Hi all! Chubby Veggie here with a guest post! A little about me: technically I began my journey to a healthier life more than a year ago, in January of 2009, though in the last 3 months I’ve become re-energized and recommitted! In the process I’ve come across some techie tools I just love– they keep me motivated and –more importantly — they keep my honest!
RunKeeper
Love this iPhone/iPad Touch app! It tracks exercise two ways– you can enter stats manually (such as gym workouts) or the app will track your workout using GPS and show your track on a googlemap. It’s really cool! I wouldn’t call myself a runner, but I have been running (err… jogging) and it is very rewarding to see my route on a map.
I haven’t lost any weight in the past two weeks and was getting discouraged by this plateau. I logged in to RunKeeper (oh yeah, the app syncs with a website) and looked at my weekly stats.
Uh, maybe it has something to do with the fact that I’ve had two of my slowest workout weeks since I started using the app? Right. Time to step it up. Run, Chubby Veggie, run!
LoseIt!
If Weight Watchers ever designs an iPhone app, they should model it off of this one. You set a goal weight and decide how many pounds you’d like to lose per week and the app calculates your daily calorie allotment and track your progress. It works as a food journal where you enter your meals (and exercise, too) and it tracks calories and nutrients. Like RunKeeper, the app syncs with a website that has some bonus features– charts of which foods you eat the most, how much your average workout session burns, etc. I love to LoseIt!
WiiFit
Admittedly not my favorite weight loss tool or tracker, but fun nonetheless. Each time I break out my WiiFit, it weighs me and graphs my progress. I’m not one to calculate my BMI on a regular basis, so it’s nice that WiiFit automatically provides that info. One thing to be careful about is the surface your WiiFit is on- I was surprised to see I’d lost 5 pounds in a matter of a week, but it turned out to be a result of placing the WiiFit on carpet instead of my usual wooden floor. Doh!
As you can see from the picture, I’m not the best Wii gal… I’ve yet to find an exercise/game for WiiFit that feels worth my time. Any recommendations?
The good old fashioned food journal
Hardly high-tech, in the past I used a small notebook to write down my meals and log my exercise. I now prefer the apps and tools because, frankly, they do a lot of the work for me– like looking up calorie amounts and creating graphs automatically. That said, I sometimes miss having a notebook that doubled as a diary. There’s no place for stickers or doodles on an app or website!
What about you? What do you use to track your exercise and nutrition? Does tracking your food and exercise help you succeed, or does it make you over obsessive?
Thanks to Missy for giving me the opportunity to post a guest blog! Hope to hear from lots of you! You can find me at the Chubby Veggie blog!
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Great post. I am an RD and I like to know what’s our there for my clients. Personally I prefer my clients just type out their meals and send them to me! Then I can do the same that an iPhone app does, but make it much more personalized
It’s fun, and so far it’s been quite effective.
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I love my run keeper app! Weight Watchers does have an app for the iPhone. You can do a lot on it but you can’t track your weight. I used to use lose it until I found the WW app.
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Hi there, Which an neat web page this is
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