Meet My Friend....

Introducing...

We all know that exercise alone isn't good enough and we aren't going to see the results that we want by JUST hitting the gym.  Our diet is 80% of the process.  Trust me, if exercise alone worked... I'd be one skinny B by now!  This is where I always have the most trouble.  But I am determined to do this the right way BUT I also want to do this in a realistic way.  Otherwise, I'm not going to stick with it.  Plus, there is only so much chicken and broccoli one can take... I mean, a girl needs Cheetos and beer every ONCE in awhile, right?

I have been using an app, MyFitnessPal, for awhile now.  There are a ton of apps out there that do basically the same thing, but I just really like this one.  It tracks your calories in and even your calories out!  You plug in your info and goals and it sets your calorie intake allowance for the day.  You also enter in your workouts and it tells you about how many calories you burned for the day.  (Although, I recommend getting a heart rate monitor that counts your calories, but that's another post.)  If you have a heart rate monitor, you can plug in exactly how many calories you burned for that session.  Plus you can hookup with friends on there to give each other support! Here is how it tracks your calorie intake and calorie output:

TIPS:

I wanted to give some tips for using this to make it as easy as possible for you to use, that way we stick to it!! The easier you make it, the more you will do it!!  I also wanted to highlight some of the cool features!

1.  Create Meals: Most of us probably eat close to the same things for certain meals.  I know that I always eat close to the same breakfast everyday so I just have to add it from My Meals.  Here is how you create meals.  First you plug in your meal items... then....

 

And this is where you will find your saved meals.

2. Multi-Add:  You can add several items at once.

3.  SCAN: You can scan bar-codes directly from them items!  I haven't scanned anything so far that hasn't been in their database!  It makes it SUPER easy! 

4.  Daily Allowances:  See what your foods have in them!  Are you eating foods that are too high in cholesterol?  Are you getting enough Potassium?  I can clearly see that my diet this day had way too much cholesterol so now I know how to try and tweak that for the next day!

 5.  Food Ratios:  It also shows you the percentages of Fat, Carbs and Protein that you took in that day. You can use this to adjust what foods you might need to add and what might need to be eliminated.  Are there better choices?  

A healthy diet should have a ratio of :  

Protein: 10%-35% * Fat: 20%-35% * Carbs: 45%-65% 

 Food is the TRUE key to getting the body we want.... but for me, it's definitely the hardest part.  I am committed to logging in every day!  And if I forget... REMIND ME!! I will do my best to try to post my meals with my daily workout routine.

Let's get stronger, together!!