After many years of trying to set personal goals in various ways and then failing to stick to them, I’m finally having some success. I can’t claim all the credit for this. To get from someone who has never been able to be consistent at anything, to someone who appears to be making the [...]
I only need 3 iPhone apps to help me with my health and fitness and they cost me nothing. If you’ve got more then you may be focussing on the tools and not the outcome; you may be thinking of the apps as a shortcut. As I have said: there are no shortcuts.
Google “best free fitness apps” and you can wade through 150 million pages. Mostly you’ll be looking at lists of apps pulled in by the sites straight from the Apple store, these are just attempts to generate traffic, a simple and easy story to get a high Google ranking, covered in ads to claw in a little revenue. The apps I’m about to recommend I use daily. They came to me through suggestion, trial and error. I’m an actual user of these apps, not a paid reviewer.
Firstly: what you don’t need
You do not need any form of workout routine or phone based personal trainer. An app cannot manage your fitness any better than a book could. Only you can do that. If you think you need an app to work out then you are unlikely to succeed because you are relying on a tool to achieve what you feel unable to do yourself.
You do not need a calorie database or calorie counter. If you’re on a diet or think you need a diet then you already know what you should eat, right? A calorie app is not going to tell you anything new, or make you thin. Buying one implies that you think information equals success. It does not, so focus on the right thing, your own motivation.
App 1: The camera
The iphone comes with one of the best tools straight out of the box. The camera. Keep a food journal by photographing everything you eat. The best advice you can get from any dietician is to keep a food journal. It forces you to see what you eat and from that you are able to take control. The iPhone camera has a camera roll, time stamping and so it can be used as the perfect food journal. If you need more information on how just email me or leave a comment.
App2: A weight tracker
You need a way of tracking your weight in a way that lets you see the trend over time. This is because the trend is more important than the daily fluctuations. Adjusting what you eat based on daily changes is not sensible. Your weight creeps up and down constantly so if you see an increase one day you may be tempted to panic and starve yourself the next day. That is one reason why diets fail. A trend line allows you to adjust your diet based on the trend over a number of weeks and so there is less of a temptation to panic. I recommend the free (lite) version of True Weight because it shows a 3 week trend line which is all I find that I need.
App3: An activity tracker
So far I’ve described a way of recording what I eat and recording what I weigh, so the final app is one that records what I do; tracking activity. Nothing beats trail guru for this as a free app in my opinion. You need to set up an account at Trail Guru and once done the app will track your movement when it’s on. The site will record that over time, and will give you reports on such things as distance covered, method, and calories burned. I would link to a review of this app but mostly those reviews are based on simple short trials, to really understand how to get the most from this tool you need to use it. You can contact me for more information or just go the Trail Guru site and explore the forums and FAQ’s.
And that’s it. Just 3 simple applications. As these are free apps it means that the developers don’t get paid for their efforts directly by you so you should consider donations and clicking through on any adverts presented to you as a way of showing your support.