Top 4 Apps for Your Health & Fitness
Written By Livia Fekiacova
There is no getting away from it, as much as some people try to buck the trend, we live in a technology age. Information is available to us at the touch of a button. Things we could never have known before unless we were part of a specialist environment are just a click away. The studies of the most prestigious universities are posted for everyone to see and share. We have a gadget for everything and we have only just scratched the surface. I remember just a few years ago the thought of watching your favourite TV show on your mobile phone was absurd, now it’s almost out dated. The world our children will live in is almost incomprehensible, technology is moving at such break neck speed that it is difficult to imagine what may be our lives in 10 years, never mind another 50 or 100 years. Some of the technology has been for the better and improved our lives enormously, the same technology has also made lives miserable to the point of suicide. The key, therefore, is using the amazing benefits to our greatest advantage. Now whilst I am not going to delve into the realms of curing disease or helping rid the world of starvation through technology, I am going to give you a list of online resources and apps that I personally find useful in keeping my health and fitness the best it can be. Some you have to pay for and some are free but whichever way you choose to go, investing a small amount of money in the right areas for your own health and fitness will always pay back dividends worth far more than money alone. Get your health right and you are looking at a good chance of a longer life, free from pain and suffering, more happiness, more energy while keeping the ability to be active and adventurous! Benjamin Franklin was once quoted as saying, ‘If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.’ Wise words indeed which still ring true today. When it comes to health and fitness, planning out your nutrition, relaxation, exercise and learning is as important as planning your meetings at work for next week. Imagine never running a diary and just turning up to work every day with no idea what your were going to do, would you be anywhere near as effective as you are by planning ahead? Would you get married and not plan every detail of the day’s events? Highly unlikely as more often than not it would turn out to be a disaster! Talking of disaster’s, that is exactly how many people see their health and fitness. People will look in the mirror or at the scales and complain that they just can’t lose the weight, or that when they get up their back hurts, or they just don’t have the time to relax! Always remember, everyone has the same 24 hours in the day, it is how you use them that allows you to be more productive. Enough talking I hear you shouting, give us the way we can achieve all our goals and turn our lives around! OK, maybe it will not turn your life around but it will certainly help you get more out of your day. For me, the most influential piece of technology I use is a FitBit. Here is the description from the manufacturer detailing its uses, I’ll tell you how I use it shortly, The FitBit is a personal monitoring device that you wear on your wrist 24 hours a day. It monitors your daily activity telling you how many calories of energy you burn, your water intake, your sleep quality and even how many calories you have eaten and how many more you can eat that day to achieve your goals. Might all sound a bit confusing but hear me out. With this information you can be sure that every day you are eating the exact amount of calories you need. Is that important……….err…………….yeah THAT’S IMPORTANT! Here is why, most people eat a fairly random amount of calories every day, even if they are on a diet. They may be following a prescribed diet plan but the amount of calories they are given to eat in a day is very much a guesstimate. You can find countless diet calculations to give you the amount of calories you should be eating if you are trying to lose weight or even put on weight but they cannot take into account your activity for that day, they can guess but they cannot know. Here is where using a monitor like the FitBit (there are others available but I use this one) comes into its own. Let’s say you are trying to lose weight. To lose weight you need to do two things: The reason 500 calories is an appropriate deficit is it allows the body to tap into fat stores for energy without feeling it is going into a starvation mode. If you cut calories too much your body will just slow down its metabolism and hormonal function and this is not good for long term health and fitness so it is important we do not drop too much below that level. When using a calculation that is assuming your activity levels it will tell you to eat the same amount of calories every day. However do you think you should be eating your 2,000 calories on days when you have been out playing with the children all afternoon or been too the gym and burnt more energy? What if you had to run around all day organising something and didn’t stop all day? Your energy expenditure would be far higher than normal and therefore you would need more food that day to make sure that you stay only 500 calories under your energy expenditure. Now on the other hand, what if it is a lazy Sunday and you spend a lot of time just sitting around not moving very much or you spend a lot of time sat at a computer, you calorie expenditure for that day is going to be less than normal so if you are still eating the same amount then you risk over eating and not keeping to your deficit. No deficit = no weight loss. In steps the FitBit, it tells me how many calories I have burned that day and I can adjust my food intake accordingly meaning I am always eating the right amount no matter what I have been doing. For me personally my days range from as little as 1,900 calories burnt in a day when sitting around writing blogs and emails to 4,000 calories on a really busy day so as you can see if I ate the same amount of calories every day then I would be way off the mark for my goals. The FitBit also monitors your sleep. If you are not aware of how important sleep is then I encourage you to go and read my blog on sleep, needless to say it is probably the most important part of your day when it comes to overall health. By monitoring it you can see, not only how much sleep you are getting (most of us do not get enough) but also the quality of the sleep, how many times are you waking or restless. Knowing this and seeing it in front of you gets you to take action and make some changes to improve your sleeping patterns. I believe that without it may people will continue to suffer poor quality sleep causing many health issues that can be avoided. Again, read the Sleep blog if you have not already done so. Water intake, do you drink enough? Are you sure? By monitoring this on a daily basis you can make sure that if you get busy you do not forget to get your 2 to 3 litres in a day. Many people think they drink enough but when they actually monitor it they realise that they are under hydrated most days. Not drinking enough will affect every aspect of your health so keeping on top of it is vital. You are also able to monitor your exercise and take the extra calories burnt into account so if you have used the rowing machine for 20 minutes, for example, then you are able to measure the amount of calories and add them to your daily expenditure. Every week I am also emailed a weekly over view of my data allowing me to see how I have progressed from previous weeks and where I can possibly improve on things next week. I find having visual graphs and measurements keeps me on track and helps when planning the next weeks approach. The one area that the FitBit is lacking is the food input part of the app so I use…. This is a free app that you can download onto your mobile device and is a great tool for monitoring your food intake. It is very easy to use, has an inbuilt list of foods, measurements, calorie, fat, protein, carbohydrate, fibre etc. values and syncs to FitBit. By inputting everything that I eat or plan to eat (more about that in a minute) I can see how much protein, fat, carbohydrate and fibre I am eating and adjust things accordingly if I need too. The app will also tell FitBit what I have eaten which then gives me the information I need about calories left to eat, or not as the case may be! By planning my day somewhat I can input my food for the day before I eat it. This is easy for me as I tend to prepare most of my food in advance so I know what I will be having. Once the foods have been input I can see if I need to increase carbohydrate, fats, protein or fibre in my remaining meals later in the day to make sure I hit my optimum macronutrients. Sometimes I may need more fats and protein so I may opt for a meal of mainly beef steak whereas other days I may need more carbohydrate so I may opt for a meal made up of sweet potatoes with some bananas for dessert. Regardless of your goal, knowing exactly what you are eating and how much of it and then knowing that it is the correct amount for your daily calorific goal is a major benefit that is far more useful than just an arbitrary figure plucked from a calculator on the internet. As a side note, in case you are interested, when I first started using this approach I personally lost 3% body fat in 2 weeks while my weight stayed the same. That may not sound impressive but believe me, losing body fat and keeping your muscle mass is a difficult trick to pull off. So when looking to eat properly, the FitBit and MyFitnessPal are my choice of apps. They allow me much more accurate monitoring of what is going in to my body based on the energy I am expending. This may all sound like hard work, in putting this and that, but the results speak for themselves. I would rather put a little effort in each day and be lean, strong and full of energy than overweight, tired and desperate for a solution. GymBoss Another favourite app of mine is GymBoss, it is essentially a timer application that you can set for your individual needs. As well as having many built in templates, you can create your own which is really useful when using interval training as your chosen activity. When interval training you basically work really hard for an amount of time, say 20 seconds, then you rest for a period of time, say 15 seconds. Training this way has been proven to help burn more calories and in particular burn more calories from fat stores. Using a timer is necessary and the GymBoss is probably the easiest and most feature packed there is. Be aware though, you will have a love hate relationship with it because I am sure the work seconds are way slower than the rest seconds!! Moving away from all the hard work, getting some ‘me’ time is usually the last thing people manage to do on a daily basis, even though the benefits are amazing. Spending some time each day just relaxing and collecting your thoughts has numerous health benefits. Your central nervous system and hormonal system are two of the areas of your body that get the greatest benefit when you just sit down and bliss out. Again I have written a blog all about the benefits of daily meditation and it is well worth a read to see how your body, mind and soul reap incredible rewards just with a bit of relaxation each day. Take A Break is an app that has two preloaded guided meditations specifically for busy people. One is 7 minutes long called the ‘Work Break’ which is ideal to make the most out of a quick lunch break. The other is 13 minutes long and titled, ‘stress relief’ this one is slightly longer and reduces the feelings of stress you may be experiencing so it is useful to use as and when you need too. Both of these meditations are perfect for daily use, they do not take up much time so can be fit into even the busiest schedule. Try it out and you will wonder why you had not done it sooner. 
FitBit
MyFitnessPal
Take A Break! (Meditation Oasis)
