“New Year, New You” with Apps

New year… new year resolutions…

My goal for this year is to lose my chubby tummy! So far I’m trying (desperately trying, seemingly failing) a low carb diet, exercise…

And I downloaded a bunch of Apps:

So far, I’ve tried to “work out” using Seven and lolo’s Easy Abs.

Seven

Although Seven only comes with 12 free Full Body exercises, which includes push ups and planking, which I don’t think is physically possible for me.

I really like the perky cheerleader attitude of the voice over trainer in Seven. Although if I were to listen to her voice for 7 months, I might get sick of it.

Seven is great because the entire session only spans for 7 minutes, and it includes rests, which I definitely need, in between each exercise.

Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/7-minute-workout-seven-high/id650276551?mt=8

lolo’s Easy Abs

I just tried out lolo’s Easy Abs yesterday, and I like it so far.

It’s all about exercises to get abs, which I’d like to strive for. But I’ll be just as happy if I can just get rid of my chubby tummy.

I love that it has videos with voice over instructions showing each exercise. Since I’m quite a stranger to exercises, I want to make sure that I’m doing it right.

And each day includes 5 exercises (which you can swap based on your preference); the free version only allows 3 minute sessions.

And there are different sets of exercises for each day, which I think should prevent me from getting bored.

You can also play music, the app will change the song’s BPM to match your pace. Although I’m not really a workout music kind of person, so I haven’t tried that function yet.

Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/easy-abs-free/id491194029?mt=8

Moves and Walking Hello Kitty are apps that I downloaded as pedometer (they say even walking helps lose calories!).

Moves

I really like the look of Moves, and it tracks where I walk to and from. And it counts how long, how far, how many steps and how many calories I lose per day.

The only thing that I don’t like about Moves is I can’t see a graph of my progress.

Link: https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/moves/id509204969?mt=8

Walking Hello Kitty

Hello Kitty anything is super cute.

You can dress up Kitty, change your background, etc. And see your progress in a Calendar form or through a graph…

But but but, I don’t know why it’s buggy on my device (maybe because I’m only an iPhone 5 running iOS 7), it doesn’t seem to be able to track my steps at all.

Link: https://itunes.apple.com/nz/app/simple-diet!-walking-hello/id899014492?mt=8

So at the end of the day, I actually deleted both Moves and Walking Hello Kitty. Instead I downloaded Pacer because it links up with My Fitness Pal.

Pacer

Pacer is also a pedometer, it tracks steps, you can record your weight and blood pressure, and presents your progress in really nice graphs.

You can even set a target and it’ll help you track how close you are getting to your target with your steps each day.

EDIT: At the end of the day, I deleted Pacer, because it drains my phone’s battery.

Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pacer-pedometer-plus-weight/id600446812?mt=8

My Fitness Pal

I think I need to keep track of the food I eat to make sure that I’m dieting more than I’m cheating (according to my friend, cheat day only happens once a week! aghast!).

It allows me to keep a diary of the food I eat. And it has a seemingly large database of foods (it even has the Taiwanese pineapple cake and the Filipino dish giniling!), so I can find out how much calories each contains. You can set a target for each day, and it will automatically calculate if you are over or under you target (I am unfortunately almost over my target, but I will try harder).

Link: https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/calorie-counter-diet-tracker/id341232718?mt=8

And I was just curious what my ideal weight is, so I downloaded runtastic’s Ideal Weight.

Ideal Weight

And guess what? I am only 3 KGs away from underweight, and I actually still 2.7 KGs shy from my ideal weight. That means that I need to lose my chubby tummy without losing weight, in fact, I need to gain weight.