Fitness

March is just a few days away and that will signal the close of Mobile Nations' Fitness Month. Over the past few weeks all the Mobile Nations sites have focused on the fitness and health uses for your smartphones.  

We've seen inspirational videos from Crackberry Kevin and the iMore staff.  We couldn't let the month pass by without offering our own video on the subject.  Oh and shooting a video from a treadmill is tougher than it looks.  It doesn't take many takes before you get short of breath.

We've covered a wide variety of fitness and health apps for your Windows Phone as well as sharing our fitness experiences over in the WPCentral forums. Three readers have already walked away with gift certificates to the WPCentral Store and in a few days we'll select our grand prize winner and two runners up.

Just remember for your chance to win the grand prize (Xbox 360 and Kinect) or one of the runner up prizes (Nokia Luna BT headset or $50 gift card to the WPCentral Store) all you need to do is comment on one of the two Fitness Month discussions (Week 1 &2 and Week 3&4).

We will announce the winners sometime on Friday, March 2, 2012. 

While time is winding down on Fitness Month, by no means should you slack up on things. Push yourself to carry February's fitness goals into March, then April, then May and so on.  Good luck to everyone and keep up the good work.

MyFitnessPal is a neat app for your Windows Phone to helps you track your workouts and diet as you work towards an established weight goal. It's a rather simple tracking app that taps into a healthy amount of resources. MyFitnessPal boasts the largest food database with over 1.2 million items and based on using the app over the past few days, I believe it.

The interface is easy to pick up on and a bar code scanner just in case your meal isn't listed in the database, MyFitnessPal is an impressive fitness and health app for your Windows Phone.

The quest to get thinner, stronger, faster, and healthier with WPCentral and Mobile Nations continues!

We’ve survived the first week. We’ve set our goals and whether we achieved them or are still working on them, we’re feeling better and doing better because of it. And we’re getting tons of great feedback. This might just be the year where mobile and lifestyle fully come together and finally start making the impact we’ve all been waiting for. It’s gone from being a token arm band case to being an entire ecosystem of highly specialized companion apps and accessories.

We recorded a special edition of ZEN and TECH with CrackBerry.com’ Kevin Michaluk, where we answered a lot of questions, cleared up some big misconceptions, and went over a lot of dos and don’ts to get things going.  Also Kevin produced the single greatest (or most terrifying) fitness video in the history of YouTube. Watch his Sexy and you know it workout (do so at your own risk).

So let’s keep it going! Once again, we’re setting reasonable, attainable goals, and we’re going to take advantage of our awesome community to make sure we attain them. We have a special edition of our Mobile Nations ZEN and TECH Superfunctional podcast coming your way this weekend to help keep you motivated, and as always we’re running everything through this discussion over at the WPCentral Forums to keep us focused, keep us accountable, and keep us keeping on!  We've already updated the discussion with week 2 goals.

Oh, and we’re still giving away WPCentral Accessory Store gift certificates every week and an Xbox 360 w/Kinect at the end of the month.  To see who won this week's gift certificate, just go to this post in the Fitness Month discussion.  If you didn't win this week, don't give up.  We'll draw another gift certificate next week.

So hurry up and jump into our Fitness Month discussion and pick your goal for week 2.

With New Year's fast approaching we're sure there will be plenty of resolutions on weight loss and living healthier. New Year's resolution or not, there's a feature rich app over at the Windows Phone Marketplace designed to help track your pursuit of a healthier lifestyle. Livescape, previously known as Life Tracker, is an activity and nutrition journal for your Windows Phone.

Livescape features GPS tracking that will help track and log activities such as walking or hiking. Additional features of Livescape include:

• Keep a log of your daily activities.
• Consumption tracking to monitor what you eat/drink.
• Calculate the number of calories burned during exercise.
• Track your weight, calorie intake.
• Calculate Body Fat, Lean Mass, and Fat Mass based on waist, hip and neck measurements.
• BMI and BMR Calculation. Track ailments such as allergies, headaches, fevers, flu, etc.
• Fertility calculator.
• Monitor your Nutrition Facts from day to day.
• Import Nutrition Facts using your phone's camera with the help of OCR.
• Review your trends using any of the built in graphing features, synchronize with Microsoft® HealthVault®.

Livescape is a mango app so you'll have Live Tile and Notification support. The app also supports multiple profiles so more than one person can track their health habits and activities.  The application is well laid out and through out the app there are on screen tips that appear to help you get familiar with features. If you're looking for a way to track your activities, monitor your diet and keep tabs on your general health, Livescape is worth looking into.

There is a 14-day trial version available for Livescape and the full version is currently running at the discounted price of $2.99. The discounted price will run through the end of the week and the price will return to it's regular $4.99 mark. You can find Livescape here at the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Looking for a Windows Phone app that will help you track the calories you burn during a workout as well as the calories sitting on your dinner plate? If so, Livescape might be worth a try.

Livescape is a journal of sorts that helps you keep track of activities and diet that effects your life. You can use your Windows Phone location services to track outdoor activities such as jogging, hiking or bicycling. Use your Windows Phone camera to help track nutritional facts about the foods you eat.

Other features of Livescape include:

• Support for the Metric System, as well as, English Units
• Step counting (Pedometer) with estimated distance traveled and calories burned
• Ability to look up Nutrition Facts on the Internet* Consumption Tracking (Food and Drinks)
• Calculate Body Fat, Lean Mass, and Fat Mass based on Waist, Hip, and Neck measurements
• Weight, Blood Pressure, Mood, Stress, and Measurement Tracking
• Ability to track ailments such as allergies, headaches, fevers, flus, and cramps
• Create multiple profiles for family and friends

You also have the ability to backup and restore your data and post your accomplishments to Facebook. The is a free trial version available for Livescape to let you try before you buy. The full version runs $4.99 and you can download both here (opens Zune) at the Marketplace.