I would like to start periodically writing reviews for websites, fitness gear, and phone apps.

My first review is completely biased, I have been using My Fitness Pal for several years now and I am in love with it! This is the perfect food and exercise tracker. Every upgrade seems to make this app even better and more user friendly!

I'll start with the online version, I don't use this much but it's a good back up. On the website you can create up to 6 meals to add your food intake throughout the day. You can also set nutrition, caloric, and exercise goals for yourself! The features are similar to the phone app but I find the phone app much more user friendly.

I really can't talk about how much I love the phone app! In a perfect world, I would want anything I eat at a restaurant to be uploaded into the app, but then again a lot of smaller restaurants do not post nutrition information.

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I love the new loading screen, it makes me feel healthier just using the app!
The side menu is easy access to everything you need to do. It is easy to get to the diary, see weight loss progress and create new recipes.

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After you click the add food, you can choose which meal you want to add to. After clicking on the meal you want, My Fitness Pal remembers all recent and frequently used items for quicker logging. You can also use the barcode function at the bottom to scan your foods. This is a newer feature and I LOVE it!! It has a huge database and has so far found everything I have scanned into my diary.
Scroll down on the same page and you can add exercise and notes about the day. If I can't find the exact exercise I did during my work out, I pick the closest one and adjust the amount of calories I burned. Under the strength section, you can track how many reps you did at what weight to see progress!

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This is what your Diary looks like at the end of the day! You can easily delete things by choosing the edit function and selecting what you want to get rid of. When you are done logging, scroll to the bottom and click finish entry. This function will also tell you your projected weight in 5 weeks if you ate and exercised the same way every day.
The breakdown shows your percentage goals and what you actually ate that day. This is great if you are trying to watch fat, limit carbs, or eat protein!

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Under the settings you can change and modify your goals. Here you can create new recipes. This is one of the only things I do not like about this app. You have to click through several screens to create a recipe, I just with it was on the side menu bar!
The recipe section allows you to store as many recipes as you want. Create them, delete them, modify, or just review them! When you are in your diary, there is a section just for your recipes for quick finding!

There are tons of other great apps out there but the most important thing is to find one that works for you!! I would rate this app 4.5 overall. It is visually please, easy to learn, easy to use, and developers are constantly striving to make it better.

Do you have a favorite app? Any apps or products you want to know more about?

This weekend was my grandmothers 90th birthday! It was great to see family and I got the exciting task to bake the cake!! I had lots of fun baking but I have a fair amount of trouble with the fudge icing. I would definitely say that while the recipe tastes super delicious it is probably does better with a one layer cake. The 3 layers in the caked cause the fudge to drape over the sides with difficulty. In the end, I had a pool of boiling hot fudge all around my cake platter! This is partly my fault since I was focused to much on an even pour on top that I wasn't even looking at the plate!!

This cake was to DIE for but I would not recommend it unless you have a big crowd to feed! You definitely do not want this lying around the house for grabs. I did not calculate the calories but I can only imagine what one slice would be...

I can't tell you how many times a day I struggle with portions! Portions vary from product to product, restaurant to restaurant, and person to person. On top of everything small, medium, large, and party size exist! Bigger sizes cost only cents more and it only makes sense to get the bigger size right? Getting used to the enormous servings can skew the food you serve for yourself.

Choose My Plate is a phenomenal website with amazing resources. A balanced plate sets the right tone for healthy eating. Choose My Plate outlines healthy guidelines for well-rounded meals.
Half of your plate should consist of fruits and vegetables. The other half should consist of protein and grains. A great way to round out the meal is a serving of dairy. If you are having trouble with portion control, try these tips: use smaller dishes, take smaller portions first and get more if you are still hungry, pre-package your portions, and use the below visuals!

Thanks for stopping by today!! I hope that cake wasn't too terribly tempting =)

I'd love to hear any struggles, questions, tips, or comments for portion control! How do you keep your portions in check? What is the hardest part of keeping portions true to size?

Have a great week!

Yesterday’s gym session was quite an adventure! I used the gym at my apartment complex and the treadmills were quite old. The decrease speed button on my particular machine was not working! While it did make me work harder, it was difficult for me to transition between walking and jogging, as I had to pause the machine and increase the speed back up from 1.5mph each time I wanted to walk or jog a little slower. One great thing: I achieved a faster 3-mile jog than ever before and burned more calories! While 36.5 minutes is no speed racer, it felt great to get closer to that 10-minute mile! I am toying with some speed variation, which helps me burn more calories, get used to jogging at faster speeds, and whip my heart into even better shape.

My determination for the week is high which gives me great hope. With 2 workouts down, I hope to get in 3-4 more as I finish out the week. My real day-to-day challenge is keeping my food and calorie intake in check. Today was good but I am still fighting the urge to eat something yummy and sweet – it’s a hard habit to break!

Tonight I am drawing my strength and serenity from a great quote that will keep my head in order:

Do not give up what you want most for what you want at the moment.

Wish me luck and I hope everyone out there is one step closer to their ultimate goal!

What are calories really?

Today I wanted to take some time to talk about calories! Food has always been the hardest part of my journey to better health. Calories are our best friends and worst enemies. We cant live without them yet most of us are in a constant struggle to create balance. Calories are used for energy in the body – we burn calories to stay alive which means we use calories when we sleep, walk, eat, brush our teeth, exercise, and watch TV.

Viewing calories as energy will hopefully help to change your view on food. Energy is like fuel, and if we fuel our bodies right it will run with more strength and efficiency. We all know that your car needs only as much gas as will fit in the tank to run. So why is that so hard for so many of us to grasp with our own bodies? No one would continue to try and pour more gas into their tank after it is completely full, allowing excess fuel to spill out all over the car and the ground. Yet, humans consistently attempt to provide their bodies with more fuel than is necessary to survive.

A single calorie is classified as the amount of heat needed to raise 1 gram of water up by 1 degree Celsius.

So what does that mean? Our bodies need to break down and utilize calories for life. Our body’s metabolism breaks food into more manageable building blocks. These include: sugar, glycerol, fatty acids, and amino acids. Calories that the body does not use are stored as fat. This is why so many people strive to have a fast metabolism – it means that the body is faster and more efficient at breaking down calories and using them.

Different types of foods have different calorie contents. As a rule: 1 gram of carbohydrates has 4 calories, 1 gram of protein has 4 calories, and 1 gram of fat has 9 calories. While our body needs all three of these components (but more on that a different day) you can see why low fat diets are so popular – they cut calories more drastically.

3,500 calories is equal to one pound of fat in our bodies. As stated earlier, if your body cannot break down the calories you ate today into nutrients needed throughout the body, they will be stored for future use.

So, what does that mean? If you eat 250 more calories a day than your body can burn, you will gain 1 pound of fat every 2 weeks. It is more common to eat these excess calories in foods like chocolate, chips, white breads, sugar, and syrups; however, overeating on healthier foods such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and protein is also possible and probable for many of us.

Weight loss in maintenance is theoretically as simple as balancing calories in and calories out. If we eat more calories than we can use each day, we gain weight. If we eat fewer calories than we use each day, we lose weight.

It is EXTREMELY important to find the right balance for you. Countless nutritional and health organizations advise not to cut calories to less than 1,200 per day. A great way to start is to determine your BMR or Basal Metabolic Rate. This is a rough estimate of how many calories your body burns just living. See my sources and site recommendations to learn more about calories and BMR’s. These websites are all an estimate…. It is difficult for a computer to estimate the calories you burn without more invasive testing. These results will give you a great estimate of what your body burns just staying alive. Eating less than this number, within reason, will allow you to lose fat mass. Eating more than this number will allow you to gain muscle or fat mass.


I hope this was enlightening in even the smallest way! As always, if you have any questions, concerns, comments, or thoughts feel free to share =)

Sources and suggestions:

http://health.discovery.com/tools/calculators/basal/basal.html
http://www.calculator.net/bmr-calculator.html?c&cage=24&csex=m&cheightfeet=5&cheightinch=6&cpound=175&cheightmeter=180&ckg=60&cactivity=1&x=62&y=12
http://www.choosemyplate.gov/weight-management-calories/weight-management/better-choices/amount-calories.html
http://www.hussmanfitness.org/html/TFCalories.html
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/human-biology/calorie.htm http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/DGAs2010-PolicyDocument.htmhttp://www.cod.edu/people/faculty/osulliva/phys1554/WeightMatters/calories.html