By Paul Dexter, Copyright.
Accountability– It’s the difference between making progress or wasting time.
People have Personal Trainers because it not only motivates, and educates- but also, because it holds them accountable to somebody.
Many clients admit that if they didn’t have an appointment at DTC, they wouldn’t have went to the gym.
Since you can’t have your Trainer with you the other 23 hours in a day (and I’m sure you would get sick of us way before that!), we can’t control what you feed yourself.
Everyone is human, and yes, even us trainers do not eat perfect all the time. The key is, if you have a goal, don’t take one step forward and one step backward by sabotaging yourself with bad food choices or binge eating.
One of the most successful ways to help you reach your goal is tracking your food intake. Before the days of the smart phone, in my competition days, I used to have to do it the old fashion way and use a pencil and paper…. that was right around the time we discovered fire.
By tracking your food, you can see your habits, your mistakes, and what your doing right.
Also, since you have all your information logged and you don’t lose weight – you know what went wrong and can change the amount of calories (too much or too little… yes, some people actually don’t eat enough, but that’s another article for another time) or ratio of nutrients that you took in that week. This will take the “guessing game” out of the equation. Then during a week that you do lose weight – you can look back at what worked and follow that same plan.
What is so great about the “Lose It!” app is that it’s so much better than pencil and paper! But wait, there is even more….
- it logs all your foods, so that when you eat the same things you don’t have to re-enter it again, and again.
- “scan” option….you can scan a package with your phone and it automatically enters the product and all of its caloric information to your phone.
- it logs all your meals too, so if you tend to eat the same meals – just hit the button.
- it can show you your weekly, monthly, or yearly caloric average.
- most importantly, it keeps a pie chart of your macro-nutrients (more important than the actual calories you consume!), so you can see if you are getting enough protein, or too much fat or carbohydrates.
As long as you are honest with yourself and log everything into the “Lose It!” app (yes, the handful of M+M’s count!) you will be holding yourself accountable and more likely to make wise choices, because you have to answer to yourself. And if that doesn’t work – you can always ask your trainer to review each week for you!
The “Lose It!” app is available on all smartphones (apple or android).
