Every step counts

I'll be perfectly honest. Right now the diet isn't top of my priorities. Living with a 5 week old with nocturnal tendencies rather kicks the stuffing out of you, and getting through the working day without my colleagues finding me snoring away at my desk is becoming more and more of a challenge. Inevitably therefore I am breaking somewhat from the three round meals a day plan and introducing the occasional snack to keep my brain ticking over. However, I've also started taking steps to counterbalance this.

The lunchtime stroll is becoming a regular feature, when the weather permits. To help track progress in this area, I've enlisted the help of an app called RunKeeper. This is essentially a clever bit of kit for fitness freaks to track their runs, but for the less physically actively like myself there is a setting included which covers walking. Enter your weight, and it makes an educated prediction of how many calories you burn in relation to  the speed and distance travelled.

What RunKeeper looks like

So, as you'll gather from the image above, today I walked a touch over 2 miles, burning just over 300 calories, all comfortably within the timeframe of my lunch break. Shortly after I finished this I received a nice email from the app informing me I'd broken my record for calories burned and average speed.

Other features in the app include a map tracking your journey, stored details of previous activities and it even has preset training plans to help you prepare for things like 10Ks, marathons etc. I'm not sure it has a plan set up for me and my sponsored walk next month, but if I ever get my running shoes on it will be good to have this option to help me prepare for a race.

I downloaded RunKeeper for free from Google Play and I believe it is also available for iPhone. Check it out as it is a useful addition to your smartphone, and helped me justify eating a few apples this afternoon!

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