The Problem
Goals? We don’t need no steenking goals!
Fitness is an admirable goal and one that I often aim at in a general way. New Year’s resolutions often revolve around fitness. But I have difficulty in setting goals and tracking my progress towards them. I imagine some of you may struggle with the same things.
Wouldn’t it be nice if there was something that allowed you to set goals and track your progress?
Solutions
Set the Goals
There are several different ways that we can approach our fitness goals, but the first thing we need to do is set some goals.
- What is our target weight or BMI?
- Are we going to use exercise, diet or both?
- What exercise plan will we follow?
- What diet plan will we follow?
- How will we measure success?
- How will we cope with setbacks?
- How will we stay the course?
Tracking
I’m not going to answer all of these questions in this post, but I will talk a little about tracking results. Future posts will double back and cover some of the other topics.
I’ve found 2 different software solutions to the tracking issue, both with problems and advantages. The first is the Wii Fit software for the Nintendo Wii. The second is Weight by Date software for my PC.
Nintendo Wii Fit
We got the Wii Fit just after Christmas ’08. This is an amazing combination of hardware and software that makes certain fitness activities fun for the whole family. It allows you to set weight and BMI goals and actually measures and tracks them for you. It is also designed to promote proper posture by measuring your balance and using games and exercises to help improve it. The weight measurement seemed to be very accurate the few times I compared it to the measurements I get at the doctor’s office. It is much more accurate than my bathroom scale!
The games and exercises are quite fun and you are encouraged to continue the exercises by the Time Bank which tracks how long you’ve been playing or working out. At regular intervals you can unlock other activities. You can also unlock more advanced levels of activities as you get better at them.
Each activity has a High Score section that lets you brag when you can finally beat your kids at ski jumping (although this will be rare 8=) making it a friendly competition.
Weight by Date Windows Software
I just discovered the Weight by Date software by Quite Healthy Technologies. They have a 15 day trial download so I’ve taken advantage of it to see what it is like.
The main thing that I like about this over the Wii is that I’m on the computer every day (all day if you ask my family), so the fitness goals and data are at my fingertips. It also incorporates more data but it does have to be manually entered. It doesn’t weigh you like the Wii Fit does.
You can also set up diet information (it actually has some common diets preloaded for you to select) to track your caloric intake.
The most important feature for me, though, is the ability to schedule your workouts. You can set up the exercises that you want to do and also log the ones you do. It will also calculate the approximate calorie burn for each activity based on your current weight.
What’s Next?
I’m only on the first day of the trial with this software, so I have some exploring to do. But what I’ve seen so far is promising. I’ve signed on as an affiliate for this product as I think it is going to be a valuable tool for people like me who need a little help in getting and keeping focused with our fitness goals.
Watch for a full review in a couple weeks or download it yourself and share your thoughts in the Comments section.
Now, if only someone could write some software that would clean my office …
Thanks to arinas74 for the jogging lady image.