My favourite Iphone and Android Apps for fitness, exercise, calorie counting and nutrition

I love fitness gadgets, but I hate the cost (doesn't everyone).  My mom and sister have the Fitbit Flex and it really pushes my mom to walk 10,000 steps a day but I am more focused on heart rate, and the Fitbit Charge is over $100, not really in my budget at the moment :-(
But I have discovered a few Apps that are FREE and WORK (two words you rarely see together).  They are for Apple and Android phones, so check them out before you spend a ton of money, maybe these will work for you!

Instant Heart Rate:  First off I didn't even know that a phone was capable of calculating heart rate!  What you do is open the app put your finger on your camera lens and hold it there with about medium pressure.  It takes about 30 seconds, which is tough if you are trying to jog but it's no different than those heart rate watches, which you have to do basically the same thing unless it is connected to a chest strap.
Heart rate monitors with the chest strap are the only ones that show you a constant bpm, so I see no difference between testing on an app or on a watch

My Fitness Pal:  I used to use this app a few years ago, and totally forgot I liked it until recently!  You create a profile, and input your age, weight, how active you are, and how much weight you would like to lose.  It then tells you how many calories you can have as well as other nutrition information like protein intake, vitamins etc.  You can also add in exercises, either by manually adding them in, which is nice when you work on machines that tell you how many calories you burned, or you can search through their list of exercises.  But my favorite part of this app is the fact that it can scan food barcodes and add in all the information! It also has a search engine for foods too, which major restaurants, and generic food.  The only down fall is when searching for generic foods, like bananas, about 10 different ones pop up!

So far these 2 apps are the only ones I have had a strong interaction with.  I am still searching for an exercise one because the app I want to use (bodyspace by bodybuilding.com) isn't compatible with my devices currently (I'm stuck with my old phone because my new one broke)

If you have a fitness/nutrition app that you love, share it here!  I would love to hear about them!

HIIT or High Intensity Inverval Training High Cardio at the gym, what I'm doing

     So I've been trying to lose weight, and have been going to the gym since the beginning of January, at least three times a week, with my goal being 3 times a week.  I don't need to lose much weight, my clothes are just painfully tight and buying new/bigger ones is just giving in.  At the gym I have been doing Zumba and other Aerobic classes, thinking that would be enough.  Well I was wrong, after 2 months my clothes didn't feel any better!  So it was time for a new tactic, and off to Google I went!

     Searching has brought new to my new favorite fitness site Body Building.com. Yes by the name and by most of the pictures on the site, it makes it look like this is made for people who really want to bulk up and yes they do tell you how to do that.  But that is not the only part of the site, there are all sorts of fitness plans and articles and it really is just awesome!  They suggested the best fat burning exercise is HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) especially with cardio!

High Intensity Interval Training, HIIT for short, is doing a mix of intense cardio, about 80% of your max heart rate, then slowing it down to about 40% of your max heart rate.  Now what is your max heart rate?  Well there are several equations to figure this out.  Brian Mac's website has a fair amount and explains the % of error that is found with each one, the error % is very  small.

     Once your know your max heart rate, you'll need a cardio machine with the heart rate monitors on them (this is mainly what I do), buy a heart rate monitor, or they also have apps for phones!  I have tried the phone apps and they surprisingly work, I didn't know that was even a thing!  Defiantly try it out!  The one I use is Instant Heart Rate.  Most of the cardio machines I have used have an interval button, which is what I normally do, but Built Lean also has a good beginner's guide if you want to do it outside.

     Now between doing HIIT Cardio, I have also been pushing myself to go 4 times a week, and after the first week of making these changes I lost 2 lbs!!!!

So try it out and see if it helps you lose weight too!

What is anaerobic energy?

When I wrote my post “Weights or Cardio” I mentioned “anaerobic energy” but didn’t really explain what it was.  Surprisingly when I was researching this, a lot of people made it sound like it wasn’t that healthy because it causes cramps and fatigue.  But if you Google anaerobic vs. aerobic, everyone says to do both.  Anaerobic vs. Aerobic will be a topic for a later post.  For right now I just want to focus on anaerobic energy and exercises.

Anaerobic energy is stored in your muscles and can be used in short burst of energy to push the body as hard as it can go, like in a jump or a sprint.  The human body can’t handle pushing itself this hard for more than 2 minutes.  That’s why exercise routines like Tabata are so short because they push the body as hard as they can with 8 sets of 30 second exercises.  (One of the teachers at my gym has us do it, it’s tough)

Now I’m going to skip all the scientific terms, because those aren’t going to help you at the gym, but when you use anaerobic energy your body is using the carbohydrates it has stored.  Burning these carbohydrates produces lactic acid, which was thought to be a waste product and cause muscle fatigue and cramps but new research proves that to not be true.  Lactic acid is actually another form of energy created and your body does use it!  So doing anaerobic exercise sound better because your are burning those stored carbohydrates, but you still can only do a few minutes of it and if you push yourself further, you’re really just going to make yourself sick and you’re still going to get cramps and be fatigued.

What are some anaerobic exercises?

Lifting weights

Sprinting

Jumping Jacks

Push Ups

Pretty much anything that you can’t do for a continuous amount of time

Links:
mind the Science Gap

lactic acid debate

WiseGeek

Weights or Cardio?

     So my friend won a free month of personal training at our local gym!  She has done personal training before but at a different gym and with a different trainer, so we were very excited to see what this guy had to say!  I caught up with her today and asked her how it went.  From what she said, the trainer seemed to cause more questions than give answers.

     One of the things he said that really confused us was that weight training is more important than cardio if you want to tone and lose weight.  In fact he said you should focus on weight training, healthy diet and then cardio, in that order from most important to least. 

     Both she and I agreed that that weight training and cardio go hand in hand together when it comes to toning, one wasn’t more important than the other.  Muscles do burn more calories even at rest, so you do want to build those up, but doing cardio, especially at the fat burning heart rate, helps get rid of the fat so you can see the toned muscle!  Really this guy didn’t make any sense.  So after I did my Zumba class, I got home and started to google…

 

Right away I found proof that she and I were right, cardio and weight training are both important!  LifeScript was the first link and even yahoo answers agreed with me.  I mean, I’ve read this in so many places it probably doesn’t even need to be cited.  But I wanted to find some sort of reasoning behind the logic of this trainer, or was he actually full of it? Well I found an interesting article from Women’s Health Magazine Online that kind of went with the trainer’s “weights, diet, cardio” order logic.  In this article it answers, what should you do first, weights or cardio.  I thought I knew the answer, you do cardio, weights and then cool down with cardio, but this article gives a totally different answer!  The article mentions that you should do strength training first and then cardio.  Why? 

Well according to the article it’s because when you do weights firsts you use up all your anaerobic energy, so by the time you do your cardio you are burning your fat stores, which is what people want!  People do cardio to burn fat so this logic totally makes senses.  And as an added plus your burn more calories ever after your work out!

So now I’m going to try this before my Zumba class to see if it helps me lose any of this annoying fat that is stuck on me!

Hope it helps you guys too!

How many grams of sugar is recommended per day

     As I mentioned in my post on artificial sweeteners, I’ve been reading the labels of the drinks I’ve been buying.  My current goal is to get drinks with as little ingredients as possible, and that I actually know what the ingredients are.  And there are some “healthy” drinks that aren’t so healthy because of the amount of sugar, for example some of juices by Naked Juice.  I really got an eye opener after reading this article here which talks about the calories and sugar in Naked Juice.  So now I’m noticing the gram of sugar in these drinks and it has me wondering, how many grams of sugar are okay to have in a beverage?

     Like the Glaceau Fruit Water I had the other day contained 21g (though this was sucralose)

     And my Triple Vitamin Water I drank today had 31g

     These seem like a lot but in truth I have nothing to go buy

     I typing my question into Google, and I realized that was not the right question to ask, there were too many variables involved.  Maybe the right question is how many grams of sugar are okay to have throughout the day?  Still too many variables, but this one is a little easier to find the answer for.

     In order to find the true answer to this question, you need to know things like your BMI, how many calories you need to intake to maintain or lose weight and so on.  I personally don’t have a scale because I would rather feel good than be focused on a number.  So I kind of wanted a basic idea so I could answer my original question on sugar in beverages.
      One fitness blog recommended 40 grams of added sugar for non-diabetic people. Link. But she also adds that the America Heart Association recommends only 6 teaspoons of sugar for women and 9 teaspoons for men. That’s 30 grams of sugar for women.  So right there is my one Vitamin Water.  America Heart Association
     This was a real shock for me. I didn't realize that the one Vitamin Water I had took up most of my sugar intake.  And I'm not even including the sugar in my creamer. (That is on my to-do list of healthy changes)
These means of course that water is the best drink, but thankfully tea doesn't have calories and I do enjoy tea, especially Tavo's Passion tea! I highly recommend it. 
So remember your sugar in-take next time you look at 'healthy' beverages!