Losing weight - even maintaining your current weight - can be a daunting task, especially during the holiday season.
Turkey, mashed potatoes, pie and eggnog pack some serious calories, and while many are inspired to hit the gym to shed those extra pounds, others are turning to an innovative source to receive weight loss and healthy lifestyle motivation and inspiration: their phones.
In a world that moves fast - from fast food and fast cars, to fast Internet connections and fast results - it is often difficult to make time for exercise and healthy meals. The Apple iPhone and iPod, along with mobile-compatible Web sites and even portable health-care managers, however, are making it easier for people to take care of themselves by providing them with health information, exercise routines, calorie counters and food product information right at their fingertips.
"More and more people are talking about (iPhone and iPod) apps that they use for calorie tracking," in addition to their regular exercise routines. "People are becoming more conscious about healthy eating and exercise, and I think it's a huge step in the right direction," says Tricia Cross, fitness director for both FitClub South and West.
LiveStrong is a popular choice for both iPhone and non-iPhone users. Founded by Demand Media and the Lance Armstrong Foundation, the LiveStrong Web site, as well as the application, was developed to inspire people to make their lives better through daily health, fitness and lifestyle decisions. Full of informative articles, interactive tools and a supportive community, the Web site helps keep members on track, inspires them to set goals for themselves and also allows them to track their daily caloric intake. While a standard membership on LiveStrong.com is free, a Gold membership, which is advertised when you register on the Web site, costs about $5 per month. With a Gold membership, you can utilize more fitness and nutrition tools, such as unlimited calorie tracking and nutritional breakdown through The Daily Plate, LiveStrong's calorie counter.
The LiveStrong.com Calorie Tracker application, which is the companion tool to The 
Daily Plate service on LiveStrong.com, costs $2.99 and is available for iPhone, iPod Touch, or BlackBerry. The tracker not only allows you to track the number of calories you have consumed throughout the day but also allows you to determine a daily calorie target based on your height and weight; search the extensive database of over 525,000 foods for nutritional information, including fat, sugar, cholesterol and more; and enter exercises to determine how many calories you can or have burned.
"I love LiveStrong.com's Calorie Tracker by Nissan," says Emily Wiezorek, a Chatham resident. "It is amazing. You can search for virtually any food, log it, log your weight loss and even search different exercises and the calories they burn. You can then enter the exercise you did, the time of day you did it and for how long, and it will determine the calories you burned for that day. It's easy, and I love it."
Another popular iPhone and iPod touch application is Lose It!, a calorie-tracking application that is similar to LiveStrong's Calorie Tracker. Equipped with a large database of foods and their calorie contents, along with a database of exercises, this free application allows you to determine your daily calorie target and as you enter foods and exercises and either adds or subtracts from that target, letting you know how many calories you have left for the day.
Andrew Diehls, a freshman at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, loved the Lose It! application because it was not only easy to use, but also informative.
"What I liked most was the ease of the use of the application. I used it for about four months ... and it gave me a good idea of how much I was eating, and how much I should be eating. It was free, too," he says.
A more recent and exercise-intensive application is Nike+ iPod Sport Kit, which measures and records the distance and pace of a walk or run. More of a kit than an application, Nike+ iPod Sport Kit works with iPod Nano, iPod Touch 2nd Generation or iPhone 3GS. The Nike+ iPod Sport Kit was released in 2006 and is able to track your running or walking workout by utilizing a small accelerometer that is attached or embedded in a shoe and through GPS, communicates with either a Nike+ Sportband, a receiver plugged into an iPod Nano or directly with an iPod Touch 2nd Generation or an iPhone 3GS.
The kit stores information, such as the elapsed time of the workout, the distance traveled, pace and calories burned by the individual, and can then display the information on the iPod, iPhone or Sportband screen or broadcast it through the headphones of an iPod. The workout information can also be uploaded to the Nike Web site through an iPod sync with iTunes or through another program the Web site provides.
The Nike+ iPod Sport Kit costs about $30 and includes an accelerometer that fits into a specialized pocket in the sole of Nike+ model shoes and a receiver that can be attached to an iPod Nano, while the Nike+ Sportband costs around $60 and consists of the Sportband plus a piece similar to a flash drive that can be used in your computer's USB port to upload your running information to www.nikeplus.com. The band stores 30 hours' worth of workouts and is water resistant. Much to the consternation of iPhone 3G owners, there is not a Nike+ application that is compatible with the iPhone 3G, but apps such as RunKeeper and Fitnio provide good alternatives and are free.
While iPhone and iPods are increasing in popularity, for those who don't own them, there are some great Web sites that can help put you on the track to a healthy lifestyle. Nicole Miller, a Springfield resident who is working toward a degree in nutrition science, finds that Weight Watchers online, as well as FitDay, work well with her workout routine.
"I used Weight Watchers online for about a year," Miller says. "It was great for me because I was using the points system already and since I'm online so much, it was not inconvenient. I was able to record my points online each day."
Access to Weight Watchers online requires you to purchase a membership, but Weight Watchers also has a calorie counter application that can be accessed via the iPhone or iPod Touch.
FitDay is a free Web site that allows you to track your calorie intake while also receiving a full nutritional analysis.
"You can track your weight and set goals, and FitDay also places your foods into charts so you can get a visual of where you need to improve," Miller explains.
FitDay also has a database of foods that you can search to learn about their nutritional information, but it does not contain as many brand-name foods that people consume frequently, Miller adds.
Even gyms, such as FitClub, are providing members access to exercise and nutrition Web sites for free when they purchase a gym membership. FitClub in Springfield and Carbondale is promoting www.dotfit.com, a fitness Web site that can work in conjunction with fitness training received in the gym and helps track nutrition and calorie intake.
"The general public can use dotfit for around $10 a month," Cross says, "but in September or October, FitClub started including it with every membership."
The best thing about dotfit, Cross explains, is that it teaches people how many calories they are taking in and burning, and like FitDay, it also allows users to track how much sodium, calcium, protein, etc. they are ingesting. New members are automatically signed up for dotfit, allowing them to access the Web site for free from their personal computers, but for current members who want to take advantage of dotfit, a FitClub trainer will need to set it up.
"The dotfit Web site provides a ton of information, not just about food but also about exercise," Cross says. It's yielding great results, she adds.
