Fitness Apps

GWC Community GWC Fitness Club
#1

Hivemind…I want to know what you use to help you track your exercise and / or food intake and most importantly why.

I tried a few and ended up with Loseit! for the iPhone. It has a fairly rich and customizeable database of foods both standard and off the shelf from the supermarket. The exercise database is also varied, from everything to running to raking. It also features goal tracking and a ton of features I haven’t even explored yet.

The best thing it has really taught me is the relationship of food to calories within the context of being aware of a 2,000 calorie a day diet. (I know, I know you need to pay attention fat and salt and sugar and blah blah blah…I’m getting there I promise!) Yesterday for example I had a good balanced day of breakfast being an Atkins bar (200 calories, Oatmeal, Fruit or Egg sandwich not an option), my usual spinich salad lunch with grilled chicken (165 calories) and I had worked out and hour and had burned 521 calories. This was a day I was going to give myself a treat for dinner. I made myself a grilled cheese sandwich. As I assembled the ingredients for the first time I really started paying attention to the packaging because the app had raised my awareness of such things. Turns out my delicious sandwich was 380 calories. Breakdown as follows:

2 Pieces of Multigrain bread: 100 calories a slice
2 Pieces of Turkey: 50 calories a slice
2 Pieces of Soy Pepperjack cheese: 40 calories a slice

Here is the hilarious part of my journey of discovery. I realized I didn’t include the butter in my original equation. I just looked it up and am again shocked:

1 tablespoon of Earth Balance butter: 100 calories!!!

HOLY CROM! That little bit of really good butter I merely applied to brown the sides of the grilled cheese added 100 calories! This delicious grilled cheese is now 480 calories! I was still under my calorie goal by 1,293, but still!

This is what Loseit is doing for me every day. It is helping educate me to make better decisions or at least the impact of variables I may have never considered before.

I’ll share more about the app as I continue to tear it apart, but what about you? What do you use? And why?

#2

Heya Solai,

I credit LoseIt with helping me learn about what I was eating, and really motivate me towards my goal of getting down to to my target weight. That line-graph steadily moving down was a huge motivator. I stopped using it at some point, but only after I developed a really good understanding of what a good day of eating clean feels like, both in types of food and in quantity.

Here are couple tips that I picked up in LoseIt along the way:

  1. If you want to go a bit more ‘hardcore’, manually go in and adjust your base activity level. If you assume you have an incredibly sedentary job that includes no exercise (honestly, the only thing that comes to mind is toll-booth attendant perhaps), I seem to recall it will lower your daily allowed calories by ~200.

  2. Use the LiveStrong.com food database to find nutritional information on food not in the LoseIt database. I used to drink a lot of Rockstar energy drinks, and when I found them on Livestrong and put them in LoseIt, I really saw what I was doing to my body caloricly. LiveStrong.com also has a ton of restaurant chains that the LoseIt database doesn’t have. One great example was that my boss loves to go to Cheesecake factory when we’re on the road. I researched and pre-loaded LoseIt with some of the healthier meals at Cheesecake Factory, and it took a ton of the stress out of eating out.

  3. Pre-load LoseIt with the food you have around the house, so you get the feel for what you’re going to be eating before you commit to it. For example, I took all my yogurts, cottage cheeses, specific brands of beer, you name it, and loaded it into LoseIt.

There are similar apps like LoseIt out there. Daily Burn (and the companion Food Scanner) allow you to scan the barcodes of packaged food and enter it into your food database. No Canadian Content, so I dropped it pretty quick. LiveStrong also has an app, but from what I’ve seen, it’s similar to LoseIt, but costs $$.

I would definitely recommend “Timer” for the iPhone. It’s a free timer (go figure), that allows you to set intervals, and can be invaluable at the gym or when working out at home.

Great thread, and thanks for taking care of the Fitness Club Forum!!

#3

I’ve been using MyFitnessPal to track food intake. It has a huge database of food people have already entered, and also has a barcode scanner which makes it super convenient.

Since this thread is called fitness apps, I’ll go ahead and add the other apps (for iPhone) I use (though not for tracking calorie intake):

RunKeeper: Uses GPS data to track how far you’ve walked or ran. Has a neat feature where it has a “coach’s” voice that will tell you your progress after a period of time (I chose every 5 minutes), and/or when you have completed a certain distance (I chose 1 mile). I like this one a lot because if I go walking in the park, a lot of times I have no idea how far I’ve traveled.

BodyBugg: of course you have to have the BodyBugg for the app to be worth anything, but the app connects to the bodybugg via bluetooth and displays how many calories I’ve burned so far that day, how many steps I have taken, and much activity I have done.

#4

Like Glenners, I’ve used MyFitnessPal with a decent level of success. It lets me track several categories e.g. calories, protein, carbs, sodium, etc… and it’s worked for me. For strength training, I use the StrongLifts 5x5 application. It’s free, but it’s proprietary to the StrongLifts program. I’ve used the app “Strong” prior to this though and it’s good.

#5

Thank you for this recommendation! I have needed a good alternative nutritionals source for chain restaurants. I’ll be giving that a try.

#6

I started using MyNetDiary to track all of my foods, but then recently switched to MyFitnessPal. The barcode scanner on MyFitnessPal works a whole lot better and faster to read the barcodes. I just scan everything I use in the kitchen and measure how much and add it up. It’s harder when you’re eating out because you don’t know how much of everything, but I estimate as best I can.

I still haven’t found a good way to track exercise. I do more complex workouts with CrossFit so it’s a mix of cardio and lifting so I don’t know how to enter it into my record keeping. All that to say, for what it’s worth, I’m just using MyFitnessPal (ironically) to track my food intake to make myself think about what I’m eating, but it works well!

#7

Bodybugg or FitBit, etc. for exercise tracking. But as discussed in FitSmart #6, you don’t actually have to track exercise to dial in the balance. As long as you’re logging consistently (it doesn’t even have to be accurate, just consistent) you can adjust it in relative terms to get what you want. :slight_smile:

#8

I just got my FitBit in the mail today. I’m eager to hear what others’ experiences have been with these fitness gadgets – I’m looking forward to using its sleep features too. Like a few of you, I’ve loved using LoseIt! and as long as I’m disciplined enough to actually enter the food, I get good feedback from the app. Luckily, my diet doesn’t vary that much day to day – it’s still just a matter of taking the time to log what I eat. At least the FitBit will help automate the fitness part of the equation.

#9

Chuck, have you looked at all into getting the data off of the BodyBugg outside of the service? I’m interested in the device, but not fond of the lock-in to their system. Did the subscription ever bother you, or is it a value-add that’s worth it?

#10

I’d appreciate easier export functionality, but it doesn’t really affect my use significantly. I get a subscription along with my training, too, but it’s relatively cheap. Honestly I use it because it’s pretty much the only real option for seriously accurate burn calc, IMO.

Ironically, I’d probably never have bought one, but scored one free with a gym promo a long time back. After owning it, I realize it would have been valuable for me to buy one much earlier. :slight_smile: Every now and then I get lazy and forget to unload it (because I just watch the digital display for daily numbers) and the memory fills up causing me to miss a day or two. I forget how cool it is to have constant access to the numbers until that happens.

#11

WOW! Thanks for those great tips! I’ve been using LoseIt for a long time, now, and I never thought to go around and pre-load it with my usuals!

I frakking love you, man!

#Wolverines!! fwump