About this time each year, I start thinking about getting into shape for the upcoming cycling season. For me, it’s impossible to eat well and exercise during the holidays. But once February rolls around, I start to get serious about losing that winter weight.
Naturally, I look to the Web to help. I ran across dailyburn.com, which I can use to track my calorie intake, exercises and weight. One of the reasons I chose site is that it also has a free iPhone app that syncs with the site.
The site allows you to track your calories by choosing what you ate and drank for the day. If you ate something that isn’t in the database, you can easily add it. I didn’t see Mirror Pond Pale Ale in the list, so I did a quick Google search to find out the nutrition information and was able to add it to the database.
This works great for eating out and pre-packaged meals, but when you make your own meals it’s not as cut and dry. For example, we made chicken fajitas for dinner and since we didn’t have any small tortillas, we used big tortillas. In this case, I had to find a match that most resembled what we made, and then I had to estimate the serving size to match what I ate.
If you’re really serious about it, you can input your recipes into the database to get a match, but you need to know the exact serving size and a host of other variables (not too mention upgrade to a paid, pro account).
The other site that I find indispensable during the cycling season is MapMyRide.com. This site and the corresponding iPhone app let you map your rides using Google maps. The site will calculate the number of calories burned based on the data you provide.
The iPhone app is really cool, as it tracks your ride via GPS. It even tracked my route from inside my bike’s seat bag. MapMyFitness, the company that makes MapMyRide has a host of other fitness tracking tools.
The other one that I use regularly is MapMyWalk. Since I have a Jack Russell terrier, who turns into a Jack Russell terror if he doesn’t get his daily walk, this has been a good site. Like MapMyRide, it allows you to input the specifics of your walk, and can then calculate the number of calories burned.
On paper, losing weight is a fairly simple process: you just create a deficit in your daily caloric intake. For example, if you create a daily deficit of 500 calories, you’ll lose about one pound a week.
In practice it’s a little more difficult. But that’s where these apps shine. Using these apps, it’s easy to set a goal and actually see that goal, whether it be a number of calories, or a number of miles/minutes of exercise.
What do you use to get rid of those winter pounds?
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