Apps to Help You Make It A Healthy Holiday & Beyond!

As the holidays approach and the celebrations begin, one of these apps could potentially be your new bff!  It is so important to be mindful of what you are eating and that is easily lost during the holidays at the buffets, cocktail hours, pass around hors d'oeuvres, the office food fest and the actual holidays. Here are 2 great smart phone apps that will EASILY let you keep track of all your calories so you can see what you have left at the end of the day and help you  make better food decisions for yourself .

MyFitnessPal & LoseIt

Free calorie and fitness trackers with over 1 million food items in their data bases. You can store your usual foods and meals to easily reuse again and you can scan bar codes of the food items at hand and all the nutrition information will come up. Enter your weight, height, age and gender and the app will come up with a calorie amount for you to lose weight set to any goal.

You can get numerous reports on your nutrient intake and daily fitness. It will estimate your time frame for weight loss depending on how many calories you program for yourself to eat each day and exercise. There are simple tutorials to show you how to get started and once you get the hang of it, it is EASY!

If you are journaling your food two things happen:

• It keeps you mindful of what is going into your mouth (you may put down the cookie if you are conscious of the fact that you have to record it into your journal).
• You can keep track of all your calories

Here is the caveat.....YOU MUST ACCURATELY REPORT THE AMOUNT OF FOOD YOU EAT AND THE AMOUNT OF EXERCISE THAT YOU DO.  That is typically not the case, so beat the odds and weigh and measure ALL your food whenever you can. If you are underestimating a 1 oz cheese cube (oops you really had 4 oz instead) then you can potentially throw off your calorie count by a few 100 calories.  The same goes with any calorically dense food....NUTS!!

So, let me know how you like these apps and coming soon I will blog about the fantastic grocery shopping and recipe apps that make life easier, healthier and less costly!!