I have found a very cool tool to help me keep track of calories and exercise, but I first had to steal my son's Nintendo DS! Nintendo's My Weight Loss Coach for the DS.
My Weight Loss Coach is a great way to have fun while doing some of the very most mundane aspects of weight loss: Tracking your progress, tracking your intake, tracking your exercise. My Weight Loss Coach is easy to set up, and actually very fun and entertaining to use. You truly do end up with a "coach", an adorable stick figure who assumes your gender and walks you through a variety of screens. In fact, one of the first thing "she" asked me to do was drink a glass of water...and she crossed her arms and tapped her foot until I clicked that I had followed her directions!
You have the ability to set up your personal info, and then My Weight Loss Coach tracks and even graphs your progress for you. I typically log in every day, if I miss a day or two, my "Coach" tells me that she missed me. It is a great way to ensure I stay connected. Along with your profile, You are offered little, fun challenges. Some are super easy: Hide your Salt Shaker. Some are not so easy: Create and post an inventory of what is in your fridge. As you achieve them, you can mark them completed and select more. As you achieve your challenges, your progress is tracked and you achieve interesting milestones, like passing through the Panana Canal. Very clever.
You receive a pedometer with the game, not the greatest one in the world, but fairly functional and easy to upload your number of steps into the game. I found the pedometer to be a bit bulkier than some of the slicker ones that I searched for online, but it was certainly eye-opening to see how many, or how few, steps I took on any given day! It truly made me think about parking further away from the store while running errands, or taking the stairs instead of the elevator. I found it resetting on its own occasionally, so I have to be a bit careful with it. There are other options, at sporting goods stores, Target, Amazon, etc., and you can always simply enter in your total number of steps without using the pedometer that comes with My Weight Loss Coach. You can also enter in other physical activities from a variety of choices.
You can also enter your daily food intake. You get to drag little food icons over your Coach and she "gobbles" up your intake! You do get some coaching to ensure that your intake matches your exercise. The food choices are pretty rudimentary, I would love to see more specific choices, but once you get the hang of it, you can get it very close to what you consumed. I was not sure that I quite got the "energy unit" vs. carbs or calories...so I was a bit confused at first. But, I have to say that it got me in the mind set that food is energy, which is a positive mindset to have when trying to lose weight, I suppose! I would prefer an "advanced" version of the game, for those of us tracking more specific dietary goals.
Results to date? I lost seven total pounds, but did not achieve the goal that the game gave me to meet by month end. But, progress is progress! Time to work harder, consume smarter "energy units" and continue to meet my coach's daily challenges. My poor kid, he may never see his Nintendo DS again! Get My Weight Loss Coach today by going to my Amazon picks on the right hand side of my blog and clicking on the My Weight Loss Coach icon!
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