Wow have I eaten a lot of food in the past few weeks. I ate so much that I almost blew out the seat of my “eating pants”, a feat that is very difficult to accomplish. Our house saw a barrage of tasty Christmas treats for a solid 3 straight weeks and I lacked the willpower to not indulge. I ended up indulging at least 37 times, maybe 43.

Now that the holidays have passed, it’s time to be a grown-up again and make sure I make it to both my daughter’s weddings. No joke.

Bottom-line, I need to get back to using today’s app of the week. This past summer I started using the My Fitness Pal app on my smartphone and I really fell in love with it. I was able to use it to easily track my calorie intake, set goals, and most importantly, track my progress. Within 2 months I was down close to 15 pounds. Here are the nuts and bolts of this awesome (and free) app:

The Good Stuff:

• Easily Track What You Eat. Just look at the above picture. You can type in what you eat and the My Fitness Pal app already has thousands of pre-programmed foods to take all the guesswork out of tracking what you eat. Also, if you’re eating a pre-packaged item you can just scan the barcode and viola, you have instantly tracked how many calories you just put in your pie hole.
• Easily Set Goals. If your goal is to lose 30 pounds in the next six months you just enter your information (weight, age, activity level) into the app and it tells you exactly how many calories you need to eat per day to reach your goal. Throw in some exercise and you’ll reach your goal even quicker. The simplicity of this app is what makes it so darn great.
• Play Along with Friends. When I first started using the My Fitness Pal app, I did it with a friend who also wanted to get healthy and drop some lbs. We made it a fun competition to see who could stay under their target calorie intake each day. If we had a cheat meal we would poke each other a little bit which was fun, but the best part was that it kept us accountable to someone other than ourselves which is really important, especially in the beginning, as we start to develop new eating habits.

How the App Could Be Better:

• The only way I think this app could be made better is if it instituted some shock therapy. I can picture it now….you just finished a frozen Snickers bar your son gave you for Christmas, you checked in the mirror to make sure you didn’t crack any teeth, and now you’re using your chocolaty fingers to enter your “cheat treat” on the My Fitness Pal when all of the sudden you have 120 volts screaming through your body. That would definitely make you think twice before you ingested any junk food.

Download the My Fitness Pal app and give it a try:

~ Download for your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch

~ Download for your Android device

~ Download for your Windows Phone

Ask the Reader: Do you currently use the My Fitness Pal app or have you used it in the past? What was your reaction, did you love it as much as I did? What do you think of it shocking you whenever you put some crap in your body, maybe not 120 volts but how about 10? Or better yet, make the voltage adjustable!

To all my faithful readers, both new and old, all the best in the new year.

And more importantly, may your “eating pants” never strain in 2014!

By Kyle James