3 GADGETS TO HELP YOU LOSE WEIGHT

If you’ve always been the first one on your block to get the latest and greatest gadget out there, you’ll be happy to know that being a gadget geek can help with your medical weight loss program, too. Below are three cool things to tinker with to help keep you on the losing side:

1. A pressure cooker: These can look a little intimidating at first, but they are easy and fun to use. Best of all, they eliminate the biggest excuse among wanna-be cooks—‘I’ve got no time!’ Pressure cookers can cook food in a fraction of the time compared to other methods, and they require little or no supervision on your part. Case in point: Dried beans can go from rock-hard to perfectly tender in just 10 minutes. Toss in a bunch of raw veggies and they’ll be cooked tender in minutes and ready to throw over some chicken and rice. An added bonus? Pressure cookers also keep valuable nutrients sealed inside—ones that might otherwise go down the drain.
2. A spice crusher: This nifty device is a perfect way to help you jazz up a regular meal and make cooking more fun, too. Not only can spices make your meals tastier, but research shows they also have health benefits. (One recent study showed that adding herbs like rosemary and turmeric to meat can help prevent dangerous carcinogens called heterocyclic amines from being generated.) There are lots of different spice crushers out there, but they all work more or less in the same way. So pick the one you think will be the most enjoyable to use—that way, you’ll use it that much more.
3. Your Smartphone: Yep, you read that right. Your phone can be a treasure trove of weight-loss assistance, all at your fingertips. Check out these apps (many of them free!) for the Apple iPhone to help keep you going strong on your medical weight loss program.a. Epicurious: This is the free app for the Epicurious.com site—home of recipes from many big-name cooking magazines. It lets you quickly find delicious recipes that are low-fat, healthy, and easy to prepare.
   b. Footsteps: This pedometer app counts up to 3000 steps per day and converts them into distances and calories burned, too, in a user-friendly interface.
   c. Go Meals: This free app has an enormous database of the most common foods and many restaurant meals as well. It provides lots of nutrition information to help you make informed choices.
   d. iLocavore: This free app will come in handy when you’re food shopping and want to know what’s being grown near you, and what is most likely to taste the best right now.

Happy gadgeting!