Staying Motivated to Walk: RunKeeper App!

Because I want to improve on my blood sugar numbers (I am a Type 1 diabetic) I have decided to get back to walking. I used to do it all the time and loved it! I LOVE music and this is my opportunity to be alone with my thoughts. Fortunately, most of my favorite music is very upbeat with a great tempo for walking. My thing is that I hate walking during the day. I'm weird like that. I feel like people are watching me and criticizing. Like "Look at that fat chick trying to get healthy". Haha... I'm so hard on myself. I mentally abuse myself, I swear. And I shouldn't put myself down. But that's another story for another day.

Anyways, so back to walking. I downloaded an app that I HIGHLY recommend. I'm not getting any monetary compensation for promoting it. I'm promoting it because the features are top notch. The name of it is RunKeeper. It's for anyone, whether running or walking. So here is a screenshot. It's not from my personal screen, just one I found online.

So let me point out a few things in each screen. First of all, I highly recommend connecting the app to Facebook. You are able to connect with other friends from Facebook and see what activity they have been doing. I think it's great for motivation, especially if you have a friend that wants to lose weight/get healthy with you. If they see you haven't been walking or running in awhile they can get on to you and push you to keep going. If you allow it, it can also post to your Facebook page that you just worked out! Be proud of your hard work!!!

Ok, so the screen on the left. It keeps track of how many miles you walked. As you can see with this lady, she ran 6.2 miles in the current month of October. Then it compares her previous month of September where she ran 4.5 miles. She can see that she's accomplished more this month than last month. It looks as though she set a goal for herself of 100 miles. All in all she has run 71.7 miles. It keeps track of your pace and at the bottom of the screen you can see her record pace was 11:45/mile.

The next screen shows her current workout session. At that current point she was running for 23 minutes 47 seconds. I generally shoot for 1 hour of walking at this point to begin with. So it's great this app keeps track of that so if I fall short, I can push myself to keep going. Using GPS it keeps track of your speed. It's not shown in this particular image, but it has a map of the area you're walking. It colors a line to show your route. I think that's a really cool feature. So of course it also shows your current distance for that session. I don't really have a distance goal, but I try to aim for 2 miles per session.

The next screen shows a list of your friends that you're linked to from Facebook that also use the app. It's pretty fun to see who is in the lead. I'm currently 3rd place of my friends, which is ok. I'm not really the competitive type. Right now I'm just trying to stay focused and making a routine of it. I don't want to give up. Maybe once I'm addicted to walking/running I can push myself to beat my buddy Omar who is the workout king LOL

The last screen displays a feature where you can post your workout for the world to see on Facebook. If you want to leave a comment about your workout you can type it here before you post.

So, it's a great app. Everything I explained to you is totally free. There are options that you can pay for, but I'm super cheap and I don't see a reason to hyper-analyze my walks. Oh! I forgot to mention. It also tells you your elevation. So if you're walking up and down hill alot it will give you credit for that.

Here's the links. Hope they work. If not, please comment and let me know. If you use this app leave comments below of your experience!

Download RunKeeper for your iPhone or Android smartphone