My Favorite Weight Management Tools

Look at this an extra blog post!  I got some great encouragement from family and friends this Christmas season about my blog and how much they enjoy it, so I am going to make and effort to blog a little more often.  It seemed it was getting a bit redundant with only Tuesday food posts and I found this new site that helps me make picture collages, which is one of my favorite things on other blogs, so here is a collage of my favorite tools to help me manage my weight!

1. Fitbit One  2. Lose It! App  3. FormulaZone website  4. Elliptical  5. Stability ball  6. Pilates DVDs

I LOVE my Fitbit One!  I'm a competitive person and with a daily goal of 10,000 steps I have a daily challenge.  When the weather is good I try to get out and walk around the hospital I work at to increase my step count on it.  I love seeing a high number at the end of the day and get a thrill when I do get it above 10,000 steps!  It is an effort, but a good one!

The Lose It! App has been the best food diary I have found.  In the past (like 2005) I used to write down everything I ate in a book, write down the calories and add it up.  So much work!  Now with my app I just scan the barcode or find the appropriate food in the directory and add it to the meal I'm eating!  It has carb, protein and fat information and will show me the percentage I'm eating along with the calories!  I can see if I'm really eating close to my balanced diet (from my last post) or where I've gotten out of control.  I can add my exercise to it and it will adjust my calorie total taking into account what I burned.  It also has a restaurant foods directory so that you can choose better what to eat when you're eating out.  It is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

I've already sung the praises of the FormulaZone website a little in my last post, but really it changed my life.  There is a small fee to access it, but it is worth it.  I can search recipes made by other people and I can make my own balanced recipes.  I take my favorite dinners and with their "Help me balance it" tool find a food that will help me increase protein or decrease fat, whatever it may need.  It really has made eating balanced meals easier.

Oh my elliptical, how I both love and hate thee at the same time.  Because of all my baby woes the doctor told me I needed to lower my BMI and my elliptical gets most of the credit.  I was terrible at paying gym fees and then never going, but with my elliptical at home I don't have the excuse of "I don't have the time to go to the gym" or "It's too hot/cold to go outside to exercise."  It has weight loss workouts that automatically adjust the resistance and they take only 30 minutes to run through.  I have been neglectful of it for a while but we've been getting better acquainted again.

And lastly my stability ball and Pilates DVDs are great alternates for exercise when I'm not feeling up to the elliptical.  These are newer tools for me and I'm trying to do an every other day sort of thing with the elliptical.  I really want to tone my arms so I recently bought a couple of small hand weights to use with the arms sections of the Pilates DVDs.  I'm hoping for some serious results!

What are your favorite weight management tools?