainable goal for most women, or at least something close to that…at least, I hope it is cause something kinda like that is where I hope I am heading!

 

 

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Apps for Weight Loss Part 1

30 Nov

On the advice of a friend I installed two new apps on my phone, both are geared towards helping you lead a healthier lifestyle, one is for your eating plan the other is for your fitness. I thought I’d review the apps, give some deets on them and what not but in the effort to not make yet another horrendously looooong blog post I am giving each app it’s own post.

App numero uno!

Lose It!

-disclaimer, the app title uses the exclamation mark, that is not me trying to make it sound more exciting lol 😉

This app is free and is very user friendly. I had it before when I was still using my blackberry phone but I didn’t have it on my blackberry because that phone was a piece of crap and couldn’t handle, well…anything 😛 So I had it on my iPod touch, it worked ok on the touch, it is one of those apps that once it is installed you are good to go, can use it anywhere, you don’t need a data plan or to be hooked in to wifi to use it so that was nice. As far as I can tell (I’ve only really played around with this new version a bit here and there) it is still the same, you install and are good to go. 🙂

This version has some new things that I already love but before I start explaining those let me give you a quick run down of what the app does.

This is a food tracker, so goodbye little notebook that I used to take everywhere and write my food and drinks in to, now it can be conveniently written down in my phone which, being the person that I am, is never far from my grasp lol.

When you first set up the app you tell it how much you weigh now, what your goal weight is, your height, your gender and your age, it then asks you how quickly you want to lose the weight and gives you options to choose from (if I remember correctly the options are 1lb a week, 1.5lbs a week, and 2lbs a week…hmm, I think I am missing an option, I’m sure there were four to choose from…I know it topped out at 2lbs a week so it does try to make sure you lose the weight at a healthy rate). It then very nicely calculates how many calories you can eat per day so you achieve your goal 🙂 Oh! and it tells you when  you will reach your goal by if you follow the amount of calories it says to eat.

The main screen shows the current day, how many calories you are allowed, how many you ate, how many you burned and your net calories for the day. There is also a bar graph that goes from 0 to 2500 and it has a line marking how many calories you are allowed, as you add food to the tracker the bar lights up to show you how close you are to your caloric limit.

The next screen is your Log screen, it shows in detail the food and exercise you have logged for the day, you can toggle back to look at previous days. Along the top of that screen it shows your allowed amount of calories per day, how many calories you ate, how many calories you burned and your net total. It also has a box that tells you if you are over or under your calories for the day…if you are over that box is bright red so you can’t miss it…no matter how hard you try 😛 When you input the food you put it in as breakfast, lunch, dinner or a snack so when you read your food log it shows the food separated by what meal you ate it in. You can select any of the foods on the list to bring up a detailed nutritional information screen, that screen also lets you adjust the quantity of food, so say you put down that you ate two pieces of bread but you actually only ate one, you can go fix it. 🙂 This is also where you enter your exercises for that day, you can select from a database of exercises (the list is quite extensive) or you can enter your own exercise. For all that the list of exercises is long and varied it still doesn’t have dragon boating, sigh, maybe one day…

After that is the Motivate screen, this one will require you to be hooked in to wifi or have a data plan. This is new (to me anyways, maybe it has been around a while) and I like the idea of it even though I haven’t used it that much yet. There are Challenges that you can sign up for which, depending on the type of person you are, could really help to motivate you. I signed up for one, it is a Holiday Workout Challenge, it was made by an American so it says there are 33 days from Thanksgiving till Christmas and the challenge is to keep active as much as you can in that time frame despite all the extra festivities you will be attending. You can invite friends to join the same challenges as you, you can see how well other people are doing (currently the leader in this challenge has logged 32 workouts – don’t freak out! She is logging “real” exercises  as well as things like housework and shopping) and you can even earn badges, ooOOOooh! Ok, so I’m making fun of it a bit *rolls eyes* they are virtual badges, I mean come on, are you gonna show your friends your phone screen and be all “look, I earned another badge that in the real world means absolutely nothing!” lol I’m thinking no!

The next page is the Goals page, this is the page that shows you your start weight, your goal weight, your daily calorie budget (just can’t get away from that!) and gives you an option to modify your program. There is also a snazzy chart that shows where you started weight wise and as you lose weight the line will go lower on the chart till it gets to your goal weight, the dates are along the bottom and the weights are listed at the side. I remember this chart from last time I used this app and I loved it! I am fairly visual with most things and seeing the line going down down down on the chart made me feel so good about the progress I was making. 🙂 Go line graphs!

There is of course a More page where you can change  various settings for the app, read summary reports an stuff like that. What I like about the More page is you can create custom foods (so, say you drink a protein shake everyday and you make it the same way every time, add it in there and when you are putting in the food log that you drank the protein shake you don’t need to put each and every individual ingredient, you just put in the shake that you saved to memory, easy peasy!) You can also add recipes, pick which nutritional info is entered and tracked, see a list of all the foods you’ve entered in to the app previously, update the list of foods in the app, all that kind of stuff.

Something I absolutely looooove is the new ways to enter a food in to the tracker. you can search the database for the food you ate, you can take from the list of foods you have entered previously, you can take from your recipes or your previous meals, you can search brand name foods ooooooor, the best part, you can scan the freakin barcode!! Oh yah! I think this is sweeeeet and the best addition to the app that I have discovered so far! I tried it by scanning the bottle of wine I was drinking and it was brilliant! It seemed even more brilliant then it is at the time due to just how much of that wine I had consumed teehee. 😉

One last thing, when you are on the main screen you can change it so you can see how you are doing that week (a basic over/under for each day and by how much) or you can look at a macro-nutrient breakdown of the current day and the week so far. So, if you are trying to be low carb or high protein or whatever, this will help you to follow that. It’s pretty amazing how quickly some of the things add up, like carbs, there are so many carbs in veggies that if you are going low carb you can totally go over your carb intake for the day just by eating a quarter cup extra of veggies that day, crazeeeee!

So this is my explanation of the app, long enough for you? lol Hey, I tried to make it short, sorta…there’s just so much info in this app! I would highly recommend this app if you are tracking your food and/or exercise, it is easy to use, it’s on your phone which odds are is with you all the time, there are lots of different options for how to enter different foods, every screen shows you the important info so you don’t have to toggle from one screen to another all the time. All in all, it is great…long as you use it! If you install it and then just let it sit there, well, don’t go complaining you aren’t losing weight cause oddly enough, it only works if you work, go figure! 😉

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Karma Points

30 Nov

I am definitely losing karma points over here, but the situation is so funny that I can’t bring myself to stop being amused by it which in turn is bringing those karma points down.

I am harness training my cat and he is not taking to it well at all! He’s never worn a collar or harness before but I didn’t think it’d be a big deal since I had cats years ago and they accepted their collars (and occasional harness) without even a twitch of their ears. However, Striker is constantly reminding me he is not like the cats I had before and this is one more situation where he is showing his personality.

As soon as I put the harness over his head he does that thing cats do so well, you know, where all of a sudden they become a bag of limpness, total dead weight, and they somehow magically make themselves weigh 100lbs so it’s super hard to maneuver them…how do they do that?? This reaction is better then the alternative which would be him fighting to get away, so far each time I’ve put the harness on him the end result is he is wearing the harness and I come away without any new wounds…which, if you knew him and his dexterity with his claws, you’d be impressed by. (I currently have a numb and yet also in pain pinky finger thanks to his claw slicing it from tip to first knuckle through the fleshy part, it feels so gross when I bend my finger and the cut re-splits open, ugh)

I try to put the harness on him everyday for at least two hours, so he can slowly get used to it and realize that wearing it isn’t going to kill him…today was his best day yet, he crawled on to my lap as soon as the harness was on and has stayed super close since, he’s more cuddly then normal (which, not gonna lie, I am enjoying) and I’m proud to say he actually slept while wearing it! Usually he works really hard to get it off then stays near me but in a panic-ready-to-run-at-a-moments-notice mode cause obviously wearing a harness is a sign of impending doom *rolls eyes*

On a weight loss note I am not following any type of recognizable eating plan nor am I following any type of recognizable exercise program, oops? *innocent face*

When I moved I moved far enough away from the gym I was at that it didn’t make sense to continue on there, luckily I had signed up for only a year and had lived there for only a year so the membership ended the same time I left the area. Where I moved to, there are 3 gyms (well, 2 gyms and 1 community fitness centre) all within a decent distance, two would require driving to get there, one I could walk to. There are also 4 weight loss clinics…I don’t know if that is the right term for those places, they are those places that you go in and sign up for their program and do everything they say (for a lot of money usually) and in a short-ish amount of time you’ve lost a fairly decent chunk of weight but you aren’t on a program that is meant to be followed for life and from what I heard once you finish the program odds are high you’ll gain the weight back cause you’re now eating real food again and your body is all “say whaaaaa? I get real food?? hurry up! store it in case this crazy wench starts starving us again and living off vitamin shots!” So, those places I am ignoring cause, well, I can’t afford them and they are kinda weird.

I have (as of a couple days ago) checked out both the gyms and the community centre and think I have decided which one to go with. The one that is within walking distance is the cheapest (which is a very important factor in my decision making process) but it is also the smallest and offers no fitness classes. However, I wouldn’t have an excuse to not go since it is so close and really, how often do I go to the classes offered at other gyms I have been a member at? Probably not enough to justify the extra cost per month. The only thing really holding me back is that to get the cheap rate I have to sign up for 2 years, that’s a long time to stay with one gym, especially considering how often I move and that each move takes me to a drastically different part of the city. I don’t want to be saddled with a gym membership for a place that becomes super inconvenient for me to get to if I end up moving in a year. Kinda funny really, I generally don’t look more then a couple weeks ahead, I don’t see the point in stressing or planning or trying to predict too far in to the future when who knows what will come along to upset the plans or ideas or visions you have in your head? Life will happen whether you want it to or not, I’d rather plan for perhaps a week in advance and leave room open so I can adjust when life throws something at me. And yet, here I am trying to decide if I should get a gym membership at this place and worrying about if I’ll be around to utilize it for the next two years. Oy! 😛

I’m pretty sure in the end I’m going to cave and get a membership at the close and cheap place, guess I’ll have to make a commitment to them for the next 2 years…it’s like I’m selling a little bit of my soul, well, I would be selling a little bit of my soul if I had any of it left lol 😉

As for food, *throws hands in air* I just don’t know what to do! I’d reached a point in weight watchers where I had seriously plateaued and I knew it was time for a change. So I switched to my low carb, high healthy fat high protein meal plan and did fairly well with that for a decent amount of time but when I went off it I went waaaaaaay off it and now, everytime I think about going back to it and the restrictions it has well, frankly, I just don’t want to. I want to think I can get the results I want with a less strict plan but reality is I most likely can’t. Soooooo, I am probably going to have to cave and just suck it up, stop whining (which, thankfully I am only really doing in my head lol) and get my butt back on the low carb high healthy fat high protein eating plan, sigh.

I suppose I could make it a challenge, I used to do that in my weight watchers days. If I knew something was coming up where I was going to want to veer from my eating plan drastically I’d give myself the goal of following my eating plan with no exceptions for a set amount of time leading up to the big event so I had earned it and could enjoy without feeling guilt. I have my birthday and Christmas coming up so those would be my goals…hmm…maybe that could work again, you just need the right mind set right?

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A Video

29 Nov

This has nothing to do with weight loss, just thought it was a well done video and wanted to share…let’s hope I can get the link to work…

http://youtu.be/HO4e4nCYBEo

 

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