ITTO: Online Options Improve Health, Wellness

Personal trainers are expanding their businesses with video conference technologies, joining the growing slate of online tools to help manage diet and fitness.

Is This Thing On?, or ITTO, is our Wednesday column showing how everyday people use technology in unexpected ways.

The possibility of having a personal trainer in the home was once a luxury of the professional athletic or the rich and famous, but now more fitness enthusiasts can access a trainer, aided by the use of Skype video conferencing technology.

Personal trainer John Bruno introduced a Skype-based coaching and training program in Wales as a response to those who expressed difficulty getting out and going to the gym, and the approach is now catching on in the U.S.

Bruno said the idea occurred to him when Skype took off in 2006, and he began to think how the technology and Facetime, combined with the rise in tablets like the iPad, would enable him to conduct his training in the comfort of his client’s home, hotel room, or an office anywhere in the world.

“It doesn’t matter where you are, as long as you have Wi-Fi access, you can switch on Skype via a camera on your computer, connect up with me and we can do anything from Pilates, to personal training to motivational coaching,” said Bruno, who has been a personal trainer for 20 years.

The program is available to anyone, but Bruno says it is ideal for mothers with young children at home and simply don’t have the time to travel to the gym with a small child in tow.

“One of my clients has a session after dropping her older child at school,” Bruno said. “It means she can do the workout while her little one is under her watchful eye and if she needs to deal with him, we can stop and carry on once she’s sorted him out.”

In addition to the Skype session, Bruno also sends out regular e-mails to his clients with body conditioning tips and tutorials, and mails special tubing for clients to use in resistance work.

One advantage the Skype-based program has over a more traditional DVD fitness program is that Bruno is there, available for questions, feedback, and comments during the exercise session.

For the self-motivated, a growing number of apps can provide on-the-go information and motivation. These apps let users input a food item and get a complete listing of calories, fat, carbohydrates and proteins. Users can also type in an activity and get an estimate calories burned, or enter the few ingredients that remain in the fridge and get a healthy recipe for dinner, making these apps invaluable tools in the quest for well-being.

“MyFitnessPal” is one highly-rated app that provides all those services as an organizational tool to generally improve peoples’ health and fitness levels.

Touted as a technological solution for busy people on the go, the program offers an enormous catalog of foods, meals and recipes, incorporates bar scanning technology to simplify the process of keeping track, and offers a social media function so those working towards a goal can encourage and support each other. The app can even distinguish calorie burning between running 10 miles or playing Wii tennis for 10 minutes.

“MyFitnessPal,” the interactive food and exercise diary app, is free and available on both a website and in app form for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry. The app is one of a growing number of online communities, with each one offering a slight twist on the general health regiments.

For example, “FatSecret” lists community fitness challenges that are available in specific communities, and “SparkPeople” offers more graphs and awards for the visually-inclined, in addition to contact with register dieticians’ and trainers’ message boards.

For those who can’t be bothered to type in the name of food items and guesstimate portions, the “MealSnap” app, developed by DailyBurn, allows users to upload snapshots of their meal for a calorie count in just a few seconds. Users need only send a photo, but can also enter a caption with specific food information to help the database better identify it for more accurate counts.

The mother of all weight loss programs, Weight Watchers, which has been around for over 45 years now, offers its entire plan online as well. Unlike the app programs, though, there is a monthly cost associated with the program.

For those interested in pursuing an online fitness option, probably the best place to start is the Centers for Disease Control. The agency’s website offers a tool to help determine a starting point to outline a plan. People can use the site to calculate their body mass index, or BMI, giving them a figure from which to create a program based on realistic, health-based information.

From there, the options for designing, monitoring and supporting the right fitness plan are almost as infinite as the Internet itself.

ITTO: Online Options Improve Health, Wellness originally appeared at Mobiledia on Wed Sep 28, 2011 4:30 pm.