The iPhone Diet

One of my goals for 2012 was to lose--within one year--all the weight I put on while I was expecting Billy. The doctor said I should expect to put on 30 pounds, but I'm an overachiever, so I put on 41, and that was on top of the 10 pounds I never lost after Isabelle. So basically, I'm aiming to get back to my pre-first-baby weight, which is 51 pounds less than I weighed on October 3. Whew.

Luckily, by October 5th, I had already lost seven and a bit of baby-shaped pounds, so that gave the scale a start on the downward slide. Since I'm nursing, there's really only so much "dieting" I can do while keeping within the recommended nutritional guidelines for nursing mommies, but I am determined to eat a little bit less junk, and move a lot more in order to get back into my favorite jeans by next October. Enter the Steve Ward Diet: where basically all you need is a piece of graph paper, a pen and a scale, and you aim to shed a tiny bit every day until you reach your goal (as I said, my timespan is over the course of a year, and I'm not doing the broccoli thing, just trying to eat lots more fruits and veggies and less p-a-s-t-a on fat days). I take a long walk after I drop Issy off at school, and use the baby carrier rather than the buggy as often as I can... And believe it or not, it's actually working!

The next little piece of kit I discovered were two bits of magic I could load on my iPhone: the Nike Training Club app and My Fitness Pal calorie counter.

Both are F-R-E-E, and both work on a smartphone, iPad or iPod Touch.

My Fitness Pal is a real find, waaaaay better than even Weight Watchers. You can log what you eat and how much you're moving around and track your weight and food intake over time. The best part, for me, is that you can also track the nutritional value of what you're eating, so you can see that you are over in some areas (for me: sugar) and under in others (for me: vitamin C), and know how to adjust your diet accordingly. Based on my calculations, oranges and kiwifruits are definitely on the menu at Chez Puppet Opera this week.

But the Nike Fitness app is even more fun. Saturday was my first time testing it out, and let me tell you...my muscles have been so exhausted from the workout that walking up stairs was almost too much to handle. I am SO excited! If I was going to try to dream up the perfect fitness app, I don't think I could have even come close to matching the awesomeness of this one. You can select different workouts for the results you are trying to achieve (such as toning, slimming down, etc.), and target specific areas of your body (tummy, bum, etc.) with bonus workouts. You can also easily program the app to play your own music playlist, so if you have some workout music that you love, you're golden! Additional features include great video clips of each exercise move that you can play at any time during your workout if you're not sure what in the world a Sumo Squat with Press or a Russian Twist is...and did I mention that it's FREE? It's like having a fun personal trainer right there in your house. The best part is that most of the exercises don't call for any equipment, and those that do require a 12-15 pound medicine ball, which means my 13 lb. baby and I can work out together!

So there you go. My current weight loss at baby-minus-4 months is 30 pounds (including 7 lbs of baby), which means I'm within 10 pounds of my pre-Billy weight and within 20 of my ultimate goal. Hooray for me! Hooray for free diet help!