Accounts and Accountability

This morning, after breakfast, I get out my phone and enter my meal into my Calorie Counter . When I log into my computer this morning, I will visit the Live Healthy Iowa website and ActivTrax to enter yesterday's workout with Gwyn to my exercise logs. Then, I'll print out my next weight lifting workout just in case I make to the gym tonight.

I need to run some stairs, but the Calorie Counter on my phone doesn't offer a stair climbing option in the exercise journal, so I will visit Calories Count--they've got a good exercise to calorie burn calculator and the website also helps me calculate how many calories I should be eating if I want to maintain or lose weight, depending, of course, on how much I weigh.



If I decided to ride my bike instead of going to the gym tonight, I have my Cat Eye computer to calculate distance, cadence, and time of the ride. And, if I need an additional boost of inspiration, well, I just look at this image of my butt from last year's Urban Assault Ride. It's like it's own continent back there, a proto-Australia read to split off from the Pangaea of my thighs.



My fitness and weight loss goals are all about accounts and accountability. For the most part, all these numbers and accounts keep me honest, inspire me, and get me moving. But, sometimes, it can feel like a little much.

Take ActivTrax: it's the new software being used at the Walnut Creek and other fancy YMCAs around the metro. In order to participate, you meet with a trainer to get your initial test results. Then, you set some weight lifting goals. Mine are tone and weight loss, though I would have liked the other goals too (muscle endurance, muscle building, etc.). When I am ready for a workout, I log into ActivTrax, print my pending workout and take it to the Y. I follow along with the program designed for me and when I am done, I hop back on the computer to log in my efforts. If I log in 250 workouts, cardio included, over the course of the year, I am eligible to win a t-shirt from the Walnut Creek YMCA.


[ActivTrax even gives you videos that demonstrate the various moves.]

ActivTrax is pretty cool. Every workout is different, so I don't get bored. The website "trax" my progress and gives me feedback on my work. It also offers me the option of a calorie and nutrition tracker which lets me know if I am on the road to weight loss or weight gain. But, counting calories is time consuming enough, so I don't take advantage of this program. I like the flexibility of my phone.

Then, there's Live Healthy Iowa, one of the many fitness challenges I've accepted. Live Healthy Iowa is a 100 day challenge for work places to encourage people to get more active and lose weight. All you have to do is log your exercise and weight loss every Friday and teams are eligible for drawings and prizes. Some teams take it really seriously and lose a lot of weight. Our teams are not as ferocious, but we do meet each week for a casual "lunch and learn" program.



All these programs, plus this blog, make my weight loss journey one of the most recorded, traxed, and calculated journeys this world has ever seen since the space shuttle. Is it helping? It's hard to say. There's little doubt that keeping a food journal is a good idea. It makes it just a bit harder to eat a cupcake when you have to enter, "cupcake." And, I actually do get motivated to try and beat last week's exercise-time totals with Live Healthy Iowa, and secretly, I love YMCA t-shirts that I "earned."

All my accounts give me some numerical accountability, just as the blogosphere and my friends give me social accountability. Whether all of this accountability will make the big number on the scale move, remains to be seen.