Weight Loss Tool Box

I've been thinking about all the tools I've been collecting and using through my weight loss journey. It's important to not only educate yourself about weight loss and the proper way to do it, but also necessary to incorporate tools to help you achieve your goals.

In my tool box:

• Weight Watchers - I love the structure of the meetings, the public-ness of the weigh in's (even though they say they aren't; you are weighing in in front of other people). I feel its a great tool to start with; they promote a healthy weight loss and teach you proper nutrition. It's not for everyone, for some it's not forever, for now, it's working for me.
• Water Bottles - This promotes my water intake. I am in the midst of my soda free summer challenge issued by Healthy Boston. To be honest, I am not really craving soda anymore, even when I go out to eat. I'm kind of cool with this. The water bottles help me have a constant reminder of what I am trying to accomplish. While I am at work, they encourage me to move around so I can fill my water bottles up. I also save money on not buying bottled water!
• My One Bite; One Decision bracelet from A Prior Fat Girl, whenever I feel a binge eating session come on, I just look down at my wrist and remind myself of the journey I am on.
• Gruve Activity Monitor - This has been something that I've only just begun to learn about. In fact I haven't even done a blog review post on it yet! (slacker I know!) However, I am liking this newest tool in my toolbox. Basically you wear it on your belt or waistband of your pants and it tracks the number of calories you burn. There are different colors to indicate how you are doing throughout the day, obviously, you want to go for green.
• iPhone - I love my iPhone, one of my mini goal rewards. But it serves a purpose in my weight loss journey as well, it serves as my iPod which I need to have music to work out to. It also has a bunch of cool apps to help. Mainly my Couch to 5K training app. But not going to lie, I do like my I Am T-Pain app, I mean you never know when you'll have to autotune something, right?
• Mini goals. You need something to shoot for. Some that is obtainable. If you look at the big picture, you are bound to get discouraged when you aren't seeing results as quickly as you'd like. I should know, over the past few months I've been slacking big time.
• Challenges - everyone needs a good challenge. Competition helps drive us to be better, it's the human in us, to always be better than someone else. So friendly challenges are great and can be helpful. I've enjoyed the #AwesomeByAugust challenge and also the little ones between DBF and myself. It can be the thing you may need to shake things up. Even though I may not win the challenges, it does help re-energize my body and gets me in a great frame of mind.

You need variety in your routine so that it doesn't get boring and you loose interest. It's also helpful to shake things up so that your body doesn't get used to doing just one thing or just one way. Working different muscle groups can help tone your body.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” Lao Tzu. Or in my case, a journey of a healthy lifestyle begins with a single calorie.

I am always on the lookout for different tools, I'd love to hear what ones you use.

What tools do you have in your tool box?