Losing Weight - Frugal Phone App

I have been trying to keep my weight down ever since I became a full time homemaker.  It was a struggle before when I was working full time but working outside of the home meant that I couldn’t snack.  I never had time to snack because I was very busy working.  Now that I am home I am surrounded by my kitchen most of the time.  Another factor is that I am 3 years older (53 years old) and I have reached the point in many a woman’s life when you know weight control is going to be an uphill battle. 

Let’s face the facts; it all comes down to calories in and calories out.  Also I can be too hard on myself many times and I need to relax.  My weight is 145 lbs. and I am 5’ 5”.  I weighed 125 lbs. when I got married some 32 years ago, but that is history and I’ll never see that again unless I starve myself and continue to starve myself to keep it off.  So it comes down to this – 145 lbs. isn’t so bad and I need to accept it. 

I remember in the Tightwad Gazette books that Amy Dacyczyn talked about losing weight and how she did it.  She counted calories.  Sometimes it’s the simplest things that work the best.  My weight started to creep up on me a couple of weeks ago and I hit 148 lbs.  I knew it was a sign that I needed to be more careful about what I was putting in my mouth and just as important how I was burning those calories, namely exercising.

I was delighted to come across a great app for my phone – My Fitness Pal.  It is a free app.  This app helps me keep track of what I eat.  It has thousands upon thousands of foods and their calories, including restaurant foods.  So far there hasn’t been one thing that I eat that hasn’t been in their food calorie log.  Then there is the fitness app.  There is just about every work out plan possible in this app and you simply have to input how much time you spent in the exercise and the app determines how many calories were burned.  It has my Curves Circuit workout calculated which led me to realize that I needed to do something else so I am now walking a few miles a day.

This app is super simple.  I just had to input some basic information, along with my weight loss goal.  It calculated the amount of calories I was allowed per day.  Then when I exercised it added those exercise calories burned into my food calories.  The more I exercised the more calories I could take in, if I wanted to.  At the end of each day I simply log off the day and the app tells me that if I continue what I did that day what the results will be in 5 weeks.  Namely it has predicted that I will be down to 142 lbs. 

It is a fun app that keeps me accountable.  Also it is so easy to input the information no matter where I am at.  Best of all it is free.  I like free.