The iPhone Mom

Rosita from Sesame Street wants your child to join her for some jump roping in Rosita’s Jump Count. The idea is simple, watch the video of Rosita on the screen and then jump while she counts. To jump you hold the iPhone in your hand and literally jump up and down. The app registers the iPhone’s movements and Rosita counts your jumps. Sometimes she will give you a number of jumps that you need to do. Other times she’ll let you jump for as long as you like.  Rosita can count in English and in Spanish.

The video of Rosita is well done and if your child likes Sesame Street they will like being able to interact with a character. When you are jumping you see Rosita’s feet on the screen and when you jump, her feet jump. Rosita’s Jump Count didn’t really interest my kids are older, don’t watch Sesame Street and don’t enjoy jumping just to jump. If you have a wiggly toddler or preschooler (and you trust them to jump with your iPhone) then this is an app that can help them use up some energy and learn to count too.

You can learn more about Rosita’s Jump Count and the other Sesame Street apps, Elmo’s Monster Maker (we love that one!) and Grover’s Number Special at  Ideo Toy Lab’s iPhone apps for kids website.

Price when Reviewed: $1.99

Seller: Sesame Workshop Apps

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

Get Running (Couch to 5K) is a training app that will take you from walking off your couch to being able to run for 30 minutes without stopping. The program covers nine weeks of workouts with a run three times a week. The runs increase over time so you won’t be biting off more than  you can chew.  When you do a run the app will literally talk you through the workout. It gives you audio cues of when to warm up, when to walk and when to run. The screen shows a clock that counts down the amount of time you have left in each segment. You can listen to your iPod music while you use the app but you have to start the music before you open the app. Your music will play and then fade in and out before and after the app’s audio cues. Having the music is a key feature for me. I can’t run without my tunes.

I already run on a regular basis so I’m not the best user to put this app through the full nine week test.  I tried a run last night and thought the app was easy to use and because I run with my iPhone on my arm (and can’t see the screen) I appreciated the audio cues. My husband has recently started to run a little bit each night on the treadmill and when I mentioned Get Running to him and he was excited to try it out. I’ll let you know how he does. Here’s hoping we can do a 5K together in a few months.

Price when Reviewed: $1.99

Seller: Splendid Things

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

I’ve mentioned in the past (a few times) about the need for an iPhone wrist strap. Here’s another app that makes me hope my kids never use it when they’ve got sweaty palms. Goodbye phone. Jump Jump is aptly named because that’s what you’re going to be doing. You play the game by listening to music and jumping in time to the beat. On your screen you will see a line with blue dots moving down towards the bottom of the screen. There is a white circle near the middle of the line. Your job is to jump (holding your iPhone – tightly!) right as a blue dot lands in the circle. You’ll earn points depending on how well you land it. The app is designed to be played by several people so you can compete against each other. There are three levels of difficulty, the higher the difficulty the faster the blue dots stream down the screen. You can choose to jump to a single song or a longer sequence of three songs. That would be about ten minutes of jumping. Jump Jump lets you enter in your weight and tracks the daily, weekly and monthly time you spend playing. It will also track your calories although we haven’t been consistent enough players to judge that feature.

I’m not sure how long this app would last in my house. I think after my kids use it a few times they’ll probably  be done with it. Not because it’s a bad app but because they’re not the kind of kids who’ll jump over and over. We’re more curl up in a corner with a good book people. But this seems like a great app for wearing out children before bed time. Has anyone tried Jump Jump out with their kids and if so, how’d they like it?

Price when Reviewed: $2.99

Seller: Amon

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

Body & Mind Connection is an app that’s designed to help you make the connection between what your mind thinks and your body does. Did I do a great job describing that or what? It has you rate yourself (on a daily basis) in several areas. Then you can look back and compare the ratings to look for connections. The different areas are diet, energy, exercise, hunger, mood, sleep and stress. You can choose from 1-5 stars to rate how you did in each of those areas. If you had zero energy for the day you’d give yourself a one. If you felt like superwoman and spring cleaned your entire house in two hours then you’d give yourself a five. The app has descriptions for each rating so it’s easy to figure out what’s what. When you’ve tracked things for a few days you can look at your ratings on a graph. Everything is color coded so it’s easy to see what’s where and how it all works together. For example, on a day when I had a 5 star stress day (loads of stress) my diet would probably be a 1 star day. In other words I’m a stress eater. Looking at my patterns over time I’d be able to realize where I needed to make changes in order to get better sleep, change my diet, etc.

Throughout the app there are different tips and FAQs about diet, energy, exercise, etc. The diet information comes from Dr. David Katz, who is the head of the Yale University Prevention Research Center. The exercise information comes from Joe Decker who is “The World’s Fittest Man”.  Finally, the inspiration in the app is from Mitzi Perdue who’s written many articles and talked to thousands of people about their struggles finding healthier lifestyles. There’s an orientation section at the beginning that goes through everything you’ll need to know. Make sure you watch the video as well.  Body & Mind Connection is designed after a university class. You’ve got your orientation and your daily classes (where you record your ratings). After working through the app for fourteen days you’ll graduate. You can then move on to a master’s degree which requires twenty-eight days. Beyond that you can continue to use the app for as long as you need.

This app also asks you to record your weight on a daily basis. It will calculate your BMI and you can watch those changes over time. This is not an app for recording specific details about what you eat and how many calories you consume. It’s not a place to track the specifics of your exercise regime either. Although there is guidance and tips  it  seems to be more about getting yourself to a place where everything is connected and where it should be so you can lose some weight and have a healthier lifestyle. It’s an interesting approach to losing weight and appears to be able to help you get to the core of the real reason you may be struggling. I think that diet and exercise are key but if there’s something else going on then you really won’t fix the problem until you’ve figured that out. So says the woman with oodles of baby weight left to lose who knows what her problem is but can’t seem to find the energy to deal with it.

I can’t personally verify that Body & Mind Connection will actually help you lose weight because I’m only a couple days into the program. I’ve had the app on my phone for a little while but procrastinated trying it out until I was just about out of time. I think I need to make a mind and body connection to work out that time management issue.

Price when Reviewed: $4.99

Seller: B Healthy U, LLC

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

I’m a big fan of the Pandora app. I went jogging today and quickly discovered that I hadn’t transferred my running playlist back to my iPhone after I updated to the new OS. Grrr.  I really need my music to make it through a run. I decided to try Pandora and see how it held up as I mosied around town. It worked great and I had music the entire run – no lags at all. Go Pandora!

I think this might be an almost perfect iPhone app. Lose It helps you keep track of your caloric intake and the calories you’re burning with exercise. It helps you set goals and then track your progress towards your new weight. I was absolutely amazed at the amount of food it had in it’s database and the variety of exercises included.

When you first start Lose It you enter your starting weight, your goal weight, your height and your birthday. Then you choose your plan: maintain your weight, lose 1/2 lb. a week, 1 lb. a week, 1 1/2 lbs. a week or 2 lbs. a week. The app then gives you a calorie budget and calculates the date you’ll reach your weight loss goal.

Tap the "My Day" button at the bottom of the screen and you get to see how you’ve been doing for the day. (At the top you can also choose "This Week" to see how your progress has gone for the entire week.) With "Today"  you get a summary of what your calorie budget is, what you’ve eaten and how many calories you’ve burned with exercise. At the bottom you’ll see "Add Food". Touch that and you’ll get to choose whether your food goes with breakfast, lunch, dinner or snacks.  After you choose your meal you can then enter in the foods. Do this by searching foods, choosing from brand name foods or creating a new food of your own.  Brand name foods lets you choose either supermarket or restaurant foods. I couldn’t believe how many different food choices were available. Yes, I searched for my weakness – Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. And yes, it allowed me to enter in my realistic serving size – the entire container. Hooray for a diet app that lets you get the sad truth right out there. Even if you can’t find exactly what you ate my guess is that you’ll find something pretty darn close. If that still doesn’t do it for you then create your own food. After that it’ll be saved under "My Foods". I loved having the ability to choose from previous meals. If you ate  the same thing on Tuesday that you’d had on Sunday you can choose the "Previous Meals" button. Choose the date you want and then choose the food you ate. This saves you the step of having to search and reenter foods over and over again.

Back on the "My Day" screen you can also add exercise. There is a huge list of exercises and if you can’t find what you want you can always tap "Create New Exercise". "My Exercises" shows you a list of everything you’ve recorded previously so it saves you from having to browse the list all over again. Lose It has exercises from lawn mowing to curling to gardening to house cleaning. According to the app 90 minutes of house cleaning burns 214 calories. That takes care of about 1/6 of the Ben & Jerry’s consumed previously. I like it!

The "Log" button shows you all the food and exercises you’ve recorded for that day. At the top you can tap an arrow to move forward or backward dates. The plus button will let you add a food or exercise. The edit button lets you edit what’s already on the list.

With the "Goals" button you get to see what your goal weight and plan are. There’s also a chart to show you how your weight loss is progressing. At the bottom tap "Record Today’s Weight" to enter in a new weight. Hopefully a lower one.

Touch "More" and you can add in custom foods, exercises and recipes. You can also turn on the nutrient tracking. This allows you to track how much fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbs or protein you’re consuming. If you turn these on they’ll show up on the "My Day" section under the "Nutrients"  button at the top.

I cannot say enough good things about this app. I love how easy it is to use – a big plus to a busy mom who hates to diet anyway. Plus you get this great app for free. Lose It is staying on my phone and when I’m done with the pregnancy thing and need to loose an amount of weight equal to a kindergartner, trust me,  I will be wearing this app out.

Seller: Fit Now

Price when Reviewed: Free

Click here to see the app at the iTunes store

iPosture is an app that’s goal is to lead you through exercises aimed at improving your posture. I downloaded this app because my posture is horrible and I could probably add a few inches and give the illusion of a few lost pounds if I just straightened up. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started the app  but I was pleasantly surprised with everything that’s inside this one – and it was free!

The "Groups" section of the app gives you lists of exercises that will  help you improve your posture. There is a huge list here, grouped into different types of exercise. There’s everything different  lunges to floor abdominal exercises to ball exercises, and more.  You browse the list and then touch the exercise you’d like to try. This pulls up instructions on how to do the exercise as well as photographs of people doing them.

Touch the "Learn" button at the bottom of the screen and you get a list of articles about lifestyle, exercise and your posture. The "iPosture" button takes you to an advertisement for iPosture’s product that they sell on their website. This type of advertisement doesn’t bother me in a free app.

My favorite part of the iPosture app is under the  "Routines" button. Here the developers have assembled exercise routines for you to follow. Choose your level from beginner, advanced or 10-minute power core and then get a list of what to do. Touch the exercise and get the directions. Easy.

Due to my pregnancy induced laziness and current couch potato status I haven’t actually tried any of the exercises but I’m definitely keeping this app on my phone and in a few months time I’ll be giving it a true test drive.

Seller: QuartzWorks, LLC

Price when Reviewed: Free

Click here to see the app at the iTunes store