Brandon Pollock PhD, ACSM-CSCS
Many people prefer exercising with a friend rather than alone. This is not surprising considering the benefits research suggests exist on peer influence during exercise. However, there are individuals that seemingly require utter solitude in order to get an effective workout in. But even if you do fly solo, chances are you have exercised with a friend at least once, especially if you have done any type of resistance training/weight lifting, as this type of activity frequently requires a spotter. A spotter is someone who supports or ‘spots’ you during a particular exercise. Spotting is most often employed when performing any exercise involving a high amount of weight or a high degree of risk, but in addition to being a safety precaution, spotting can be a motivational tool.
But who spots your diet?
When it comes to diet and exercise, whether you are trying to lose, gain, or maintain, a spotter can be a form of motivation. Wouldn’t it seem useful to have a friend, “motivator” permanently with you at all times supporting you? They could chronologically keep track of what you are eating, how much you are eating, how much exercise you are getting, and how many calories you are burning. At the end of the day, they could give you a breakdown/total of your calories consumed and exercise activities performed. Of course, this would take a lot of work and depending on the quality of ‘friend’ it may end up costing you a small fortune; but doesn’t that sound helpful? If you agree you can go ahead and stop reading, take out your smartphone, and download the MyFitnessPal calorie counter and diet tracker.
MyFitnessPal is a free application available for download that allows people to easily monitor and keep track of their calories and physical activities by entering what they ate and what type of exercise they performed into an online diary. In comparison to fitness trackers / calorie counters I have used in the past, not only does MyFitnessPal have more options, it is by far the most user- friendly. The app’s food database boasts well over 3 million different kinds of foods to select from, and it allows customized recipes to be entered, so you will never need to worry about finding certain foods. The exercise database contains 300+ exercise activities to choose from, including cardiovascular, strength, and flexibility workouts. The app contains an exercise tracker that reports how many calories burned for each activity based on your gender, height and weight. A number of valuable nutritional recommendations are also provided. In my opinion, MyFitnessPal’s overall cleanliness, attention to details combined with the database size, diet log, exercise tracker, and daily reports put it at the top of calorie / fitness tracker apps currently available.
As nice as it would be, the exercise you are performing and what you are eating are not tracked for you automatically. For the most part you will need to manually input all food and exercise performed. This means getting in a good habit of logging not only what you eat, but all activities you perform throughout the day. The more frequently you log, whether food or exercise, the more effective and useful the feedback in quantity and quality. When used properly and kept up to date MyFitnessPal will help you achieve your desired goals, and coach you through step by step.
Article’s Resources
- Anton SD, Leblanc E, Allen HR, et al. Use of a computerized tracking system to monitor and provide
feedback on dietary goals for calorie-restricted diets: the POUNDS LOST study. J Diabetes Sci
Technol. 2012;6(5):1216-25.
2. MyFitnessPal.com
3. Rittenhouse M, Salvy SJ, Barkley JE. The effect of peer influence on the amount of physical activity performed in 8- to 12-year-old boys. Pediatric exercise science. Feb 2011;23(1):49-60.