Thursday, April 14, 2011

Making Changes, Working a Program (or app)

I have made mention of the fact that I am often not pleased with my weight or spongitude of my muscles in the spring.   Usually my solution has been to train to run a marathon.  However, I have decided to be a little gentler to myself this year, and instead I am using the wonders of technology to keep my diet and exercise in check.

For the past two weeks, I have been using two android apps in tandem--one called Cardiotrainer, and the other is called Caloriffic--to work towards increasing fitness and decreasing what I am eating.

Caloriffic puts foods into three different catagories; green yellow and red.  I bumped it up from its free version to make it calculate out my calories for weight loss goals.  It's extremely easy to use, and things are catagorized in such a way to make entry easy and quick and pretty accurate.  It's a great way get a reactive effect from self reporting, and makes me more mindful of what I am putting into my mouth and when.

Cardiotrainer I have been using for almost a year, and it's great for using the GPS to tell you how far you have gone, and how fast.  I love that there is a little British "man" who announces my times, my calorie burns and how long I have been walking or running or biking.

Since I have upgraded part of the apps to work together, I now get a listing of how many calories I  have burned this month, and how many miles I have gone.  So far in April, I have matched my total for all of March.  I am shooting for 10,000 calories burned in April.  I am halfway there.

Is it working?  It's too early to say.  It has only been two weeks, and I have worked out all but one day.  My scale is very old and isn't giving accurate numbers--either that or I have gained  6 lbs. off and on this week, sometimes in the space of minutes.  I do believe I will be working from the "scale of pants" until I get a replacement.  The Scale of Pants says that things are fitting a skosh better, but nothing visible yet. 

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