Losing weight is an issue that many people struggle with on a daily basis. It’s difficult to keep track of which foods are the healthiest choices or how much exercise a person should be doing and on how intense and regular a basis.
Given the inherent challenges, designers of new technology have started to focus a lot more on health and fitness in recent years, to the benefit of users. From fitness apps to calorie counters, it’s much easier these days to stay on track and meet goals you’ve set for yourself.
Fitness apps
Apps that record and encourage personal fitness programs are all the rage, because they’re easy and often free to download, but can be incredibly interactive. Fitness apps can be located online via your smartphone or tablet device and downloaded in a matter of seconds.
A fitness app can be programmed with the user’s height, weight, and ideal weight-loss goals. Then the app will log all the activity the user engages in each day. This will help you to stay motivated and accurately track your progress with just a few clicks on your mobile device.
Fitness apps can also be motivating because the user can synch a device with his or her social media accounts. This basically means that other people can see when a user is working out (or isn’t working out, as well).
This in itself can be incredibly motivating if you seriously want to be able to lose weight and keep it off for the years to come. The best thing is that most fitness apps are available as free downloads. Some of them are designed so that you can wear them on your wrist or belt buckle and track your steps each particular day.
Calorie counting and dieting
Most people find the task of keeping a food journal tedious and time-consuming, especially when you use the old paper-and-pencil method. Nowadays, however, there are hundreds of different apps that you can download to record your food intake, count calories, and see instantly how many calories you’re allowed for the rest of the day.
This takes most of the guesswork out of dieting if you’re used to having to struggle with knowing what, when, and how much you should be eating.
Another factor that comes into play regarding dieting apps on a mobile device is that you can easily look up the nutritional value of a given food item while you’re on the run. Let’s say you’re standing in line or idling in the car lane at a fast food restaurant and you’re thinking about ordering a burger.
You can swiftly look up hamburgers on your dieting app and see how many calories it contains, as well as the ingredients and other nutritional information. Some fast-food chains have their own specific nutritional information online.
This makes it much easier for you to make healthier choices about what you eat, especially when dining out. Fitness and health are no longer aspects of your life that you have to monitor on your own, when so many apps to measure activity are readily available to help you out.
Originally posted on March 7, 2014 @ 1:14 am