Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Wanna lose weight? There’s an app for that!

Wanna lose weight? There’s an app for that!

I’m going to keep this somewhat short and sweet, but if you’re one of the folks out there looking to shed a few pounds without buying into some program or spending all of your dough on special meals or pre-planned menus, I may have a solution for you. But first, a preface.

A few years ago I realized I had slowly put on quite a bit of weight. I’ve always been a bigger guy, more solidly built, but through college and most of my twenties that was muscle, and while I wasn’t lean like Brad Pitt I certainly wasn’t out of shape. Then, time, and bad eating, and lack of physical activity took its toll and I got soft. It happened so slowly I barely even noticed it. Until I did. And once I did I resolved to get fit again. So I joined Weight Watchers, lost almost 50 pounds and everything went swimmingly. I learned how to keep track of what I ate and I started to exercise regularly.

And then I met GalPal, and started eating out more, and going out more, and basically just started enjoying life more, and while the physical activity kept pace, te healthy eating did not, and I again started to get soft … but this time I noticed it was happening!

I didn’t want to spend money on Weight Watchers again, and realized the one thing I had taken away from that program was quite simply that you need to keep track of what you eat. Not so you can deny yourself anything, or torture yourself for consuming this or that calorie. No. You just need to be aware of what’s going inside of you. Once you are – well at least once I am – it’s far easier to not overdo things. You can eat whatever the hell you want and still stay in shape as long as you keep everything in moderation.

So having said all that, if you are the kind of person the above profile fits, then I have a recommendation for you. I downloaded a handy little app called Lose It! It keeps track of what you eat and allows you to log in exercise and calories burned and it’s just been all around great for me. I’ve lost all that winter weight (decadent weight) I’d been accumulating and am in pretty great shape again.

(And GalPal seem pretty happy with the results, so there’s that too.)

3 comments:

QuietlyGoingMad said...

Oh bless you! I've been using DailyBurn and don't really love it--so I'm ecstatic there's another app. out there for tracking my foodz.

Much like you, as long as I keep an eye on what I'm eating (and when I'm eating it), I do really well dropping weight. As soon as I stop--it's add insta-10!

Tankboy said...

Yeah, sometimes simply being aware is the best tool of all!

Mich said...

You know I'll love you however you look, but you are lookin pretty good lately, and I'm proud of you for sticking with it!