As a fitness fanatic and gadget freak, I am always looking for the newest app or gadget that can bring me to the next level. I don’t just want a pedometer, I want something a little more. I want a tracker that can keep me motivated, give me goals and help me surpass them. I want a tracker that I can use in different fitness classes and apparatus and an app that is able to keep my food in control while telling me about the nutritional content of what I am putting in my mouth. So, after personally looking at, testing (most) and wanting all of them, this is what I have found as my favorites:
Gadgets
Fitbit Force 
This awesomely sleek and beautiful looking tracker tracks all sides of fitness from your calories burned from walking, to running to cleaning your house (which means it would obviously track your new hobby of curling!). For me, I love it because it also tracks your sleep. Too often we forget how important sleep is to our overall health and fitness routine and this tracker helps stay on top of that for you. It also has a fantastic silent vibration alarm which can wake you gently unlike the harsh radio or phone alarms that jolt you out of our sleep. It also has a wonderful online component.
Atlas If this amazingly cool Inspector Gadget looking tracker does even 75% of what it says it will do, then it is going to make some serious waves in the tracking world. The Atlas tracker tracks on an x-,y- and z-axis, meaning it can track you regardless of the way you are moving. It can track your pushups and what kind of pushups you are doing. It can track you while swimming and track if you are swimming freestyle or butterfly. It tracks cycling, lifting, running and it can learn pretty much any exercise you want it to, it even tracks the power that you generate, and your heart rate. Sounds like every athlete’s dream… but you just have to wait for it to launch later this year.
Smart Body Analyzer
This scale really amazes me. It not only tracks your weight, but your body fat percentage, your heart rate and the room’s air quality. What? That is just incredible. The app or online interface is motivating and decently easy to use.
Garmin ForeRunner 910XT This incredible tracker is made for the runner, cyclist or triathlete. This great looking watch has a large display so you can see your customized workout fields (heart rate, pace, time etc). If you are training for a multi-sport event, it is easy to transition between tracking the different sports and the GPS tracking is awesome.
APPS
Nike + Nike + is my favorite running app. It not only tracks my running with great precision, it also gives me great graphics of my maps. It also lets me keep track of my running shoes and how long I’ve had them for and how many miles have been put on them (something that is very important). And it helps me track what kind of terrain I was running on. It also has some nice pluses like being able to start friendly competitions with friends, track goals and, even though it may sound silly, get cheered on via Facebook WHILE I’m running. If I so choose, I can post that I’m running to Facebook and anytime someone likes it, I hear a light cheer over my headphones. It helps motivate in a fun way.
Fat Secret This is a free app that is simply just a food and diet tracker. I love the interface, it is simple and easy to read. One of the things that I love about Fat Secret is that it allows you to keep a personal journal as well as a food journal. Online food trackers sometimes forget the fact that tracking how you feel around the food you eat can be pivotal in losing weight. This tracker also has some awesome tracking tools for your habits and performance over time, so you can really see how well you’re doing and where you might need work!
PEAR Training-Intelligence While you do need a pricey heart rate monitor for this app, it is tres cool and incredibly helpful when training. Using your heart rate as an indicator, this app will coach you through your training, letting you know if you should speed up or slow down.
Zombies Run!
If you are bored of just simply running to run, this crazy cool app tells you a story via your headphones where you are the center of the story. You are “runner 5” and the story takes you through a series of missions while running. You collect numerous things like ammunition, batteries and medicine while running and if you are using the GPS tracker, you can also opt in to participate in zombie chases which will make you run faster in spurts to outrun a zombie. If you don’t outrun it, you can lose your supplies that you worked so hard for or, even worse, fail the mission. SO COOL! This app also tracks your run and your time.
SportSetter While all of these gadgets and apps mentioned above are incredible, they really only track your quantitative data – tracking your numbers, helping to motivate by giving you some numeric goals or displaying goals you have entered and tracking how you reach them. But, what about actually helping you to get active? What about an app that can help get you active, personalize what you want and how you like to work out and help find a place to use all of these other apps or gadgets? You really need something qualitative. Something that takes your personal likes and dislikes and provides an empathetic and customized approach in providing options for you to choose from. Sportsetter does all of that. There is something about having the customized approach as opposed to the generic listings that most other apps give you that is incredible and definitely makes you come back for more!
Blog written by: Julia Dalton-Brush @ourfitjourney IG: Juliadaltonbrush
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