Newsletter
Using Technology to Enhance Your Healthy Lifestyle!
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Use a Spreadsheet to Track Your Progress
Tracking your progress can be a really powerful motivational tool, whether you're just getting starting with a fitness program or need encouragement to maintain your healthy lifestyle. Tracking is a very useful tool for charting:
- Fitness:
- Distances or times for running, swimming or bicycling
- number of workout sessions per week
- heart rate
- type of workout (interval, endurance, etc)
- Nutrition:
- Grams of protein, calories or fiber consumed on a daily or weekly basis
- number of meals and snacks per day
- vitamin or mineral intake
- daily water consumption
- Health statistics:
- Weight
- BMI (body mass index)
- body measurements
- health variables if you have a condition that needs monitoring (blood pressure or blood sugar levels, for example)
Chances are that you have a spreadsheet program on your. Experiment with the chart formats and find one that lets you print out a visual record of your progress over time. Print them out in full color and display them proudly wherever and whenever you can use a boost! Getting an overview of your progress over time is a wonderful motivational tool for meeting and exceeding your goals.
If you're tracking amounts consumed of, calories, fiber, protein, other nutrients, the USDA web site has a comprehensive database that contains an immense amount of information about foods. It's downloadable, free of charge, for use on Windows, Macs, and PDAs using the Palm operating system.
Download a Cookbook to Your PC
Downloadable Cookbooks and recipes are easy to find and store on your PC (and some are free!).
Keep a Journal, Online or Off
Many people, maintaining a healthy lifestyle can find that recording their day can be remarkably useful:
Here are some journaling sites you might want to investigate: OurStory, MyFamily and LiveJournal. If you don’t find one you like and are comfortable with, you can always do a search with Google or some other search engine.
If you’re not sure you want to keep a journal (whether online, on your own computer or in a notebook); or if you’re not sure how to start, check out this page at writingthejourney. It includes interactive exercises to help you along the way.
Track Your Fitness Goals and Progress Online
- If you'd rather chart your progress online (instead of a spreadsheet), you might want to check out FitDay, which offers fitness tracking software for a fee. A modified version of that software is available free to anyone who registers with the site.
Fitday is not the only site offering this type of service, so look around and see what else is out there.
Expand Your Workout with Online Resources
Just about everyone knows how to use a search engine like Google or Yahoo! to search online. But sometimes it can be hard to find the good stuff Here are a few sites that might interest you--check them out, then use your favorite search engine to explore even further!
- www.readysetgofitness.com Ready, Set, Go Synergy Fitness explains why so many people start exercising, don't see results and give up. The program is easy to understand, has transformed people of all fitness levels and ages.
- Netfit offers a wide variety of exercise routines.
- Self Shape is a good resource for free, downloadable, exercise instruction videos. You should have either a DSL or cable connection, because these files are big and will take some time to download.
- There are lots of great yoga and Pilates sites out there -- yoga.about.com and pilates.about.com are good places to start.
- If walking is your cup of green tea, take a look at the 10,000 Steps program--it’s a new take on exercising, and all you need are good shoes and a pedometer.
Work with a Personal Trainer Online
If you’d like to interact with your own personal trainer online, start by checking out Changing Shape and Global Health & Fitness to get an idea of the range and style of services available. There’s a fee, of course, but it’s less than what an in-person personal trainer would charge, and what you can get online may be just enough to fill your needs.
Burn Your Own Workout CDs
Check out Music Search, iTunes or Napster for exercise and motivational music. (Note: There is a fee involved at all three sites.)
If your computer has a CD burner, create your own workout music by downloading the free iTunes software to your PC or Mac, copying tracks from your own CD collection to your computer, and burning custom CDs of your favorite high-energy music.
Work Out to Music that's Calibrated to Your Ideal Beats-Per-Minute Pace
If you're using an iPod or other portable music device while you run or walk, find out how to create music collections calibrated to your ideal beats per minute! Apple's free iTunes software works on Windows as well as Mac operating systems; to use this feature, make sure you've downloaded the latest version of iTunes (iTunes 4).
These tips are just an introduction to the fascinating topic of using technology to enhance your healthy lifestyle--would you like to learn even more? Be sure to sign up for the latest free course at the Atkins Learning Center: Technology and Your Healthy Lifestyle." You'll explore many of the options, features and possibilities that technology offers--and find ways to harness the power of technology to enhance your healthy lifestyle!
This free, instructor-led course has a lively Message Board where you can ask questions and discuss your health and nutrition goals with others. And while you're there, check out our other great course offerings at the Atkins Learning Center. See you in class!
