A message from John Psuik, Founder of Developer One and the inspiration behind iFitOne :
“I’m hoping that what I discuss below might just set off a spark inside you to help you follow through with your weight loss and fitness goals.
I’ve went from being an inactive, overweight and yes ‘fatty’ to becoming skinny, feeling better than I have ever felt in my entire life and having more energy than ever.
Like so many others, I spend a lot of time sitting at a desk, working at a computer, talking on the phone, you know the drill. It’s so easy to put on weight…
I’ve never previously participated in any kind of sports or physical activities, until I saw the picture you see here. Seeing this one picture forever changed my life.
Seeing just how out of shape I was in that picture (I really had no idea) made me think to myself that this was simply not the ‘me’ that I thought I really was or wanted to be.
I immediately tried all sorts of things, from some crazy diets to the ‘magical’ weight loss pills, none of which worked. I stopped drinking soda and remember the headaches I had for a month.
None of this was getting me anywhere, but I didn’t give up on the goal of getting myself into better shape and losing a lot of weight.I started out with a simple idea of creating an Excel spreadsheet. This included a grid with checkboxes for the basic things in my diet like water, vegetables, fruits, dairy, junk food, soda, coffee, exercise.I would print a pile of these and keep them with me wherever I went to record what I ate and log the exercise that I did. Everyday I would try to do better at reaching my goals for the day and would try to check-off at least one exercise/activity a day.I continually refined the spreadsheet idea, started incorporating my diet and activity tracking into Agenda Fusion on my Pocket PC. By looking at my goals every day and keeping track of how I was doing, I started eating a little better, exercising more and started to see really significant changes.I so much wanted to check off my exercise for the day, that it felt great if I could get myself to do it twice a day, and for quite a while I did just that. The weight started dropping off even faster.As I neared the point of losing 50 pounds, I started running a little bit, at first one mile, then two, thinking “how on earth can anyone run a marathon?”.
In 9 months, I took off just about 100 pounds!
I didn’t do it by giving up everything. I still enjoy having a soda, junk food at the baseball game and just about everything else that’s ‘forbidden’, but I’ve learned to limit those items, and when I do have them, I have to pay my body back by exercising it off. That’s my commitment to myself.
iFitOne was created to help you easily track the basic categories of what your eating and your activity, to do it every single day, and to quickly see how you’ve been doing.
I can’t stress enough the importance of simply keeping a log of what you’re doing every day. If you decide to do this on paper or with some other weight loss tracking software, that’s fine too.
By committing to recording your exercise and food consumption each and every day, you’re made much more aware of what you’re doing to your body and whether what you’re doing is in line with your weight loss and fitness goals.
I used this very simple idea to take off quite a bit of weight and continue to use it today to maintain this loss 5+ years later.
I was never an athlete. I’m not a health-food junkie.
What I am is someone who wants to stay in shape and feel great every day for the rest of my life. So I continually look for challenges to keep me interested in exercise. I try new foods. Above all, I keep track of what I’m doing every day to keep fitness at the top of my mind so that I never let myself return to where I once was.
I started out struggling to run one mile, slowly managed to build up to a 5k run, then a marathon, then to cap it off, participated and finished the ultimate challenge of an Ironman triathlon (Swim 2.4 miles, Bike 112 miles, Run 26.2 miles).
Does it get any easier once you’ve lost the weight?
I don’t consider it to be much easier, it’s a different kind of challenge.
Every day, I still focus on trying to eat more good food and stay away from the fatty stuff. I’ll forever know just how good a package of M&M’s tastes, or these amazing ‘Wine Gummis’ that I found on a trip to London, and there’s simply no way I would cut out the items I really enjoy. I just know that I can’t have them all the time, and on those days that I indulge just a bit too much, I’ll make up for it with a little more exercise the next day.
If you’ve struggled to lose weight in the past, are tired of dieting, want to look better in your swimsuit, whatever the reason might be, commit yourself to keeping track of what you eat (every day) and push yourself to get some activity.
It’s so much easier to stick to a simple plan that it is to follow some complex diet monitoring program where you get frustrated and eventually quit.
I wish you all of the best success in achieving your weight loss and fitness goals!
Try iFitOne and see how it can help you keep track and stay motivated to reach your goals. The nice thing about iFitOne is having it with you wherever you are to quickly update your daily log. The friendly reminders can also help keep you on track until it becomes an automatic part of your daily routine. “
