CONTEST: Nutrition MY Way!

[Rene Ritchie]

February is fitness month at Mobile Nations, and you know what that means? we all get together to get in shape, share tips and tricks and recipes for success, review amazing apps and accessories, give away great prizes, and have a ton of fun!

This here is our Nutrition MY Way contest. Simply tell us how you use your Android phone or tablet to eat better and stay healthier. What are your favorite apps? What are your go to accessories for diet and calorie counting, recipes and meal planning, weight tracking and nutritional balance? How does your device fit your active lifestyle? We want to know!

Write them out like a blog post. Yup, use paragraphs, list apps, list accessories, make it really helpful for anyone else interested in using their tech for exercise!

We'll post the best entries on Friday, so get them in ASAP! Need more incentive? We'll pick one winner a week and send them a $100 gift certificate!

What are you waiting for, start posting NOW!

 

[candrusiak]

I'm using MyFitnessPal on my Nexus 4 to track my calorie input. MFP makes it really simple with an extensive database of prepared foods and the ability to enter your own recipes. It also allows you to track your excercise, weight and measurements so you really almost don't need any other apps.

I'm using a Nike Fuelband to motivate myself to be more active. No Android app but the web interface is friendly and syncing only takes a few seconds. The Fuelband is a great tool for tracking steps and your general activity level but I'm not sure how accurate it is for calorie count. If nothing else it keeps me moving!

I've started cooking smarter and really tightly controlling my portions. I purchased these two cookbooks and they are both full of great ideas for tasty low calorie meals.
The America's Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook: A New, Healthier Way to Cook Everything from America's Most Trusted Test Kitchen: America's Test Kitchen: 9781933615561: Amazon.com: Books
Amazon.com: Cooking Light The Essential Dinner Tonight Cookbook: Over 350 Delicious, Easy, and Healthy Meals (9780848736446): Cooking Light: Books

For me this the start of a long journey from 400lbs down to a healthy weight and lifestyle.

So far so good, I'm already down 17lbs since early January and feeling fantastic!

 

[gksmithlcw]

I only use one application for my nutrition tracking and that's the same app I listed last week for activity tracking which is Calorie Counter by CalorieCount. I use this application religiously to track my food intake, my activity and my weight as well as connect with others trying to maintain healthy lifestyles.

 

[sspratlen]

I think i use EVERY app.

Here's the breakdown:
I have a Withings Scale so I use the WIthings App.
I have a Body Media Link so I use that App.
I have a heart rate monitor so I use Endomondo for tracking fitness.
I also use My Fitness pal for food tracking
I use Spark People mainly for the great articles
I also use EarndIt.com to get points for all the fitness and give the points to the charitable causes.

All of these sites basically link together in one way or another so I pretty much only enter my food manually, everything else is automatic entered and tracked!

I love it all!

 

[Pmac25]

I'm using My Fitness Pal to watch what I am eating.
Cardio Trainer for tracking my workouts.
Google Music to keep me entertained
YouTube to watch videos when I am on my trainer.

 

[RandomNickname]

So, I'm using my EVO 4g LTE in a couple of different ways to track my food and calories; as a lot of other people are doing, I've been using MyFitnessPal as a food/calorie tracker. It helps to get a handle on what I've been eating and give me a more-accurate number value on what I am intaking. I also use the phone to take pictures of my meals. Not as any food-porn, send-it-to-instagram-and-let-the-world-marvel-at-my-meals type of food porn, but because it creates a very tangible food diary for myself, far more than just writing down what I've had. For whatever reason, being able to accurately visualize my food resonates better with me than a written food diary, so I use it for that.

I'm starting to also look at some good recipes and other reference for actually cooking for myself (and finding proper meals when going out). After doing a lot of research outside of phone apps and such, looking at a variety of information from doctors and nutritionists, and taking into account my own needs (and likes, as far as food goes), I am trying out a somewhat-paleo diet. I'm not going insane with it (knowing myself, I need to be able to cheat on occasion, or I'll bomb out on the whole thing), but given my own lack of eating things such as cereals and grains (particularly wheat; after some of the information I've read on it, I am trying to avoid it like the plague), I am trying to be as paleo as possible, and see where my weight and general health goes. To supplement this I looked at a bunch of apps available for this particular diet plan, and have found I really like Paleo Food from ProsperTrack. It's got a great deal of good information, and easily referenced information on allowed and disallowed foods, but also gets a feed from Mark's Daily Apple, one of the better blogs on eating paleo.

One caveat to it is that it's not the most fleshed-out as far as recipes and such go, so I am looking around for something to supplement that (and may just go with an ebook or two, if need be), but right now it's a very good reference.

The final way I use my phone is somewhat unconventional, in that it's not a fitness-specific app I'm using (similar to the camera-as-food-diary), and that is using the Alarm Clock Xtreme Free to schedule out multiple meals. I am trying to follow the idea of small constant grazing type meals as opposed to large meals, so I have six alarms throughout the day with various labels (breakfast, snack1, lunch, etc) to remind me to eat little something something. If I don't do this, I find that I tend to skip meals, and will eat maybe twice a day. Setting up my own personal nagging helps to keep me on track.

Besides being able to use my phone as a repository for various workout apps (Couch to 5k, Fitocracy, and Runtastic have all been in use/rotation), the phone is perfect for this simply because of portability, and if I am away on work, I still have my tools at my disposal (and on my person usually -- the upshot of having become tethered to my phone, as have we all).

 

[jackbcohen2]

I use my head and some paper to keep track of what I eat. I don't have a phone so it's hard to keep track of my food with any apps.

 

[ro1224]

I've tried several apps, but right now I'm using the eTools app from Weight Watchers and it's working for me. Down 13.6 since Jan 2. That said the apps from LoseIt and MyFitnessPal are quite nice too. Also there is this app called Fooducate that is handy for looking up nutritional values on the fly. I've learned to pay particularly close attention to the nutritional values of the foods I'm selecting for use with my WW diet. I'm basically looking to cut out unnecessary sodium and sugar carbs while maximizing the more healthful ingredients available. I'm also making a concerned effort to cut down on processed carbs. I find a lot of people are unskilled at reading food labels and understanding the amount of junk that is in processed foods.

 

[Fairclough]

I view its a bit too over the top for calorie counting, I know its good to keep in mind what your eating but sometimes its not possible. When I am in full training, we would get served a 3 meal breaky and its hard to keep track of the calories - mind you we were still not gaining weight. However when I am trying to push my weight down to qualify for lighties (LW) I would just use a simple app like evernote and take a quick short note of the number not what it is and add it up together and make sure my daily output (measured by hr monitior) is way above my input with sweat runs etc.

 

[stefan222]

I'm watching my calorie and nutrition intake every day. I couldn't find a proper app, so I wrote my own: Calories!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.digitalcure.ccnf.app

Loosing weight is a good thing, but you always have to keep in mind your nutrition values, e.g. vitamins and minerals! The primary goal is to stay healthy...

 

[gksmithlcw]

Loosing weight is a good thing, but you always have to keep in mind your nutrition values, e.g. vitamins and minerals! The primary goal is to stay healthy...

So true! That's another reason I love CalorieCount.

 

[jean15paul]

I used the website SparkPeople.com to develop personal nutrition plans and exercise plan, all for free. There are great articles on everything fitness related written by experts and a huge community aspect. It's actually the largest online weight loss community. They have Android (and iPhone) apps for tracking your food, water, exercise, and weight. And there's a separate healthy recipe app. Tracking food when on the go is a big help. (It's hard to remember hours later when you're at a computer.) And I love to use the recipe app when shopping in the grocery store. There's also an inspirational quote app and a produce app.

I'd definitely recommend SparkPeople to everyone. Apps are linked below.

https://forums.androidcentral.com/e.../apps/developer?id=SparkPeople&token=ynQoQH0g

(I posted basically this same info in the week 1 thread, but it's actually more applicable here. Sorry.)