Alpro Vitality App

I must apologise for the length of time it's taken me to get this post up! The guys at alpro contacted me ages ago asking me to try out the vitality app and sent me some yummy soy deserts, the dark chocolate flavour... First time I'd tried those and I'll definitely be getting them again, much better than the regular chocolate... anyway I digress.... I tried the vitality app out at the beginning of my relationship breakdown with Mike when my eating was probably at its worst and it was good for helping me realise just how little I was surviving on a day... I also imagine it's good for people looking to cut down as it's probably more geared towards, or just people wanting to keep track. I think sometimes you just don't realise how many calories are in something..

Pros

• Takes into account that there is more to health and wellbeing than exercise and nutrition and there is an option to add in social time and other non food/exercise related activities such as recycling.
  
• Able to keep track of meals and snacks separately and collectively as the day goes on
• Keep track of water intake as the day goes on so you don't do what I often do and forget all day and cram it all after tea meaning I'm up and down to the loo all night.. doh!
• Also keep track of reaching your 5 a day, however, I wish there had been options for adding to this section as some people like to try and eat more than 5 often I ate more and would have liked the little ego boost of being able to put that down haha maybe that's just me!
  

Cons

• At first I found adding meals hard to do I figured it out eventually but it didn't seem very intuitive..of course that just might be my lack of computer abilities...
• No spelt on the ingredients list so I hd to use brown rice instead as I thought they might be similar, also no blueberries and a few other items which I had to try and put the nearest option in.
• On a few occaisions it doubled the calorie count of one meal whilst stating the correct number of calories on the meals bit.. I had to half the grams of the meal for it to appear right on the chart although then it appeared wrong on the list... not sure what went on there, I tried all sorts to fix it and that was all I could come up with, but again someone more computer minded might not have found that so difficult!!

Whilst I think this is a great tool I probably shouldn't continue to use it. It's too easy for me to become obsessive about these things and whilst it did give me a kick in the right direction at first it would be too easy for me to use it in a bad way, and generally counting calories and I don't go well together... That's nothing really against the app though just personal choices, it's a great free app for people who get on with that kind of thing it's just not too healthy for me... Leads to too many up and down emotions from feeling high that I'd not eaten anything one day to looking at the same day and thinking what are you doing to yourself Laura you idiot.. In some ways these things are far easier not written down for me, on a computer program or otherwise... Anyway, go check it out here just 'cause it's not for me doesn't make it bad!

In other news I got back in the boxing gym tonight!! It felt SO good! I sweated buckets and worked hard, the coach said he thinks I'll be ready to fight come the new season in Autumn so that's great news! I'll write a proper post on that tomorrow... must sleep soon up at the ungodly hour of 5.30 for work :-( After 6 days off and lie-ins it's going to be so hard haha