I have recently been surrounded by a lot of people on diets, and carrying out New Year’s resolutions to become fitter or healthier, counting their daily steps or calorie intake, and I felt it would be topical to discuss all the options available to help you if you wanted to join in.
There are many apps, some free and some
not, that can be downloaded onto your smartphone or tablet to help you to
improve your fitness both in body and mind.
For the battle of the bulge my Fitness Pal is
very effective. You basically put your
details – age, height and weight into the app, and it will count calories for
you. You have to log what you eat, and
you can look up food values on the app, so it can help you to know how many
calories are in common foods, or even branded foods and drinks. There is a database of about 5 million
foods. You can even scan the barcode of
foods to assess how many calories are contained in it. The app can help you set your goals and track
your progress and motivate you to keep up your diet.
As we all know, calorie counting alone is
not enough to keep you in shape, and some exercise should be thrown in to the
mix as well. Most smartphones come with
apps for tracking fitness. The latest
software update for iPhone included an app for health. Look for the white app with the red heart. If you keep your phone in your pocket all day
long, it can then be used to track your exercise- count your steps, how many
floors you have climbed and how far you have walked or run. It’s incredibly incentivizing.
If you want to track other activities, you
can use Runkeeper, Nike Fitness, Strava or many others. They will map your activity, be it walking,
hiking, cycling, running etc and show you how far and fast you have travelled,
and compare your workouts over time. You
can also see how many calories you have burned.
Freeletics is an app that was recommended
to me to try. It brings a gym workout to your house. It’s free, and it gives you short movies to
follow like an exercise class.
Some people find that wearing a fitness
watch is a good way to track both calories and fitness, as well as hours
asleep. Fitbit is one of the first of these
type of trackers and reasonably inexpensive.
It is worn like a watch, and tells the time, your heart rate, how many
steps you have taken, miles you have run, how many floors you have climbed, and
hours slept. It works with an app on
your phone. You can also input your food
and water intake.
If it is your mind you want to train, there
are lots of options. I have just
downloaded Fit Brains, which will help you to work on many different brain
areas, and tests your speed as well.
You can set a daily reminder so that you keep up the training, and it
will decide which areas you need to focus on.
Again your progress is tracked in the app, and you will notice that you
do improve dramatically with practice.
The tests start off quite simple and become more complicated. It takes about 5 minutes to complete your
training. Scrabble or Sudoku would also
do the same job I expect.
In our busy world, that there is often so
much rushing about, that we spend very little time resting our brains, which
can lead to stress overload, anxiety, depression and insomnia. Spending 10 minutes daily on a guided
relaxation or meditation could be the very thing that you could try to include
in your daily life. I found an app
called Headspace, but there are many more.
It is incredibly soothing to be guided into a state of tranquility.
Hope you may be inspired to try one of
these suggestions, or to learn more about the technology you already have. Do contact me if you would like to know more,
or if there are any topics you would like me to cover in future articles.
