I hope all of my readers enjoyed the holidays and have kicked 2010 off to a great start!

My favorite Christmas gift: an Apple iPhone.

Thousands of iPhone applications (a.k.a. apps) focus on food, nutrition, and healthy eating habits. There are apps for cooking just about anything, in any fashion; apps for searching nutrient and recipe databases, apps for making grocery lists and budgets; apps for tracking calories, carbohydrate and fat grams; apps for planning meals and weekly menus; apps for finding local farmers markets, choosing sustainable fish, tasting new wines or cheeses; essentially apps for everything food.  The iPhone even has a built-in timer for use in lieu of a kitchen timer.

Since many of these apps can help you eat smarter, and since eating smarter is my great passion, I am excited to tell you that I will be testing some of these apps and reporting my favorites to my readers.

Today, I installed Whole Foods Market Recipes, a fabulous app that let’s you search for recipes by category or specific dietary preference.  Categories include  family friendly, one pot meals, portable, and quick and easy, and special diets offer low fat, sugar conscious, high fiber, gluten-free, and vegetarian fare. Not only is there a comprehensive variety of recipes to choose from, but once you make your selection, the ingredients are automatically added to your shopping list, in the exact amounts called for.  Who hasn’t arrived home after a well-intended trip to the grocer to realize one or another ingredient was forgotten?  No more!

Rank recipes as Favorites, and you have a complete, portable recipe box to refer to when shopping or meal planning, nutritional information included.

Another useful feature, On Hand, lets you enter foods items you already have but don’t necessarily know what to do with.  The app lists recipes using those items, meaning new meal ideas and less food waste. Better bang for your food buck!

Don’t have an iPhone?  You can find the same, great recipes on www.wholefoodsmarket.com.

Need a few holiday gift ideas for those fitness-minded friends and loved ones?

Stuff stockings with resistance bands, jump ropes, exercise DVDs, and cute sweat bands, athletic socks, and water bottles. You could include a few sessions with a personal trainer, or gift certificates to a new yoga, pilates, or martial arts studio.

Subscriptions to fitness, yoga, and healthy eating magazines are also thoughtful and inexpensive gift ideas, and your friends will think of you each month when they receive a new issue.

If you have any gadget-happy people on your shopping list, check out some of Fitness magazine’s “Gadgets Galore” ideas:

Nike+ iPod Sport Kit, $29.00
Data dorks on the run! Place wireless sensors inside your Nike+ shoes, and the Sport Kit will measure your distance, pace, and other information on the screen of your iPod nano.

Omron HJ-112 Digital Premium Pedometer, $24.99
The Omron HJ-112 helps you reach your daily fitness goals by tracking your steps, distance traveled, and calories burned. Comes with a one-year warranty.

Tanita BF679W Duo Scale Plus Body Fat Monitor with Body Water, $49.99
This scale calculates not only your weight, but also your body fat and body water percentages, giving you a more accurate read-out on your fitness progress.

Strollometer Wheel-Based Stroller Speedometer/ Odometer, $37.99
A stroller pedometer! When taking the baby outside, new moms can do double-duty by strapping this device onto the carriage and watching the miles add up.

Happy Holidays!

It’s a no-brainer.  The more you walk each day, the more physically active you are.  Fitness experts estimate that an average of 6,000-10,000 steps per day is the “magic number” of strides required to prevent weight gain over time. If you’re trying to lose weight or maintain a weight loss, the number may be even higher. Adding steps also has added health benefits: increased aerobic fitness,  improved muscle tone, lower blood pressure and cholesterol, lower risk of heart disease, diabetes, and osteoporosis.  Plus, walking is easy and convenient, can be spread throughout the day in short bouts, and easily done on vacation or while traveling for work.

How many steps do you think you take each day?

How many steps do you actually take?  Don’t know?  Buy a pedometer: a small, inexpensive, step-counting gadget that’s worn on your waistband or inside your pocket.  Fancier models can even compute distance walked and calories burned.

Start by wearing the pedometer every day for one week. Put it on when you get up in the morning and wear it until you go to bed in the evening. At the end of the day, record your daily steps in a notebook.  At the end of week, average your daily steps over the past 7 days.  You may be surprised how many or how few steps you get in each day.

Increase average daily steps each week by 500 per day until you average 10,000 per day. If you currently average 3,500 steps each day, your goal for the following week is 4,000 each day. The next week’s goal would then be 4,500 each day. Continue to increase each week, and you’ll be averaging 10,000 steps in three months time (~13 weeks).

Need ideas to step it up:

• Take a walk with a co-worker at lunch.
• Walk the dog, walk your neighbor’s dog.
• Go for a walk with a spouse, friend, or child after dinner and on weekends.
• Use stairs instead of escalators and elevators.
• Take a spin around the mall or grocery store before shopping.
• Park as far as you safely can from all entrances.
• Plan outings in parks, amusement areas, outdoor tracks.
• Play frisbee.  Play tag in the yard.
• Carry your golf bag for 9 holes.
• Buy a used treadmill on ebay.
• Go up and down the stairs in your home or apartment during commercials.

Depending on your stride length, 2,000 steps is roughly one mile.  10,000 steps  is the equivalent of 5 miles.