By profession and by passion, I am a planner. For work I plan conferences, seminars and meetings. For fun I plan parties, weddings and vacations. For my health and weight loss journey I plan shopping lists, menus, and workouts. Planning and tracking is in my blood. There’s nothing better than sitting down to map out where I’m going so I can get a clear picture of what I need to do next in order to reach my end goal. Not only that, but I feel such a great sense of accomplishment by being able to see all of the checked off items on my to do list.
As much as I love a pen and a piece of paper, when it comes to my weight loss journey, the convenience of having my “plan on the go” on either my phone, wrist or tablet, really helps me to keep track of my eating and workouts in a way a pen and paper just can’t do.
I use My Fitness Pal not only to track my caloric intake, but what really works well for me is to actually plan out my menu for the week using the app. By using it this way, I can see ahead of time if my plan will go over my daily caloric allotment or if I’m not eating enough. I also like the accountability feature of the app, in that it keeps track of my consistency or lack thereof. I also like being able to connect with my friends who are also on the journey. This feature affirms that I’m not in this alone and gives me a sense of support and community.
As for tracking my workouts I really like using the Nike+ app on my iPod. I like that is tracks my number of steps, how long I walked or ran, how far I went, how many calories I burned and my weekly and monthly totals. Being able to add up my monthly totals last year when I committed to walking 2 miles every day for the month of July, yielded some pretty impressive totals. I’m sure I would not have been able to track my progress so accurately had it not been for technology.
My weight loss journey has had it’s ups and downs (pun intended). Some weeks I’ve breezed right through my weekly goals. Other weeks I’ve found the battle to be all up hill. In either case, it’s been a source of inspiration to go back to my tracking devices to see proof of what I am capable of doing.
Tracking is definitely not something to be taken lightly. There are all kinds of devices and apps out there to help people like myself stay on track. Not only that, there are Health Insurance companies jumping on board who provide tools such as mobile apps to help their members keep track of their health in a convenient way. Oscar Insurance, serving health insurance New Jersey and New York is one of those companies. They are so in tuned with their members that they’ve started providing their members with Misfit Flash activity trackers, which allows members to receive cash rewards for meeting their daily physical activity goals. How cool is that?