Fitness gadgets and Apps

[Terry_w]

After sitting my my bottom all day in an office environment I am rapidly getting fat and unhealthy. Therefore I have decided to try to get more healthier with the type of food, the amount of food, and exercise etc.

Can anyone recommend any good gadgets and/or apps to:
1. Keep track of movements
2. Keep track of food (maybe)
3. monitor things that need tracking.

Someone recommended the Fishbone UP
http://www.fitshop.com.au/jawbone-activity-monitor/jawbone-up/
It is a wristband which measures movement.

After moving a few steps there is nothing i would like more than sitting in front of the computer analysing my movements

 

[Ace in the Hole]

Good on you for making the decision, now to follow through with action...

I like www.myfitnesspal.com for tracking calories.
For choice of diet, maybe try giving low carb, high fat a try.
I've been on a really low carb high fat diet for the last 5 days, feel good now, but it takes time to adapt.
Never eaten such low carbs on a single day in my life, now next to no carbs 5 days straight, it's not that hard.
Dropped 1.5kg so far and I don't really need to lose weight.

Good luck with your health and fitness goals.

 

[ZOMG]

MyFitnessPal is great app, you can scan barcodes and it'll input that food in, enter your goal calories and start plugging your food in.

If you're looking to lose weight, it's a relatively simple concept of:

Calories in < Maintenance calories.

To estimate your maintenance calories-

Estimating Requirements
The simplest method uses a standard 'calories per unit weight (usually kgs)'. They calculate a TOTAL CAL REQUIREMENT (TEE). They are:
- 26 to 30 kcals/kg/day for normal, healthy individuals with sedentary lifestyles doing little physical activity [12.0-14 kcal/pound]
- 31 to 37 kcal/kg/day for those involved in light to moderate activity 3-5 x a week with moderately active lifestyles [14-16 kcal/ pound]
- 38 to 40 kcals/kg/day for those involved in vigorous activity and highly active jobs [16-18 kcal/ pound].

E.g. Let's say you're at 80kg, your maintenance calories is around ~2400k cals. If you want to lose weight, you'd want to go on a 500 kcal deficit per day. You can also factor in exercise into this equation, i.e. doing 1 hour of cardio may burn off 400-500 kcals.

Push came to shove, diet >>>> exercise every single time. Hope this helped.

 

[Of The Vultures]

Sitting down for prolonged periods is unhealthy regardless of any weight gain, so good for you for trying to make a change.

I like the app Cardio Trainer, I know it has a calorie tracking function (possibly as an add-on app) but I only ever use it to map my walks.

I watched a couple of Michael Mosley's documentaries the other day, very interesting:
http://www.sbs.com.au/documentary/program/1087

http://www.sbs.com.au/documentary/program/1196

Take home messages from both were that going to the gym after sitting in a chair all day is not enough, the key is incidental exercise all through the day, ie stairs instead of the lift etc. And as far as losing weight, exercise won't suffice - reducing calorie intake is key, and intermittent fasting is particularly good for you (not total absence of food, just reduced to <500 calories on fasting day)

 

[moyjos]

Yep definitely myfitnespal. Awesome app.
Also..get yourself a pedometer and aim for 10,000 steps a day.

To start, wear the pedometer without caring about it... Logo at the steps and try to consciously add 5-10% extra every day u til you get to 10,000 steps.

 

[moyjos]

Good on you for making the decision, now to follow through with action...

I like www.myfitnesspal.com for tracking calories.
For choice of diet, maybe try giving low carb, high fat a try.
I've been on a really low carb high fat diet for the last 5 days, feel good now, but it takes time to adapt.
Never eaten such low carbs on a single day in my life, now next to no carbs 5 days straight, it's not that hard.
Dropped 1.5kg so far and I don't really need to lose weight.

Good luck with your health and fitness goals.

Ace, care to share your menu plan for the past week? I respond really well to low carb, high protein and would interested to see a low fat high fat menu.

 

[Scott No Mates]

I use mapmyfitness/mapmyride/mapmyrun etc.

MMF gives you a whole range of workouts (running, gym, cycling, walking etc), measures/estimates calories, tracks with GPS, includes height of climbs, heart rate, speed etc (syncs with other programmes).

Strava - mainly for cycling

http://www.8700.com.au/

Plenty of options both for android or those self-centred "I" users.

 

[eggnog]

Just start with and stick to an exercise program. Doesn't take much time to do but it means that you can still sit around all day.
Im personally doing the insanity workout program. Only takes 40 min out of my day. Its a 60 day program so not too long. Im only on week 4 but its already showing amazing results.

 

[Belu]

i use sleep cycle to track my sleeping patterns, also helps to keep you focused on getting a good rest which is as important as exercising in my opinion.

 

[kathryn d]

There are lots of simple things to do.
Take the stairs.
Park further away.
Walk to the store (if reasonable distance)
Push the plate away.

 

[robbiejuve]

Gadgets and Apps distract IMO and I think the fitness industry complicates things because there is so much money to be made in selling you useless apps, gadgets, gym memberships and supplements.

If you are honest with yourself you will know if the exercise you just did was meaningful or if what you ate today was good or bad.

I dont know where your office is but I assume you need a car to visit clients otherwise I would suggest switching to commuting to work on a bicycle. If you live within 15km of Sydney, riding a bike doesn't take much longer than a bus or train. If you live closer, you can run into work too. KG's will fly off doing that.

Check out meetup.com and see if there are any fitness groups that match your interests. For example I am part of a Soccer group which I love to play. We play 3 times a week for 2 hours each time. That is an awesome work out doing something I love, doing that on a treadmill would have killed me with boredom. I also go to Kayak meetups and when I have some time, will get into the mountain bike one.

 

[tess85]

I use Runkeeper which feeds into Beeminder. Working really well for me at present, can't rave more about Beeminder.
http://www.beeminder.com

 

[Ace in the Hole]

Depends on how serious you want to be.
A high level athlete would use many of these tools to track progress.
A regular person probably doesn't need any of these.
I still think tracking your calories/macros and getting familiar with how many calories are in different food types will give you a much better understanding on how your diet affects your body composition.
Once you are familiar with this, you could probably stop tracking and go by the mirror and weight scale, but it is a great learning experience which should be done if never done it before.

 

[jrc77]

TerryW,

I use MyFitnessPal to track calories and a Fitbit One as my pedometer to measure my activity level. It syncs wirelessly and the Fitbit apps integrate with MyFitnessPal so that my activity adjusts my allowed calorie intake.

My wife has a Fitbit Flex (which does a similar thing but is a wrist band rather than clipping on pocket) and says it is far more stylish.

The Fitbit App/website keeps a seven day rolling tally of steps for you and any linked friends - so you can compete to keep you motivated.

I am quite happy with this setup.

Regards,

Jason

 

[ozmale42]

No need to use apps and other gimmicks

You just need to remember it's all about the calorie deficit - calories expended > calories consumed = weight loss.

I occasionally use my own version of, what they call, the 2-5 diet when I feel I am putting weight on. That involves 2 non consecutive days of virtual fasting and 5 days of normal eating.

During the 2 days of fasting you can consume up to 600 calories each day, which provides a net calorie deficit of 1,600, while on the normal days you can eat normally within reason, say 2,200/day.

Consider a male aged 40 who is 6 foot high, weighs 85kg and who lives a sedentary lifestyle. That person needs a calorie intake of 2,200 per day just to maintain their current weight (15,400 per week). Over a week on the 2-5 diet that person will consume 12,200 calories, being a net calorie deficit of 3,200 calories which translates to weight loss of 0.5kg per week. If you exercise as well the calorie deficit is even greater. I try and burn off 500 calories per day 5 days a week through exercise.

For starters I would just cut your calorie intake by say 500 a day and walk for 45 minutes each day. Then build up to 5 min walk/ 5 min jog and do that for 45 mins. Re-evaluate after 6 weeks. You could complement that with some resistance training as well. Reduce intake of alcohol, deserts, breads, pasta, rice and anything containing sugar. While fruit is a good part of any balanced diet too much is not good due to the amount of sugar in it. Limit that to 2-3 pieces a day.


Good luck

 

[tobe]

the best gadget is a pushbike!!

 

[Ace in the Hole]

You just need to remember it's all about the calorie deficit - calories expended > calories consumed = weight loss.



Consider a male aged 40 who is 6 foot high, weighs 85kg and who lives a sedentary lifestyle. That person needs a calorie intake of 2,200 per day just to maintain their current weight (15,400 per week). Over a week on the 2-5 diet that person will consume 12,200 calories, being a net calorie deficit of 3,200 calories which translates to weight loss of 0.5kg per week. If you exercise as well the calorie deficit is even greater. I try and burn off 500 calories per day 5 days a week through exercise.

I used to strongly believe in this until a week ago.
I fit the description given almost perfectly of a male aged 40 who is 6 foot high, weighs 85kg, but losing weight fast on a high fat, high protein and almost no carb diet, taking in just over 3000 calories daily.
Only slightly active.
Done this for the past 5 days and lost 1.5kg, admittedly would be carb depleted, but still dropping weight.
Prior 4 months to this gained about 5kg on a very similar calorie count, maybe 3200 average, but higher carb and lower fat.

Because of this, I no longer believe the simple formula of calories in vs calories out.

Of course I could gain weight on the current diet, but calories would probably have to be maybe 4500 calories daily on this diet.

 

[vbplease]

Strava - mainly for cycling

Strava is excellent for running as well.. great for hearing your pace every 500m when listening to music.

I use JEFIT for the gym, it has great animations for all the different workouts. It says it's supposed to log and graph the stats but doesn't seem to work. Anyone know of a free app that does this? Graph increases in strength for different excercises?

 

[redwing]

Yep definitely myfitnespal. Awesome app.
Also..get yourself a pedometer and aim for 10,000 steps a day.

To start, wear the pedometer without caring about it... Logo at the steps and try to consciously add 5-10% extra every day u til you get to 10,000 steps.

The Fitbit is great, it can also track your sleeping patterns

TerryW,

I use MyFitnessPal to track calories and a Fitbit One as my pedometer to measure my activity level. It syncs wirelessly and the Fitbit apps integrate with MyFitnessPal so that my activity adjusts my allowed calorie intake.

My wife has a Fitbit Flex (which does a similar thing but is a wrist band rather than clipping on pocket) and says it is far more stylish.

The Fitbit App/website keeps a seven day rolling tally of steps for you and any linked friends - so you can compete to keep you motivated.

I am quite happy with this setup.

Regards,

Jason

What Jason said

The new Fitbit flex is probably less likely to be forgotten also, mine is a clip on and has gone through the wash twice

 

[Terry_w]

Thanks for all the replies and useful tips and websites etc. I agree that gadgets are not really necessary, but gadgets can enhance the experience.

I now have a fitbit flex wristband so will give it a go and report back. When I went to the shop to buy it I did have a choice of escalator v stairs and I did use the stairs where I usually would have taken the easy escalator route - so I guess it is already working!