My Fitness Pal

"If Everyday Were Like Today, You'd Weigh 102 lbs in 5 Weeks." - My Fitness Pal

God, I love when my fitness pal tells me how fast I'll be fit and thin if I stay on track like I did today! And for that reason, the instant gratification I get even though I can't see my results yet, I find this app totally addicting! It's the easiest way I've found to track my calories and my exercise to get to a weight and fitness level where I want to be.

It's so easy to use. You put in your weight, your goal, your activity level, and set a calorie goal per day. Then, you enter the foods you eat and the exercise you do each day. Fitness pal tells you if your on track and your progress each day.

What's better is you can find your friends on facebook, or from your phones contacts, and share your food and exercise diary. Or, you can chose to keep your diary private. I like to share mine, and I enjoy getting snack ideas from my friends.

Before I started using fitness pal I would sometimes not eat enough before going to the gym, and get dizzy or tired. Which can be dangerous. On fitness pal, I can literally see if the breakfast I ate is going to be enough to get me through my gym workout. If my breakfast was 300 calories and my gym workout burns 500, that's a good thing to know.

I used to also think I was eating healthy, without understanding how many calories are in things or the breakdown of how much fat, protein, sugar, sodium I was getting each day, and what I still needed. Now I can see all of that on my fitness pal. I can actually look at the nutrition in my food and see if I need to eat more protein for dinner, or if I have extra calories to have that piece of cake for desert.

Whatever your using to track your progress, it needs to work for you. There are a lot of other aps and websites out there that work in ways similar to the fitness pal, and you should find the one that is a good fit for you. By tracking your progress in every meal, and every workout, its easy to stay inspired and on track. It's also impossible to lie to yourself when you see your not!

Pinterest

Let's be honest, based on what you pin on pinterest, are you more a deep fried cheese bread kind of person or the light tabouli chicken salad type?

It seems that it's so much easier to eat poorly these days and leave it up to your workout to burn it off. But eating healthy doesn't have to be a chore, and working out doesn't have to be a solution to your poor eating habits. Similarly, there will always be a great excuse to skip the gym, or to open up a box of mac and cheese for dinner. It’s the kids favorite meal anyways, right? But the harsh reality that you must remember is that someone out there IS busier than you and they ARE making the time to eat healthy and work out! In law school, I would spend crazy hours in the school library and work long hours late into every night of the week, but I managed to make time to stay healthy! I made the time because I couldn't afford not to be healthy and neither can you!

Here are some tips to get you started on the right track:

• sweet tooth? I love dipping berries in greek yogurt and freezing them. Hello low cal fab pre-gym time snack! :) 
• No time to work out? On study breaks, or even during commercial breaks from a tv show, try doing various workouts durring each commercial. I like to hold a body plank for the duration of one commercial, then switch it up! Do sit ups for the next, and jumping jacks for the next!  Everyone has time for this one! It only takes 3 minutes or so.