It was on the third week of May 2017 when I decided to change my lifestyle. I wanted to lose weight, be more active, and prevent myself from becoming sick.
Unfortunately leaving the house and going to the gym wasn’t an option for me yet. My 3-year old son throws gargantuan tantrums when he knows I’m leaving that it’s impossible to say goodbye without stress.
Instead, I decided to browse through fitness apps on the App Store to see if I could work out while at home. It was a tough choice considering there are thousands of weight loss and fitness apps, but I eventually started my fitness journey with an app called 8fit.
8fit homepage
The first thing that drew me to 8fit was the visual queues that came with the workouts. As someone who hasn’t done physical activity in years, I needed to know how to do these workouts correctly.
I soon realized that there’s more under the hood. You can create your own fitness plan, try hundreds of healthy recipes, do yoga workouts, and log other types of exercises. It also comes with a basic line graph that shows your progress over time.
I decided to invest in an annual subscription (P2990/year) to see if it actually works in helping me burn fat and lose weight.
The workout
My fitness journey started at 142 lbs. I had just got back from our trip to Cebu and I still felt sluggish and bloated. It didn’t help that I kept falling ill months before we flew due to colds, cough, back pains, etc.
On 8fit, my current fitness plan is to burn fat paired with a weight loss goal of 120 lbs. And because I wanted to burn fat, 8fit created a pure cardio fitness program for me.
The app’s design is straightforward with no distractions. You’ll see your habit tracker at the very top, today’s workout right below, the Yoga Sessions section below that if you decide to include yoga in your routine, and your healthy recipes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
If you perform other activities like walks, dancing, and the like you can log those in by tapping the green plus button at the center. You will then enter the time spent doing the activity and 8fit will calculate how many calories you lost based on that info.
Once you begin the workout, 8fit displays a gif of the exercise so it’s easy to follow. You can see instructions on how to do the workout, the number of times or seconds left to do the workout, and a Skip Exercise button if you prefer to skip and do the next exercise.
Since my fitness plan is all about burning, my routine is to dance (I pop in Dance Central 3 into our old Xbox 360) for warmup and then perform the workout for the day. I do a lot of squats, fast feet, and paleo runs to sweat, boost my endurance, and burn what I eat.
The diet
Dieting is a constant struggle. Forcing myself to turn away from what I love to eat always causes me to break and go back.
This time around, I promised myself that I’d be more careful with what I eat and drink, and this means taking sugar out of my diet. I stopped drinking soft drinks and fruit juices. I stopped buying chocolate and cake. I cut down on my white rice and instead eat wheat bread and a bit of potato when available.
I didn’t want to bear the hunger pains though, so I stocked our fridge with fruit, frozen flavored yogurt, and these maple quinoa nut packs from KIND snacks. I’d eat crackers from time to time as well.
In case you’re bored with your usual menu, 8fit also provides hundreds of healthy recipes that are easy to prepare.
As someone who doesn’t like eating vegetables, I took small steps by trying a few of their chicken and pork recipes first. Cooking is my biggest frustration in life as I don’t have the time or the skills to cook the more complicated dishes. To compensate, I eat in portions and try to distract myself by munching on my KIND pack while watching TV or working.
The results
Current weight tracked
As of this writing, I managed to lose 20.4 lbs. I started out at 142 and am now at 121.2 after four months.
That long straight decline at the beginning of my journey were the months I didn’t track my weight. I only realized there was such a feature around August, and have been entering my weight every Friday morning before having my breakfast.
The 8fit app has been a huge help, but it’s changing my lifestyle and being more active did that did so much for me.
I became more focused and less sickly. I have less stomach problems, no more back pain, and more fiber in my body thanks to the food I switched to. The workouts and the dance sessions help me sweat each morning. Because I’ve lost this much, I’m able to fit into my old clothes to the point that some I have to give away.
My end goal is to hit 120 lbs, so there’s still more work to be done. Once I reach it, I’ll continue to use 8fit to maintain my weight and lifestyle.
Resources:
- 8fit app for iOS and Android
- Check out 8fit’s nutrition and fitness guides
- “Ask a Dietician: Why You Should 100% Stop Counting Calories” via girlboss.com
[…] mean, the 8fit workouts were pretty easy to do and I didn’t trust myself to manage my eating habits thoroughly. Once […]