Prepare a budget for the purchase of at least a pair of specialty shoes for one type of exercise you choose. Choose the wrong sports shoes and you could end up lying on the couch nursing a variety of complaints such as toe blisters, shin splints, Achilles tendonitis, back pain, knee pain, and also hip pain.
There are many types of shoes you can buy according to the type of exercise that you like, such as the following:
Tennis Shoes
In the sports activity that uses a racket, you should use special shoes that can support the movement to the side. To that end, these kinds of shoes are usually more rigid and heavier than running shoes.
Aerobic Shoes
For this exercise, the shoes must be flexible, able to support and cushioning which absorbs, while minimizing the impact on the foot.
Soccer Shoes
Shoes of this type should be able to reduce the pressure on the foot. Using the wrong shoes can cause a soccer player at risk of developing calluses on the surface of the skin or toenails growth disorders.
Walking Shoes
Choose shoes that are lightweight and can reduce pain in the heel and ankle for this sport activity. Shoes for walking should be more rigid in the front so that the toes are more comfortable.
Running Shoes
These types of shoes are very flexible so it can support the foot to bend each time its stride. However, this type of shoe does not fit if it is used for other types of sports.
Basketball Shoes
To get the maximum benefit from the function of the shoes on the game of basketball or any other sport netball needed shoes that have a combination of flexibility while supporting the movement to the side.
Cross Trainers Shoes
This shoe combines several functions simultaneously for the benefit of more than one sports activity. Its features should have the flexibility on the front legs to run, but also must have a good control for a wider movement such as aerobics or tennis.
For those of you who want to buy specialty shoes for your favourite exercise, you can go to the sport shoes store and tell the staff the usual type of exercise you usually do. Choose shoes that are comfortable to use since the first time you try, the size that suits you. If your heels attached with the back of the shoe, and your finger is about one centimeter to the front of the shoe, then it is the right size for you. You should remember that each shoe has a limited lifetime depending on the quality of the shoes you bought. If you feel the shoes you normally use had been uncomfortable to use, immediately go to a sport shoes store to buy your new shoes.
In addition to a healthy balanced diet, exercise is something that is very important to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Exercise can burn body fat so that we can avoid the risk of dangerous diseases. Regular exercise should be done three times a week to keep our body fit. It’s important to feel 100% comfortable while exercising. Many factors can determine the appropriate clothing for the exercise we choose. The following are things you should consider to choose the right clothes while exercising:
Right Material
Choose a material that can breathe and absorb perspiration. Materials such as Spandex or Lotto can make your body stay comfortable during exercise.
Right Size
Choose a size that is not too tight so that the body can still move easily. Clothes that are too tight can make it difficult for us to move and increases the risk of injury. However, do not choose pants that are too loose if you want to cycle because it can cause injury if the fabric caught in a bicycle wheel.
Sports Bra for Women
Using a sports bra when exercising is essential to compress the breast well and protect it from shocks. When you want to buy a sports bra, choose materials that are comfortable and able to absorb perspiration. The right size is also very important in order to keep the breasts well supported, but did not make it feel tight.
Healthy life starts with healthy foods. It’s not about strict dietary limitations; it’s all about the balance of nutrients. Consuming a balanced meal is already fundamentally essential advice for everyone. The definition of balanced meals is the elaboration of foods that have nutritional content in accordance with the required nutrient intake. Nutrition needs of each person are different. It’s depending on gender, age, daily activities, and others. Although in a different number of nutrition needs, but we all need carbohydrates, protein, vitamins, minerals, fat, and fibre.
Carbohydrates
It needed by the body as a pillar of the main power source for the daily activities of the human body. It’s better to change your daily carbohydrates with the healthier. For example, have brown rice instead of white rice; it also contains 3.5 grams of fibre per cup. Protein
The function of protein is to help body growth and replacing damaged tissue in the body. It’s good for body building. Good protein source contains no saturated fats and no cholesterol. Vitamins & Minerals
Vitamins and mineral are essential nutrients your body needs in small amounts to work properly. There are two types of vitamins: water soluble and fat soluble. Water soluble vitamins include vitamins B1, B2, B3, B6, B12, C, Biotin, and Folate. They are not stored in large amounts in the body, and any extra is lost through your urine. Fat soluble vitamins include vitamins A, D, E, and K. They can be stored in your body, but the high amounts of fat soluble vitamins are not recommended. It can cause health problems. Vegetables and fruits are the best sources of vitamins. Fat
Fat is a source of energy as well, but its more difficult to be absorbed by the body. Try to avoid saturated fats for your daily meals. If you have fish as your protein source, it also contains unsaturated fats. Fibre
Fibre can help lower blood glucose, helps lower blood fat, smooth bowel movement, and make the stomach feel full faster.
Fitness isn’t something we can think about once, run through a checklist of things to improve it, and forget about. Just as in other areas of health, fitness must be maintained through small and consistent actions that add up over time. That’s why mobile apps make ideal fitness companions. Because our smartphones and apps are always with us, they become constant reminders to check your progress, stay the course, and keep your willpower strong.
Whether you’re trying to lose weight, walk more steps in a day, or make time for a seven-minute power workout in your living room, fitness apps can help.
While some apps for fitness connect you to a community of people who cheer you on and send their support, others motivate you through competition. One fitness app on this list, called Pact, lets you compete for cold, hard cash: e.g., she who hits the gym most in a month wins the pot. In others, such as Strava, glory is in the bragging rights you earn when you get the shortest time running or bicycling a segment in your neighborhood. You compete virtually against everyone else using the same app and covering the same ground.
Some of the apps highlighted here are tracking tools. You can log workouts, count calories eaten, and collect stats about all your runs to see overtime how you’re improving. Fitness apps can also be coaching apps that put you in touch with a personal trainer or nutritionist who will check in with you once a week. And some, of course, combine all these things.
But most important of all, the best fitness apps let you set your own goals and maintain a pace that’s right for you. They keep you motivated for becoming the version of yourself you want to be.
Free Available on: Android, iOS
Earn money for charities every time you run, walk, or bicycle by using the free Charity Miles app. Corporate sponsors (whose information you’ll see as a backdrop image in the app) agree to donate a few cents for every mile you complete. Browse the app’s list of charities, find the one that you support, and then hit the road. When a lot of people use Charity Miles, those little bits of money add up.
Free; $4.99 Elite Upgrade optional Available on: iOS
The best bicycle-ride tracking app I’ve tested is Cyclemeter by Abvio. This iOS-only app collects a wealth of data, is very accurate, contains several well-thought-out features, and appeals to fitness enthusiasts who participate in more than one sport. Despite the name, you can use Cyclemeter to track walks, runs, and other activities. It does not include a calorie-counting component, but it is packed with data about your biking outings.
Free app; requires compatible heart rate monitor (about $50 to $100) Available on: Android, iOS
If you want real hard stats about your workouts, accelerometers and GPS aren’t enough. You need a heart rate monitor…and an app that can access the information it collects. One option is the Digifit iCardio app for iPhone and Android (it’s called simply iCardio in Google Play). You can pair it with any supported heart rate monitor to track your runs, bicycle rides, and other workouts. Digifit iCardio records heart rate, of course, but also distance, time, and pace. All the components needed to track heart rate can add up, so plan to spend somewhere in the $50 to $100 range to get full use of this app. If you’re in the market for a heart rate monitor, I recommend the MIO Link wristband.
Free; $5.99 per month or $29.99 per year for Premium Available on: Android, BlackBerry, iOS, Windows Phone
Endomondo tracks your runs, bike rides, and other outdoor activities with good accuracy and a simple interface. Its training plans and coaching features, which are limited to Premium subscribers, definitely improve the Endomondo experience.
Free; optional Premium membership $49 per year Available on: Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and Web
I came to know the Fitbit system through testing the company’s activity trackers, such as the Fitbit Charge HR, but you don’t necessarily need a tracker to use parts of the mobile app and website. Without a tracker, you can use the Fitbit app to count calories, log your weight, and record other health information, such as your blood pressure and glucose levels. If you do own a Fitbit, however, you can also upload the data it collects to the mobile app via Bluetooth.
Free; $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year for Premium Available on: iOS
Former NFL player Tony Gonzalez aims to inspire you to get fit in the iOS-only workout app FitStar. The free app contains “Basic” workouts designed to inspire you to move more, whereas a Premium subscription gives you more program options, such as “Get Strong” and “Get Lean.” No equipment is required for these workouts, so you can complete them at home, at the gym, or on the road. When you first use the app, it runs you through a fitness test so that when you get rolling with your workout plan, you start at an intensity level that’s right for you.
Free; Jefit Pro version available for $4.99 Available on: Android, iOS
When you hit the gym, do you still carry a notebook or crumpled sheet of paper to all the stations and machines? Don’t. With mobile apps for the gym, there are better ways to keep track of your sets and reps. The Jefit Workout app gives you simple tools for crafting weight-lifting workouts and keeping track of the details as you complete your routines. You can log sets and reps, as well as how much you lifted. A calendar helps you plan your workout days and rest days. Jetfit Workout isn’t especially rich with features, but it gets the job done.
Free Available on: Android, iOS
The Johnson & Johnson Official 7 Minute Workout App (free) helps you squeeze some exercise into your day at an intensity level that’s right for you. The interface is surprisingly attractive and clear. All you need is a chair and seven minutes—or about 11 minutes if you add a warm-up and cool down. A medium-intensity workout can include jumping jacks, pushups, wall chair, high-knee running in place, crunches, plank, side plank, triceps dips using a chair, and a few other moves. The app coaches you through each move as it comes up in the workout. It’s a great app for people of all ability levels.
Free Available on: Android, iOS, Kindle, Nook, and Web
The free website and app Lose It!, designed for counting calories and logging exercise, can help you lose weight, especially if you tend to eat name-brand American foods. Lose It!, which has been around for years, has an incredibly strong community of supportive people to help you stick to your goals. Lose It! is compatible with a long list of other fitness devices and apps, including Nike+ FuelBand, Fitbit devices, Runkeeper, MapMyFitness, and Jawbone UP, so you can import your calorie intake and balance it effortlessly against your calorie expenditure.
Free; optional $5.99 per month membership required for some features Available on: Android, iOS, Windows Phone
The company that makes the Map My Run app for runners also makes a slew of similar apps for different sports, such as Map My Ride for cyclists and the more general purpose Map My Fitness. Although it might sound like Map My Fitness will give you the widest range of supported activities, really all the apps have settings that let you track different sports and workouts. In other words, you only need to download one of the apps, and you can use it for almost any activity (Map My Fitness has more than 600 activities). But beware: The free app keeps some of its features behind a subscription pay wall, starting at $5.99 per month or $29.99 per year. As with most fitness apps for running, walking, cycling, etc., Map My Fitness uses GPS to track the routes you travel, and shows you a map of the ground you covered when you’re done. It also displays length, in both time and distance, as well as pace, maximum speed, and a few other statistics.
Free Available on: Android, BlackBerry, iOS, Windows Phone, Web
We live in a world of temptation, cheap pleasures, stress, and convenience—all of which can affect our diet and health. MyFitnessPal is a mobile app and website that gives you a wealth of tools for tracking what and how much you eat, and how many calories you burn through activity. Of all the calorie counters I’ve used, MyFitnessPal is by far the easiest one to manage, and it comes with the largest database of foods and drinks. With the MyFitnessPal app you can fastidiously watch what you eat 24/7, no matter where you are.
Free; wagering money is optional (but kind of the point) Available on: Android, iOS
Pact, formerly known as Gympact, is an app that you use to wager money on whether you’ll go to the gym or complete a workout. The app verifies if you’ve hit your goals by making sure you check in to the venues where you said you’d pump some iron. If you reach or exceed your goals, you earn cash. If you don’t, you have to pay up. The pot is communal, and there are a lot of slackers out there pouring money into it.
$4.99 per month Available on: Android, iOS
Pick a playlist from one of RockMyRun’s music sets, and the beat will match your heart rate or tempo as you run. It’s a fun app to try, with a surprising array of genres, including classical music. If “Flight of the Bumblebee” inspires you to pick up the pace, give RockMyRun a try.
Free; $4.99 per year for Elite Available on: iOS
Rich with stats, highly customizable, and with an astoundingly low price for Elite membership, Runmeter is the best running app for data-lovers. Note that the $4.99 price for Elite membership is per year, making it the least expensive running-app membership you’ll find. It’s for iOS only, however, so if you switch between having an iPhone and an Android phone, it might not be best for you.
$4.99 Available on: Android, BlackBerry, iOS, Windows Phone, and Web (for accessing account)
Runtastic Pro lets you measure and track your runs, walks, and other exercises, but it also doubles as a coaching app to motivate you to keep working toward your goals. You can use it to train for races, too. The $4.99 Pro version is worthwhile, because the free app lacks (and tries to sell to you through in-app purchases) many of the features that are central to the experience, such as the coaching features, voice feedback, and music player integration. The one-time fee, rather than a subscription, makes Runtastic Pro a good deal.
Free; $4.99 in-app purchase for full content, recommended Available on: Android, iOS
The Runtastic Six Pack Abs app will leave your midsection muscles burning for days—or simply tighten that tummy, depending on the difficulty level you choose. It’s a solid coaching app that targets abs through a wide variety of exercise moves. A human voice (available in several languages) counts through your sets and reps, while a video of an avatar shows you the correct form for each exercise. Some of the training programs are weeks long, and there’s plenty of variety along the way.
$3.99 per month or $19.99 per year Available on: iOS
Motivating yourself to move, or keep moving, might take a little help, maybe from an up-tempo song with a catchy chorus. A neat iPhone app called Spring ($3.99 per month; $19.99 per year) plays music designed to help you keep your pace up until the end of your workout. You tell the app your steps per minute or RPMs for cycling, and it selects music that will be ideal for your pace. With more than 30,000 songs across a number of genres, it’s a great way to explore new music while also burning some calories.
$9.99 per month Available on: Android, iOS, Windows Phone
Music streaming app Spotify now packs playlists and special features designed for working out. A Running feature, for example, finds your running tempo and plays songs whose beat matches it. The company also created a few custom Running Original playlists, DJ-mixed electronic music that’ll perk up your workout, even if running isn’t your thing. Spotify’s fitness-focused features are for Premium members only.
Free; Premium from $6 per month or $59 per year Available on: Android, iOS
Runners, bicyclists, and other outdoor types have a host of apps and devices they can use to track their activities. The best one for competitive types is Strava. Whether you’re competing against yourself to beat your best time, or looking at the long list of strangers on the leaderboard who have smoked you on some nasty uphill stretch of your favorite route, Strava brings a fierce competitive angle. This freemium app is a great one to download if you crave having the heat turned up.
Free; $9.99 per year or $3.99 per month subscription optional (recommended) Available on: iPhone
One of the most fun, and challenging, workout apps I’ve tested is Touchfit: GSP. The GSP stands for Georges St-Pierre, your workout coach (and MMA World Champion) who has created a number of muscle-boosting routines. What I especially love is the app first has you complete a test workout, in which you rate different exercises as easy, tough, impossible, or “need to learn.” Your answers inform the app going forward about how difficult your workouts should be. You can choose workouts of 20, 40, or 60 minutes, to do at the gym or at home with little more than a mat and resistance band. The app is free to download with an optional (but recommended) $9.99 per year or $3.99 per month subscription.
Free Available on: iPhone
How is caffeine affecting your sleep, feelings of fatigue, and how hard you work out the next day? The iPhone-only app called UP Coffee (free) by Jawbone could help you figure that out. You use UP Coffee to manually log your caffeine intake, and the app then assesses how different amounts of caffeine affect your sleep. You need a Jawbone UP 24 or original other Jawbone fitness tracker for the sleep-measuring part. But once your connect the UP Coffee app to the fitness-tracking Up by Jawbone app, the rest is automatic. The results were surprising when I tested the app. I thought I was not at all sensitive to caffeine, but I noticed I slept noticeably less on nights that followed high caffeine intake days. I highly recommend Jawbone UP users give it a go.
$15 per week Available on: Android, iOS
Need a professional health coach to help you meet your fitness goals? For $15 per week, Vida Health Coach gives you in-app access to a personal coach who works with you one-on-one no matter what your health or fitness objectives are. Once a week, you can talk to your coach by phone or video conference, too, to get real advice. The coaches have a range of certifications and specializations, so if you have, say, gestational diabetes, you’ll be able to work with someone who understands your special needs.
$4.99 Available on: Android, iOS
Maybe you’ve heard of Zombies, Run! (featured next in this article), but never tried it because, well, you hate running. Now there’s an alternative called The Walk. It’s an app that uses audio storytelling to add some adventure to your walking workouts. As you walk, you listen to a story and are tasked with completing different missions. And who knows? Maybe adding a storytelling and adventure element is just the motivation you need to spur you to keep moving.
$3.99 Available on: Android, iOS
Zombies, Run! is an audio adventure and game rolled into a running workout. You listen to a story through your earbuds about zombies—which may be right on your tail!—and keep running to complete missions as they come up in the story. It’s a little silly, but definitely engaging. This app aims to motivate you to move rather than let you spend your time wading through data about your runs.
Free; $4.99 Elite Upgrade optional Available on: iOS
The best bicycle-ride tracking app I’ve tested is Cyclemeter by Abvio. This iOS-only app collects a wealth of data, is very accurate, contains several well-thought-out features, and appeals to fitness enthusiasts who participate in more than one sport. Despite the name, you can use Cyclemeter to track walks, runs, and other activities. It does not include a calorie-counting component, but it is packed with data about your biking outings.
Do you nitpick over every last calorie and crumb, but let fat content go by the wayside? Fat grams are just as important to consider as calories, and you may be surprised at which foods have a shockingly high fat content.
It’s probably no surprise that greasy cheeseburgers, French fries, and pizza are loaded with fat. But did you know that even certain vegetables and healthy fish can have a high fat content? Keep in mind that fat is an important part of a healthy dietand while not all fat is bad, the fat content of a given meal should be evaluated just as closely as its calories.
Fat Content in Your Diet: How Much Fat Is Okay?
It’s important to pay attention to how many fat grams you eat each day to make sure you’re getting just the right amount of fat in your diet and no more.
The recommendation is that no more than 30 percent of your daily calories should come from fat, says Anne Wolf, RD, a researcher at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Based on the average daily total intake of 2,000 calories, this means we should eat less than 65 grams of fat each day. “Typically we’re eating well over what we need,” notes Wolf.
There are two kinds of fats, commonly considered “good” and “bad” fats. Saturated and trans fats are bad, as they are linked to a number of health problems, like heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Unsaturated fats — the good ones — can actually protect your body from some of these conditions. Still, that doesn’t mean you can eat them without limit because too much of any fat, or of any food for that matter, can lead to weight gain.
When tracking the fat content of your meals, make sure that most of your fat intake is in the form of unsaturated fats, that less than 20 grams are coming from saturated fats, and that hardly any are from trans fat.
Fat Content in Your Diet: Fat in Everyday Foods
Think of the foods that frequently make up your daily meals. Have you ever considered their fat content? Here are some commonly eaten foods and where they weigh in on fat (typically the bad kinds):
Average fast-food hamburger: 36 grams
Average fast-food fish sandwich: 24 grams
10 French fries: 8 grams
One ounce of potato chips: 10 grams
One slice of cheese pizza: 8 grams
Two ounces of bologna: 16 grams
One hot dog: 14 grams
Three slices of cooked bacon: 10 grams
One ounce cheddar cheese: 8 grams
One cup whole milk: 7 grams
Two tablespoons of peanut butter: 14 grams
One teaspoon of butter or margarine: 4 grams
One serving of most breads, bagels, and cereals: about 1 gram
If some of those numbers don’t look that bad to you, pay attention to the amounts and serving sizes of each of them. When was the last time you ate only one ounce of potato chips, just 10 fries, or a single slice of pizza? So think about fat content before you indulge in a burger and fries for lunch followed by pizza for dinner.
Fat Content in Your Diet: Surprisingly High-Fat Foods
While the high fat content of certain foods is no surprise, you may not realize that many other foods are loaded with hidden fat:
Movie theater popcorn (because of the way it’s processed)
Packaged meals with added sauces, butter, or oil
Highly marbled red meats, including some cuts of beef and lamb — that white marbling is fat
Chicken and other poultry if the skin is eaten
Salad dressings
Perhaps the biggest hidden sources of fats to watch out for are prepackaged snack foods and meals. They often contain dangerous trans fats — frequently listed as partially hydrogenated oil or vegetable shortening in the ingredients — because they give these foods a longer shelf life. Trans fats are particularly unhealthy for your heart and cholesterol levels and should be avoided as much as possible.
While you might know that olive and vegetable oils are high in fat, so are nuts, olives, avocados, and certain fish like salmon, mackerel and sardines. These foods contain the good, unsaturated fats — just monitor how much you eat to control yourweight.
Given the high fat content of so many foods, if you’re not careful, you could exceed your entire daily fat allowance by lunchtime! Keep an eye on your fat intake, and opt for unsaturated fats in place of saturated and trans fats. Your health, yourheart, and your waistline will thank you.
The Adidas miCoach Fit Smart burst out of the German sports giant’s lab back in 2014, hot on the heels of the Adidas miCoach Smart Run.
Whereas the Fit Smart’s older brother packed in GPS connectivity, the new arrival shunned this feature in order to slim-down and offer a better battery performance.
When we reviewed the Fit Smart just over a year ago we lamented, “It’s neither a specialist GPS running watch nor an everyday activity tracker – it lies somewhere in between and, as a result, it falls short of being a device that we’d highly recommend.”
But now, thanks to an update that brings step tracking, calorie counting and estimated distance measuring to the workout-assistant, it is an everyday tracker – hence the updated review.
Read on to find out how it fares…
Adidas Fit Smart: Design and build
Although not as well received as Adidas would have wanted, we at Wareable were quite enamoured with the original miCoach training smartwatch, the Smart Run, and were excited to hear that a follow up device was about to hit the shops.
Whereas the Smart Run was quite a chunky device, with a large strap and oversized face, the miCoach Fit Smart pays its dues, design-wise, to the ever-growing fitness tracker genre that’s dominating wearable tech right now.
It hasn’t completely dumped the idea of a display – although there’s no glass or pixels packed into the Fit Smart – instead you’re looking at a 34mm silicone strap that hides a 17 x 11 LED matrix display. Alongside this basic yet effective display are a row of neon LED strip-lights, which we’ll come back to later, and two physical navigation buttons. There’s also a main action button below the display.
The silicone strap lets your skin breathe quite effectively and the clasp sits pretty comfortably on the underside of the wrist. At 50g it’s hardly going to weigh your arm down either.
The Fit Smart comes in two colours: black and pearl. It’s the latter colour variant that we took for a test run and, although it looks pretty futuristic when the plethora of LEDs are lit up, it is susceptible to looking a little bit grubby after a few training sessions. The black one shouldn’t suffer from this issue, obviously.
It’s sweat proof and is 3ATM water resistant, although Adidas recommends not swimming with it on.
Adidas miCoach Fit Smart: Training
On the underside of that LED display you’ll find the Mio heart-sensor, which we’re told is the same one that was present on the Smart Run GPS running watch and the same one you’d find onboard Mio fitness wearables.
Your heart rate plays a key role in the Fit Smart experience, which is centred around helping you train in specific zones. It’s important to remember that the miCoach Fit Smart isn’t a dedicated running watch – rather a training companion that is designed to work across a range of activities including strength and flex regimes.
During a training session, the colour strip of LED lights light up to tell you what zone you’re in, with five different colours on show – all representing a different training intensity zone. During a free training session it’s up to the user to monitor his or her own zones and adapt accordingly, while during a set training session, the LED display will tell you to increase or decrease intensity in order to hit the desired level. You’ll also feel vibration alerts as well when you need to step it up or ease it off.
It’s a system that works well and the display’s instructions are pretty clear. However, you’re putting a lot of trust into the heart rate monitor’s accuracy and we’re not entirely convinced of its pulse recording skills. When testing the Fit Smart against the TomTom Cardio and the old miCoach Fit Smart, we found that our levels varied greatly across the devices, with the Fit Smart and the TomTom being much more in-tune with each other.
Getting a heart rate to register isn’t exactly a speedy affair either – you’ll be waiting around for around a minute before it locks in.
Adidas miCoach Fit Smart: Activity tracking
The biggest criticism we threw at the Fit Smart originally was its lack of fitness tracking smarts; it seemed pointless to have an activity band that didn’t offer basic lifestyle recording.
That’s been fixed, thankfully with the Fit Smart now using its sensors and accelerometer to count steps and estimate distances travelled and calories burned.
You can view your progress in detail on the app – it also tallies with distances covered on other Adidas products synced to you account – or directly on the device itself by tapping the main button.
We found step counting to be a little generous compared to a Jawbone UP3 but, as with all algorithmically created counts, the stats should be used as a guide and not an exact science.
The revamped Train & Run app allow lets you set daily and weekly goals.
Adidas miCoach Fit Smart: Ecosystem
Like the Smart Run, the Fit Smart is heavily tied into the Adidas miCoach ecosystem, which is both desktop and app based.
With the Fit Smart you’ll be using the app (iOS, Android and Windows Phone), which we’re glad to say has had a major spruce-up in time for the new activity tracking update.
Once paired using Bluetooth 4.0, the Fit Smart will keep in sync with the app, sending over details of your latest training sessions and receiving the details of any set workouts that you want to do – you can store 15 different workouts, each with their own intensity zone objectives, directly onto the band. These workouts can customised yourself within the app, or you can select one of the many on offer from Adidas.
Within the app you can also customise the Fit Smart’s display, opting for a single screen showing a specific training aspect (distance travelled, calories burned, heart rate, pace and so on) or a split screen with two dynamics on display.
You can train with the Fit Smart untethered from a smartphone; it works independently. However, with no GPS connectivity built in, the Fit Smart is extremely unreliable when it comes to tracking distances.
There is a 12 minute calibration workout built in to the Fit Smart that you should carry out in order to improve speed and distance recordings, although we found that this made only a minimal difference. Long story short: if you want detailed data on your run you’re going to need to tether to your smartphone and the miCoach app, making use of your mobile’s GPS connectivity.
The device itself has memory enough to store around 10 hours of workout data. You can access your recent history by navigating through the watch’s homescreen.
This homescreen extends to one that displays the time and two that start a new workout. The latter splits into free training and your stored workouts, which are clearly labelled.
Adidas Fit Smart: Extras and battery life
The Adidas miCoach Fit Smart smashes its older brother out of the park when it comes to battery life.
Adidas states that you’ll get five days of use from the 200mAh battery, with an hour’s training a day. We’ve done six 5km runs with our Fit Smart in free training mode, as well as testing out a couple of the set workouts and we’ve still not had to give it a charge. It’s been on standby mode for over a week as well.
It will charge from flat in three hours but the bad news is, like most new wearables on the market – it does need its own charging cradle. This isn’t a moan that’s unique to Adidas though, so we’ll not mark it down for that.
Summary: Use of low energy sweeteners (LES) in place of sugar, in children and adults, leads to reduced calorie intake and body weight – and possibly also when comparing LES beverages to water — according to a new review.
Use of low energy sweeteners (LES) in place of sugar, in children and adults, leads to reduced calorie intake and body weight — and possibly also when comparing LES beverages to water — according to a review led by researchers at the University of Bristol published in the International Journal of Obesity.
For the first time, all available science was integrated into a single review to evaluate the real impact of LES, such as saccharin, aspartame, sucralose and stevia, on energy intake (EI) and body weight (BW) over the short- and long-term. A considerable weight of evidence confirmed that consuming LES instead of sugar helps reduce relative energy intake and body weight.
Lead author Professor Peter Rogers from the University of Bristol said: “We believe that we should shift the question from whether LES are ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ and rather focus on how they should be best used in practice to help in the achievement of specific public health goals, such as the reduction of intakes of free sugars and energy.”
The authors conducted systematic reviews of relevant studies in animals and humans consuming LES in a non-restricted diet. In total, 12 human prospective cohort studies, 228 comparisons in human intervention studies (short and long-term) and 90 animal studies were examined.
Managing energy balance (that is, energy intake vs. energy expenditure) well results in a steady body weight. On the contrary, eating an excessive amount of food causes an increase in body weight as this extra energy is stored in the body as adipose tissue (fat). Low energy sweeteners were developed for consumers looking for ways to reduce their sugar and energy intake.
The comparison between LES beverages and water is important because it shows that LES do not increase appetite. If anything, the evidence suggests that LES beverages reduced weight more than water. One reason for this may be that switching from sugar-sweetened drinks to those with LES may be an easier and more acceptable dietary change to make than switching to water.
