**UPDATE** Intermittent Fasting & Some Apps

I've gotten so used to the IF lifestyle that I hardly think of it anymore. I wanted to post a little update and share some of the tools that have been helpful (and free) in the routine.

The day after my June 30th birthday, I went from doing the 16:8 plan (fasting for 16 hours) to the 20:4 plan. Strangely, I find it easy to fast for 20 hours where I struggled a lot with the 16:8 plan. Go figure.

These are 2 of the apps I use (in addition to occasionally using My Fat Secret):

Time Until 

 The Time Until app (above) is my motivator/reminder once I have set the number of hours I plan to fast. So far, I've stuck to the 20-hour fasting but the next app I'm showing you (below) lets me set a schedule of my choosing.

iFasting app

The above app is called iFasting and it is really, really handy for anyone setting a fasting schedule. I've been using it since I went 20:4 and I only have one complaint and that is that it got a couple of my counts wrong:

Or maybe I messed up keying numbers into the app or because fasting times ran into each other... I don't know ~shrug~. I've used the app so much that I considered upgrading to the Pro version. One big problem with that is the price. The Pro version costs $6. That's steep for an app. Since the descriptions in the Play store don't detail the upgraded features, I have contacted the developer to find that out. It's only fair since I am talking about it here on the blog.

I have been considering trying this other app that no one else has downloaded or reviewed. It's called Faster - The Fasting Tracker. I am hesitant because the only thing listed under Permissions is "Other". I really want to know what the heck that means...

Anyway, I have been progressing well with the fasting. My weight is weirdly staying in the same general area (and, no, I'm not telling what area that is), but my clothes are fitting looser and people have been commenting on the "loss". I'll take it. In addition to that, my legs and feet are a lot less sore and tired.

As far as My Fat Secret goes, I haven't been checking in recently. When I check in every day, I'm too focused on minute goals. Thinking too much about what I'm doing to lose weight is self-defeating for me.

When I first started the 20:4 routine, I was trying to schedule my eating hours as late in the day as possible. I think the first few days, I was eating as late as 8:30 and 9:00 at night. That was great because I get most of my cravings at night. Also, I have finally learned to choke down black, unsweetened coffee. (The trick to that for me, by the way, is to make the brew weaker than I do for creamed/sweetened coffee.) Here's the thing, though I only have 4 hours (6 during my 18-hour fasts) to eat and I don't like having that one meal on my gut when I'm about to go to bed.

After a couple of days, my cravings subsided and I found I was eating less. Since that happened, the best schedule I have come up with is to eat during the hours of 1 to 5 or 2 to 4. That leaves a lot of time to be up and avoiding snacking so I make sure to have fresh coffee ready and some water in the fridge. Coffee seems to work as an appetite suppressant, although I messed up one evening and added turmeric to the black coffee. 1 teaspoon Turmeric = 8 calories. Oops. Speaking of sneaky calories, even fresh mint leaves carry a few. Sheesh! I am down to the plain and filtered tap water and weak black java.

My biggest annoyance is my neighbor offering me cookies, cake and margaritas every other day. I've just started giving her this look every time.

I want to point out that one of the reasons I even first attempted the 20:4 schedule is because I read that the body really starts to benefit from fasting at the 16-hour point.  Information at that link shows a chart and includes the following observation:

"But according to the information above, in terms of insulin level, the fast is only really getting going at 16 hours. Extending it further than this ramps the drop in insulin and the increase in lipolysis."

This made sense to me and I realized that my 16-hour fasts were only touching on my goals. Now I'm going for 4 hours into the "sweet spot" the article speaks of. The reduction in cravings is just another benefit.

I cannot wait to post some photos. I feel that, if I keep this up, by the end of this month, I will have some serious visual evidence of IF working. If I were ten years younger, I would have reached my goal weight within a couple of weeks. Alas, this almost 60-year-old body is a little more stubborn!

For those of you also doing IF, I hope you found something useful in this post.

Peace
--Free

**REVIEW** Fat Secret Weight Loss App

Well. For me, MyFitnessPal is over, done, and out. Finito. I deleted it from my phone and if I could block it, I would. I have found a replacement app that I love.

Welcome to my life, Fat Secret!!! ❤❤❤

Let me post some screenshots so you can get an idea of how useful the app is, then I will go into Pros and Cons. Let's start with the phone app, which is how I use Fat Secret the most.

*********

That up above is what the page looks like when you are inputting your food diary in the phone app. This is the page I use the most.

The photo below is the bottom of the food diary page. This is where you can see a summary so you can check your progress of how many calories you have left before you hit your threshold for the day.

The bottom photo shows a cumulative "report" of how many times you've eaten something. 

The photo below is another view of progress. It breaks down the days by caloric intake. It's a nice glimpse to let you know how your days are breaking down. My daily calorie limit that I set for myself is 150 so I can tell that the closest I came to that was on the 15th.  I wasn't finished logging meals today which is why the 16th looks so low.

I like the idea of having photo and scanner capabilities within the phone app. Users can (and I did) take photos of their meals for the day they were consumed. Also, you can look up nutrition info for foods in your kitchen by barcode. Most of the items I scanned came up as is. In cases where my item wasn't found, I was able to search a list of similar items. Once, I couldn't find my exact brand of chicken breasts. It was store brand. I quickly found a brand that had the same info as that on the label of my chicken. Cool.

By the way, you get the option of sharing or not sharing your stuff with other members. If you want to share your food photos but you don't want to share your weight tracking, fine. If you want to share with the Public community of Fat Secret, you can - or you can choose to only share with your Fat Secret "friends". That brings up another point: you can choose to follow other community members. You can also join groups and give kudos to other people's entries or shared info. I'll get to that in a moment when I move on to the web app/site.

This photo below is a beautiful thing. When I first saw it, I assumed it had something to do with a paid version of the app. No, no. The app is totally (as of this post) free. The My Professionals section is for inviting, say, your doctor to peek in and see how you're doing. I'm not sure how it works, but I will test it when I see my doctor next - if she wants to sign up and do this. Very handy.

The Recipes section is pretty cool. I have submitted 2 of my recipes and am waiting for Admin approval before they are posted. So you see that you can brown recipes and get some ideas for your meals. 

What's especially cool about the recipes is that you get so much information when you look them up. For example:

When I submitted my recipe, I had to input the ingredients, prep & cook times, and list the steps to take to cook the item. The app fills in the nutrition information based on the ingredients listed. I love that.

Let's say, you kind of like that recipe for Chicken Tostadas but you maybe want to keep browsing. Well, look how helpful it is to see even more recipes using chicken breasts.

Remember what I said about sharing or not sharing? In the phone app, you can find the options on the Settings screen - and you can get to the Settings the usual way.

There are also options for setting reminders, allowing comments, etc.

 You can even choose a color scheme for the phone app.

Now, moving on the website app,  you will see why I prefer using the phone app.


This is the page I land on for "Home" and I don't like that. What I want is to get to MY stuff. This page starts you with what seems to be everyone's activities. 

When using the website, I have learned to go straight to the right-hand sidebar with the green highlighted My FatSecret. The sections there will get me to my stuff. Not to be selfish, but I'm happy to see what everyone is doing but this weight loss is my weight loss.

You can see your "calendar" by a list view or month view. This is the "list" view:

And this is the "month" view.

I talked about being able to add recipes. Apparently, it takes a while to get them approved by Admin and, I guess until they are approved, you can't add your submitted recipes to your cookbook.

So, this Fat Secret is kinda nice, yes? Very much so. Now, Pros and Cons.

PROS

• The phone app is wonderful and much easier to use than the web app.
• The site is fun and interactive if you like being in a community for the support.
• The database of ingredients is pretty right on so far
• It's motivating to have a weight tracker within the app
• The scanner for looking up ingredients and nutrition info is very helpful and easy to use
• The phone app info syncs well with the website if you need to switch back and forth
• The support team is very responsive to questions when you contact them

CONS

• The web app (site) is not nearly as good as the phone app
• The phone and web apps both take some getting used to. The features in the web app are not always easy to find.
• It's not easy IMO to copy and paste individual foods from one days meal to another.
• I have yet to figure out how to save my favorite foods that I will be adding on a regular basis

Listen, overall, the phone app is dang near perfect and since it happens to be what I use the most, I'm happy. Some of the issues I have with the website may be due to being a newbie. I'm sure I'll get the hang of it soon.

Every little bit of motivation helps when you are making lifestyle changes. Fat Secret is going in the right direction to being perfect.

By the way, as of today, I am down 10 pounds since March 5th when I started Intermittent Fasting. I'm taking selfies to share in a slideshow or something once I have reached my goal weight.

Peace

--Free

What the Heck Happened to My Fitness Pal?

So... I went over to MyFitnesPal after about a year away. Boy, does it suck now! I used to love that app. I used it for all twelve of my diets! LOL

Seriously though, it really seems so different now. I couldn't put my finger on what seems changed, but I went looking for another app to replace it and saw a Reddit post that had the same complaint. Seems that MyFitnessPal has been bought out by UnderArmour...

Well, there ya go. I don't know how I missed that logo change. It's all up there and in our face.

 In case you missed who's in charge now... And we all know that I love (but can't afford) all things UnderArmour.

MyFitnessPal used to be very easy to use. I could scan items to get my calories, set up my regular foods to get to quicker, and even communicate with other users. Today, I didn't get past trying to add some new foods. The calorie counts were wrong for the first 3 items and when I tried adding the bread, the app didn't recognize slices as a unit.

I gave up and tried an app that I saw mentioned in that Reddit post. It's called Fat Secret (yeah, bad name) and it's pretty similar to the original MyFitnessPal. But it is new and there are some annoyances that will probably get fixed as time goes by. I don't have the patience. I need to get started logging my meals and keeping track of these calories.

I think I love this one!

My niece and I texted about the Fitness Pal situation and she said that she hasn't bothered using that app in ages. Huh. So I guess I'm not the only one unhappy with it. She told me that she uses the Pro version of My Diet Coach. I checked out the free version and it's about the same as Fat Secret.

What I have decided to do is keep track of my calories using an Excel sheet. I just have to try to remember how to set up the page to do the math for me! I was never good at Excel when I was good at other things. Now I look at the page and my head starts to hurt.

My intermittent fasting is going great and doesn't even feel like any kind of a diet. The only problem I am having is tracking my calories. I've been undereating because I don't want to be a glutton like I was my first 2 days in.

This is today's meal that I'm fixing for 4pm. That's my best time of day to eat because I have started cutting off my eating at 7pm instead of at 8pm. I start my 8-hour eating window now at 11 in the morning. Much less time to wait for that first cuppa caffeine! I'm still trying to work out the best hours for me to live with and this is what I'm using to make sure I don't get brain-foggy figuring out the 16-hour fast window.

Anyway, folks, I'm looking for recommendations if you have any. Tell me what you think of all the apps I mentioned. Meantime, I'll just start tracking by pen and paper until I find some safe Excel sheets to download. If I find some that seem safe, I will post them the next time I blog about IF.

Peace
--Free

**REVIEW** HBO Now Trial Subscription (Android app)

Let me start by saying I'm really glad that I got to use the trial subscription. As you guys know by now, I plan to be living in another state very, very soon. I don't own (and really don't want to) own a TV set, I get all my news and entertainment via my computer and phone.

So...

I wanted to test out some alternatives to Netflix, Hulu, and cable subscriptions. When I saw that the HBO Now app had a trial, I went for it.

                                         

The PROS: 

The service is pretty nice. I like that it can be used on a phone or tablet or PC. You can add your selections to a Watchlist. That was great. The viewing selections haven't been bad this month. I don't watch a lot of movies until long after they are first released so it's always a treat to binge watch when I'm doing things like... Oh, I dunno but let's say, packing. (Sidenote: I have packed 15 boxes of assorted sizes - from Medium and Large USPS Flat Rates to Medium cardboards from UHaul. I will never in my life move again if it involves my packing anything more than a suitcase!)

Anyway.

I watched some stand-up comedy (I laughed so much at Adele Givens that I got a stitch in my side); The Wizard of Lies (about Bernie Madoff) was soooo fascinating, and my favorite documentary was Mommy Dead and Dearest - which is about a crime involving a mother and daughter named Dee Dee and Gypsy Rose Blanchard. (If you like documentaries or true crime, this one will be riveting. I first heard of it via a podcast.)

So, yes, the selections were great and I might even actually get a full subscription somewhere down the line. However...

The CONS:

The app (online and via phone) is a bit clunky. The Search mechanism is downright hideous. It's case-sensitive! Also, it's not great for guessing at partial actor/movie names. Probably I missed a lot of offerings just because I got tired of scrolling and scrolling.

The streaming was bad, bad, bad! At one point while watching Ride Along 2, the video locked up for over ten minutes.  This freezing up happened (for not quite as long) with almost every video I watched. I thought it might be my phone or PC, but every other kind of video was fine. (It still might be a user-related problem.) Those were minor cons compared to - I don't even know how to label this so I'll call it ...


The SUPER CON:

I'm glad that I and so careful with my budget, which is why I like to test things out with a trial plan.

"Trial" subscriptions can be sneaky and I have, in the long ago past, ended up being billed for a service I didn't like. All because I forgot about the end-of-trial date. It happened only once. After that, I learned to bill to a reloadable debit card or - and this is what I usually do - I mark every calendar I use with a big ol'  "DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!" notice set for a week before the end date. I hadn't run into a lot of cancellation problems. Until now.

It's a good thing that I have a week-ahead cancellation system because it's kinda hard to cancel HBO Now. I don't know if this is just my experience, but - oh my aching head was it a pain in the butt.

I've been mostly using the service via my PC so when I got the calendar alert to cancel, that's where I signed in. The first place I went was to my Profile. There is no "cancel service" button anywhere else that I could see. From my Profile, I selected Billing Information. And that's where things got annoying.

There is no Cancel option on the Billing screen. There was a notice that I purchased the service via Google Play and a detail of "paid through" date of the subscription. There is no Cancel option shown but there is a Manage Subscriptions button. Alrighty then.

Guess what? When I used the Manage Subscriptions option, it led me offsite to the Google Payment Center. From there, I should be able to "manage" (aka cancel) the service.

Nope.

I basically went back and forth a couple of times (between the HBO Now site to Play store to Payment Center) before I just changed the Payment Method in my Google payments from my debit card to my Google Play Balance (a whopping $0.52). But I still wanted to get the service properly canceled.

What I ended up doing was contacting Google Help. And thank goodness I did get the help I needed. The rep was very nice. She got the service canceled and I am a little less stressed.

Bottom line: the service is pretty good but you better be ready to deal with the cancellation process.

That's it for now, folks. I am ragged tired and I still have many miles to go, as they say.

Peace
--Free

Pennies Make Dollars, Dollars Make Sense

Remember that I gave up on making New Year resolutions a while back. I stand by that, but I have started making some New Year changes. The biggest one is to do with money.

When I think of saving money, I normally think of a regular account with my bank. That's not savvy enough. Plus, no matter how much I save in the bank account, I always find reasons to dip into those funds. Always. That money is too freaking accessible for someone as impulsive as I sometimes am.

I'd heard about ways to save with small investing apps. There are a lot of them that sound interesting:

• Acorns
• Robinhood
• SigFig
• Betterment
• Stash

What sounded great about most of them is the small amount required to start an account. What I balked about at first were the monthly fees. Also, I was nervous about the idea of ~gulp~ investing. The only time I've ever been involved with investments is through employer offerings of IRAs and 401ks. Thinking of handling any kind of investments on my own sounded a little scary. Plus, my budget is so tight I actually call it a "budg". 

Still, I knew that I wanted to do something so I had to work on my doubts and concerns.

First, paying a buck-a-month fees to invest in a couple of plans is not that scary. I could give up chewing gum and never feel the loss of that.

Second, yes, my budget is tight, but only because I can be less than smart about my spending. 

My first step was to trim the "luxuries" from my budget. Here is what I cut:

• Netflix was the first to go. I don't own a TV so streaming is my one way for that kind of entertainment. It's a $7.99/month charge I can easily give up. I have Amazon Prime which gives me access to TV shows and movies. Also, I get all the other Amazon Prime benefits that I do use a lot. (I have no idea why I didn't cut Netflix sooner.)
• Planet Fitness was a $20.06 monthly fee that was a little frivolous. I could have had the $10/mo option if I used the gym enough to warrant a membership in the first place. My nephew has a couple of pieces of gym equipment that I can use anyway. 
• I used to give myself a $40/mo allowance for makeup and other girlie goodies. I cut that down to $10. I don't need to spend so much money on hair and makeup until I am getting paid for my appearance.
• I canceled my $15/mo Audible account. That hurt the most. Sort of. I listen to and read books the way some people watch TV. It's my addiction. I rarely am without a book in my hands or ears! The only way I am surviving this cut is by depending on my local library and Overdrive accounts for my fix. (By the way, I highly recommend these for anyone who loves books.)

I am making some other minor cutbacks too. When I grocery shop, I only get what I know for a fact that I'm going to use what I buy. I realized that this was a cut I could make when I looked in the freezer and saw meats that I'd bought a couple of months ago. 

Basically, I've cut over $70 a month from my spending. That might not be a lot to some people, but that's a huge amount to someone in my position. What the heck was my broke, champagne-tastes behind thinking all this time?!                         

I can now invest those amounts. Any type of investing involves risk, but I'm only risking the money that I was previously just giving away. This is a classic win-win for me.

For anyone who thinks that small-change investing is not worth it, take a glance at this:

That there is a screenshot of my Google Rewards history. All those tiny amounts in the middle column have added up over the last few years to the $120 amount you see at the top of the right-hand column. That's how a pennies make dollars. Seriously. 

So, yes, investing small amounts of money can make a lot of sense for people who can't afford to deal with big investment firms. As for myself, I'm really not that high-maintenance. If a ton of money suddenly rained down on me, the first thing I'd do is lock myself inside a nicely stocked cabin with book-lined walls!

I decided to start with Stash. It was a pretty painless set-up process. Now, I am looking at a couple of the other app choices. I can't recommend this for anyone else, but I can tell you that this is one New Year change of habit that I feel really good about.

Peace

--Free