My 5 Favorite Apps

Today is the first theme day of the blogathon. We are supposed to blog about our 5 favorite apps. I'll try to connect them to the purpose of this blog.

1.

Lose It is a great app for keeping track of your calories and activity for the day. Best of all, it's free! (At least it was when I got it.) You put your current weight, your goal weight, how much you want to lose a week, and it gives you how many calories you should be getting a day. If you add exercise, it adds those calories you burned to what you can eat for the day. My favorite thing about this app is that you can put your recipes in. Just list the ingredients and amounts, how many servings it makes, and it will tell you the nutrition facts per serving. It is the easiest one I've used for figuring out my own recipes. You can scan barcodes and find almost everything already in the system, which saves a lot of time. I am not using it to keep track of my calories right now because I am using Sparkpeople, but I still use it for my recipes.

2.

Okay, let me just say that this is not my favorite app. I LOVE Sparkpeople online but the app itself isn't capable of doing all that you can do online. The app is very helpful for keeping track of my food and water intake and exercise on the go. Since I am using Sparkpeople as one of the tools I use to stay motivated, it is helpful. This app also allows you to scan barcodes of products. I have found the nutritional information for everything I've scanned so far. That saves a lot of time!

3.

BlogPress: My blog is on blogspost.com and this is the best app I have found for blogging on my phone. It is also incredibly easy to post pictures from my phone (where almost all of my pictures are) to my blog. I can save my blog as an online draft and work on it again from my laptop, and vice versa. You can also manage more than one blog from it.

4.

Pandora? How does this help you lose weight? Music is what gets me through my workout! I love podcasts, but I seriously can't listen to someone talk to me while I'm pedaling my heart to 85% of its max heart rate! I have found so much music on Pandora that I would have never heard on the radio. Lots of these songs have made it onto my exercise playlist.

5.

IntervalTimer is my newest app. I do metabolic training right now. (I promise a blog about it soon!) I do 20 second intervals and this app keeps track of all of it for me. I can also connect it to Facebook, but I haven't done that yet. It doesn't give me the option to only show it to my group.
                                                                                                                                                                      

So, now onto me. I was up at 5:00 and at the gym when it opened! I ate the lunch I packed for myself and then when I got home I fell off the wagon. I ate ice cream and hot fudge, and now I don't have the calories I need for dinner, because I had more than just a little serving. I'm going to eat dinner, but this is a strong reminder that I have to measure and have a little more willpower! I didn't need it, I wasn't even hungry!

Tomorrow I am in a conference all day and I am planning my trip to Blue Coast Burrito. I will have to have a calculated and healthy supper!

Today's question: What is your favorite app?

"Lose the Weight" and Nightmares!

On Sunday mornings, our current sermon series is titled "Lose the Weight." Now before some of you think my preacher is either brave or stupid, he is talking about the weight of debt, fear, stress, etc. Today was about fear and worry. I have to admit, just beginning this journey, I have a lot of fear, especially having broadcast it to many of my friends. What if this is just like every other time? What if I can't do it? What if I fail? What if I just gain it all back and even more?? What if I never get to eat that cheesy pizza or drink a Pepsi again? That last one is kind of funny, but sadly true! He said there was a study done that concluded that worriers also have active imaginations. I can attest to that! The fear of failing or being deprived are real for me. He gave us two options. Listen to your heart or talk to your heart. If I listen to my heart I am being passive. I will probably eat more of something than I should, skip my workout, or what have you. Instead I need to talk to my heart and remind myself that I am not alone in this journey and think on the positive things that are happening.

Speaking of fear, I had two nightmares last night! The first one was that I woke up at 9:15 my first day of class, which is tomorrow, and my class started at 9:00! I went anyway and she assigned me a 5-page paper on a picture book! (Can you tell what my Master's degree is in?) The 2nd nightmare was truly horrifying for me right now. You know it is one of my commitments to go until June 30th without soda. Well, in my dream someone gave me a drink and I drank it without thinking and it was a soda. I was devastated in my dream, and I mean embarrassingly so! I don't think I would be quite that dramatic in real life. This has become so much a part of my daily life that I am dreaming about it!

My family always goes out to eat on Sunday afternoon. Today we went to Outback. (COUPONS!!) I had the Alice Springs chicken without the honey mustard and Aussie cheese fries. Yes, yes, I added cheese and bacon to my fries. I CAN"T HELP IT! Okay, I CAN help it but I chose not to. I did drink water. That has to count for something, right?

I am going to the gym this afternoon and then making sure I have things to take for lunch this week. I'm trying not to sleep Sunday afternoons away.  When I do I don't sleep well at night and my goal is to be AT THE GYM DOOR at 6:00 in the morning. Don't laugh.

I started reading a new blog by a lady named Carly. Here's a link to her blog. She did a 30 before 30, 30 things she wanted to do before turning 30. I am thinking of doing a 40 before 40. I will be 37 next week, so I have 3 years to accomplish them. I've been working on my list and I have only come up with 20 things so far. So today's question (not that anyone is answering them yet) is what are some things you want to accomplish? I thoroughly plan on stealing any good ones you have.

This is day two of the blogathon. My friend Suzzanne (who has made it into my blog three days in a row now) has a couple of other friends participating in the blogathon too. Here are the links to their blogs. Two Hands and a Roadmap and Writings from the City Line. Check them out if you have a chance.

Today, I leave you with this...

 

Weigh-in and Blogathon

I am happy to report that I have lost 4.4 pounds since my initial weigh-in on June 21st! That was 11 days ago. I also went into a new "10s" place! Barely, but I'm there. I do not plan on seeing that number sitting there in the middle again until it has a 1 in front of it! I know I probably won't always lose at this rate so I'm taking it while I can.

Today is the first day of the Blogathon. I have to post everyday in June! This came along at the perfect time (Thanks Suzzanne) and will get me into the habit of blogging. There are some theme days coming through it too.

I was going to go to my chiropractor's office and do the MAX T3 workout with them this morning, but I was too lazy to go out to the car last night and see what time it started. Yes, that would be a very sad, but true, fact. So, I will be going to the gym today instead. I do love my gym. I go to the Jimmy Floyd Center here in Lebanon. There is a large variety of people that go there. I used to go to Sports Village, I actually used to work at Sports Village. It is nice, but I see more of the "120 pound, perfect mom" there. I like the variety at Jimmy Floyd, plus, they have racquetball and as soon as I get to where I don't think I'll have a heart attack I plan on joining the league! I love racquetball and it is a great workout. Jimmy Floyd also has a better variety of weight machines. I think that will be my Sunday challenge, weight training.

                                                                                                                                                

I kept my commitment this week to work out 6 days! WOO HOO! Just 4 more weeks of this commitment. I'm thinking I may do 2 week commitments after this. Like from weigh-in to weigh-in. Maybe that's not long enough. Maybe some should be 2-week and others 6-week commitments.... I DON"T KNOW!

I may or may not have had Mexican for lunch. Okay, I did. BUT it keeps me from going on Sunday when they have a buffet. Tonight I am just snacking on popcorn and an orange because I am not that hungry.

I have been thinking about changing the name of my blog since the focus isn't just Clean Eating. It will be part of it, but it's much more than that. So, here's the question of the day....
What do you think would be a better name for my blog?

My motivation for today, and maybe it can be yours too...