Happy New Year!
I posted an image on Facebook...my family...sitting together in a room...everyone has a phone...nobody is talking. What a funny world we live in today.
Technology is amazing, it has changed the way we live, and is making it easier to improve our habits by tracking and networking within social communities. Obviously these new apps can only do so much—it is still up to us, the individual, to make things happen.
To welcome in the New Year, here are some apps that caught my attention!
Five apps for shaping up posted on Gigaom include: Fitocracy (iOS), HealthTap, Healthy Habits, Bloom and Juice, and LIft.
- Fitocracy combines social networking with activity tracking, allowing you to engage with people doing the same activity.
- HealthTap lets you connect with a network of 30,000 doctors to get your questions answered online.
- Health Habits coaches people to form healthier behavior patterns by reminding them about the activities they should complete and recording their progress.
- Bloom and Juice (iOS only) use inspiring images and sophisticated graphics to motivate people to healthier living.
- Lift (iOS now, Android coming) lets you pick the habit you want to develop and track your progress to your goal.
And from Medscape, here are activity and diet apps to help you achieve success. The activity apps include 5K Runner, Nike+ Running, and Runkeeper, which offer coaching, tracking, and connecting with like-minded social communities. On the diet-side, there are Fooducate and DietBet. Fooducate helps shoppers make healthier purchases and DietBet is a social diet game, challenging you to join in a four-week weight loss challenge to lose 4% of your weight.
Or you can challenge yourself with an endurance event and “pay it forward”, consider joining Team in Training, the endurance training and fundraising arm of The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. You train in a fun, non-competitive environment, where the goal is to “complete” not “compete”. Most of the participants are “non-athletes” who are drawn to the LLS mission of finding a cure for cancer, meet new friends, get in shape, and conquer a personal challenge. I’ve done it and loved it, training and hiking the Grand Canyon in May.
And if all this high tech stuff is not for you, there are other options to consider. Besides Taekwondo, UMAC offers kickboxing. Kickboxing is a great way to get in and stay in shape.
Here's to a healthy and happy 2013!
Look for my weekly blog every Monday providing tips and insights from UMAC Briarcliff, "Living a Black Belt Life."
