Your Ideal Form

Helping you on your journey to your best self!

Audrey D

Workout Apps

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Workout Apps

Just like there are tons of apps out there for tracking and logging your nutrition and your fitness, there are also a flood of workout apps out there. The apps I’m going to talk about aren’t about tracking, but about actually giving you a workout to do.

When you don’t know what to do

Workout apps are just that. An app that takes you through a workout. I generally recommend you watch the workout through at least once beforehand so you know what to expect, but other than that, you generally just follow along doing the exercise shown on screen. Some of the apps will have a countdown timer showing how long until the next exercise if they have a video of the workout. Others simply list exercises and tell you how many of each to do, and you go from one exercise to the next in a circuit until you are finished (or you can complete the circuit multiple times if it’s too easy for you!) It’s like having your own personal trainer in your pocket.

When you’re short on time

Workout apps are great when you are short on time. Many of the workouts are five to ten minutes in length, letting you squeeze in a workout quickly. Some of the apps are focused on a particular body part, so you can quickly work your arms, and if you find another few minutes later in the day, you can  work your legs next. Others focus on giving you a full body workout each time.

When you are short on space

Workout apps are designed to be viewed on a cell phone, and perhaps because of the small screen size, most of the workouts don’t require a lot of physical space. At most, you generally need the amount of floor space needed for a yoga mat. This means you can generally do these workouts right in your living room.

When you have little to no equipment

Another bonus to workout apps is the workouts they put together are often body weight based, so they require little to no equipment. Lunges, squats, push-ups, crunches, etc. can all be done without a gym membership.

When you are traveling

Because workout apps tend to be designed to be short, space saving, and light on the requirements, they are fantastic for when you are traveling. I travel often for work and know that it can really throw my gym routine way off. Having these little workouts to do can give you something to work on while you’re traveling so that a vacation doesn’t set you way back.

When you need one

There are so many apps out there, it can be hard to make a list. Do a search for “fitness trainers” to see just how many there are! A very popular one is 7 Minute Workout. You can also search for a type of workout you are looking for such as “yoga” or “booty workout” to narrow it down. There is a company that makes a series of apps called “Daily Workout Apps” which has free workouts for butt, abs, yoga, cardio and arms. And if you have more time, YouTube has millions of fitness videos for every level, and of every type imaginable.

Do you have a go-to app for working out? Let me know below!

Choice, Chance, Change

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The three Cs in life- Choice, Chance, Change. You must make the choice, to take the chance, if you want anything in life to change.

Getting to your ideal form starts with making a choice. You have to choose to put in the effort necessary to reach your goals. The next part is the hardest: taking a chance. This is where you leave your comfort zone and strike out, trying new things, seeing what works, what doesn’t and risking opening yourself up to the criticisms and judgement of others. But in the end, the change within you is absolutely worth it! And while the outer changes are fantastic, it’s those inner changes, those changes in mentality that are where the true transformation happens.

The three Cs in life: Choice, Chance, Change. You must make the choice, to take the chance, if you want anything in life to change.

Nutrition Tracking Apps

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Nutrition Tracking Apps

Tracking what you are doing is the only way to know if what you are doing is actually getting you closer to your goals or not. Logging gives you an accurate picture of what you are consuming. While you can track your food manually using a journal, I have found that using an app is often faster and more convenient.

Apps do the manual work for you

The great thing about using an app is that much of the work is done for you. The apps generally come with a very large database of foods. Look up a food, and all the calories, macros and nutrients are listed for you. No need to do a separate search to find that information. Many apps come with pre-built in graphs as well so that you can get a visual representation of your habits without needing to built a chart on your own. Apps can also give you a big picture view. Many apps that let you track nutrition also let you track your exercise, weight, body fat and even measurements.

Apps making logging food fast and convenient

Aside from coming with a huge food database to make logging quick and easy, apps also come with other features to make getting an accurate picture of your intake as painless as possible. Many allow you to store your own recipes under your profile, so you can easily log foods you make at home. Just input the recipe once, and you can then log that food with one click in the future. Most also include a bar code scanner so that you simply scan the bar code of whatever you are eating and it will find the food and  log it.

Apps can come pre-configured

Many apps have websites associated with them. They can have meal plans on there for you to follow. Just make the foods that they list out for you to stick to the plan. Some can even take into account things like low-carb or vegetarian diets. Plug in your goals, and the app will tell you how much of what you should be eating. I will caution you to calculate your own TDEE using various calculators. For some reason, across the board, apps seem to be really bad at coming up with the right amount for people to eat.

Apps can offer support

Quite a few apps are part of a larger website. These sites often have large communities of people where you can find others with similar goals. There are message boards and groups based on geography, shared interests, and other demographics. This gives you a place you can turn to for support and accountability. (And I’m here for you too!)

Apps that are out there

Here is just a small sampling of apps that you can use to log your nutrition to help keep you on the right track!

What about you? Do you use one of the nutrition trackers listed above? Share your favorite tracker in the comments below!

Would You Rather Make Progress or Excuses?

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making progress is more important than making excuses

Time is inexorable, marching along, bringing with it new experiences and surprises. As much as we might like, we can’t pause it to get a break or get more of it somehow. We also can’t speed it up to get through a trying time faster. Life will keep on happening, and with it, good days and bad, difficult times and wonderful ones. Too often, we live for some point in the future. Next weekend. Next payday. Next month. I’ll start next Monday. Once X is over, I’ll be able to do Y. The problem is that once X is over, Z happens, and Y gets pushed back yet again. Don’t put your health on hold waiting for some perfect time, because there never will be a perfect time.

For some of us, it’s about perfectionism. We want everything to be perfect. But what we’re really doing is being greedy. I could go do a shortened version of my workout today, or, I could wait until tomorrow to be able to do the whole thing and get all the benefits of doing the entire workout. So I wait, and then tomorrow something else comes up and I end up not doing a workout again. Or, if I can’t be perfect with following my diet today, I’m just not going to try, because I want my efforts to be maximized as much as possible.

Little bits of progress here and there DO add up! Consistency is the key to success. While you are still waiting to find an easy way or a perfect time, someone else is already getting results because they decided making progress is more important than making excuses.

How and Why to Drink More Water

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How and Why to Drink More Water

While I wish for all of you to have a thirst, zest and zeal for life, unlike that Dos Equis guy, I do NOT want you to stay (literally) thirsty, my friends. Hydration is important!

Quenches your thirst for zero calories

Most of us have a limit to how many calories we should take in each day. Wouldn’t you rather spend those calories on tasty, filling food rather than just a drink? When you’re thirsty, reaching for water can quench your thirst without cutting into your calorie quota for the day. Also, we often have a tendency to forget to count liquid calories. Using high calorie drinks such as soda to quench our thirst often leads to going over our calorie limit for the day.

Regular hydration prevents retention

There are many reasons your body might retain water. Keeping your hydration level constant can help prevent large fluctuations on the scale when your body needs to use more water for sore muscles or digesting large meals. Staying properly hydrated also prevents your body for mistaking thirst for hunger, making you possibly eat more than you should.

Keep water handy

The best way to get more water throughout the day is to keep it close at hand. Buy a water bottle in your favorite color so that you aren’t ever without something to drink. Test out different kinds as well. You might prefer a wide-mouthed bottle, one with a sports cap, or one with a straw. They even make insulated bottles to keep your water cold, bottles with built in filters if your only option is water from a tap, and even bottles with built in infusers so you can flavor your water with fruit. Get the one that works best for you.

Drink up!

Now that you have a water bottle, be sure you use it! You can set a timer and drink a little bit each hour. You can also make a rule for yourself that you won’t have a second cup of coffee until you’ve had half or a full bottle of water. Perhaps you have to drink an entire bottle before lunch. Yes, you will find you will have to pee a lot at first, but just like any other muscle, your bladder will get stronger over time.

I feel like water solves everything. Wanna lose weight- Drink water. Clear skin- Drink water.Tired of your man- Drown him.

You DO Have the Time

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-I don't have time- is the grown-up version of -The dog ate my homework-.

“I don’t have time” is the grown-up version of “The dog ate my homework”. It’s a BS excuse. Everyone has the same number of hours in each day. It’s all about priorities. Here’s a little pen and paper exercise for you: go through your day yesterday (for bonus points do this for multiple days) and write down how you spent each half hour. Sleeping, getting ready for work, working, eating, commuting… write each half hour down. Are there blocks where you don’t remember what you did? How much time was spent in front of a screen when you weren’t doing work?

This isn’t about abolishing fun, far from it. But many of us do have the time, we have just chosen to do other things with it. If that was a conscious choice, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with that! But far too often, we turn on our phone to check what the latest notification is, and  15 minutes later we’re still scrolling through a social media feed.

Maybe after doing the exercise above, you can honestly say that you know how you spent every minute of every day and none of it was wasted. Remember that it is a result of the choices you have made. And life is hard, I get that. A choice you may have made years ago might still be causing repercussions now. Choosing to go to college immediately after high school vs. waiting a year and working for a year first will put people in very different financial situations 5 years down the road. But you can’t go back and change the past. You can only make the most of TODAY.

Whether you choose to prioritize time with your family, your financial security, or your health, it is up to you. Just remember that instead of saying “I don’t have time”, what you really should be saying is “that’s not a priority for me right now.”