Check out these 6 apps that might help you stay on track with your fitness goals

Are you ready to get in shape, lose weight, and eat healthier? The keystones for success in any undertaking are setting specific goals, measuring progress, and being accountable to those goals. Smartphone apps can make achieving your goals easier than ever.
There are hundreds of apps posed as tracking tools, in which you log your workouts or calories eaten, while others automate the tracking or even offer you coaching. Some are combination of all these things. We’ve browsed through dozens and dozens of apps to bring you the six best apps to help you eat smarter, stay accountable, and get moving.

Myfitnesspal

Often hailed as one of the best all-in-one calorie-counting and exercise-tracking apps, this app has an extensive database of popular foods and restaurant menus and makes logging food and exercise simple and easy. It takes your weight, height, goal weight, and lifestyle into account before giving its recommendations, and breaks your goals into smaller, 1-month goals to keep you motivated.
Available on: Android, Blackberry, iOS, Windows Phone, and Web
Cost: Free

Nexercise

Get competitive! Nexercise keeps track of your daily exercise and publishes your score along with your friends’ scores. what better way to get off the couch than to make sure you keep up with your friends or make sure your dad doesn’t leave you in the dust?
Available on: Android and iOS
Cost: Free

Fooducate

Don’t shop without this app. Scan the bar code of a food item and this app will give you a health rating based on calories, processing techniques, and sugar amounts. It will help you identify those tricky foods that like to pretend they are healthy.
Available on: Android and iOS
Cost: Free

Nike Training Club

Like a personal trainer in your pocket. Select a workout based on the time you have and the reults you want–cardio, toning, strength, etc.–and watch videos to learn proper form. It pulls music from your own playlist to keep you in the zone. Each workout earns you points you can use to unlock features like star workouts and personal training advice. The autoshare feature uploads your results to Facebook for additional accountability.
Available on: Android and iOS
Cost: Free

Lose It!

Based on the simple principles of tracking calories and garnering peer support, Lose It! lets you manage your daily calorie intake and calorie burning for you to see how long it will take to reach your goal. You can even scan the bar codes of most food items for accurate nutritional information. The active online support community helps keep you accountable.
Available on: Android, iOS, Nook, Kindle, and the Web
Cost: Free

Zombies, Run!

You’ll be too busy running from zombies to realize you’re getting an awesome workout. This app integrates your own music into apocalyptic missions and gives you training mixed in with gripping story. Play outside or at the gym.
Available on: Android, iOS, and Windows Phone
Cost: $3.99

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• Working Around Children: Management Tips for HomeBiz Moms

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Working Around Children: Management Tips for HomeBiz Moms

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Altering your perception of distractions and interruptions can make working at home easier.

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by Barbara Brabec
Many moms have told me that the trick in successfully working at home with kids underfoot lies in being flexible. "I won't postpone my creative instincts until my children are adults," says one mother. "I've simply changed my perception of work, altered my view of distractions and interruptions, and adjusted my work schedule to accommodate the needs of my children. This means, of course, that clients must be chosen carefully. We think about the kinds of jobs we can handle and those we can't." Here are some practical tips shared by Moms in my home-business network:

• If your children could ruin the business illusion you are trying to create, a separate business phone should be considered. And don't let children answer your business line until they're educated in the proper way to do it. The last thing you want is a child yelling into the ear of a prospective client, "It's for you, Mommy!"
• Develop a series of hand signals you can use to communicate with young children when you're on the telephone with a client. One Mom told me that her girls grew up knowing that a ringing telephone meant that the TV or stereo or most recent fight over a toy or article of clothing went off immediately, and they learned hand signals early on. One signal indicated business (when they were expected to disappear into another part of the house); another indicated they could play nearby quietly.
• To get extra uninterrupted time for your work, hire a baby-sitter or mother's helper for a certain period each week. Except for emergencies, give the sitter the authority to handle whatever comes up. If your child will be at home under someone else's care during your uninterrupted time, choose for your workspace an area of the house where you aren't in sight. At the appointed hour, close the door and try not to listen. (This gets easier with practice.)
• To ease stress, take a nap. The smartest thing she ever did, says one Mom, was to start making the whole family take a nap every day. "Every afternoon we turn off all the phones and whoever is home has to lie down and at least rest so Mom can nap," she says. "This is a real mind-rester for me, and it gives the kids some relaxation time, too."
• Lighten your load by making your children responsible for their own laundry duties. Years ago when her children were very young, a mother of five accomplished this by giving each child a personal basket for carrying dirty linens to the laundry room and carrying them back when removed from the dryer. She put shoeboxes into drawers for her youngest children to hold their unfolded underwear and encouraged them to make a game of matching socks. Today, this home-business mom says she folds no laundry except for her husband's T-shirts and their bathroom towels, and irons only a few special shirts and dresses.
• Consider giving your son or daughter a tiny corner of your office or workroom so they can "play with mother" all day long. One mother told me she gave her daughter her own little desk, toy typewriter, an old, defunct telephone, and lots of blank paper, pens, pencils, crayons, paints and colored markers. "Because she was free to touch and play with everything she could reach--except the papers on my desk--she learned to respect this at a very young age," she says. "By the time she was four, she was extremely bright and artistic, confident, and secure, owing greatly, I feel, to the fact that I was always with her during her formative years."
• If you need to see clients on a regular basis with no children around, consider using an incubator facility. I'll never forget the mother I met at a home business conference who explained how she handled client meetings. At that time she was renting an office in an incubator facility one hour at a time as needed. And she had this interesting little box that contained a couple of pictures for the wall, a calendar, and desk accessories--all those little office touches a client would expect to see. She set everything in place just before the client walked in the door and, at the end of her meeting, she packed her little box and went home. Her phone setup was also amusing. In order to legally advertise her phone number, she had all her calls forwarded through the incubator facility. The only problem was, after fifteen minutes there was an automatic disconnect--which meant that every time her phone rang, she had to start a fifteen-minute timer, and if a call happened to run long, she had to get inventive and come up with a good reason to hang up so she could call back.
• Set time aside for children's activities so they don't become resentful of the homebased business. To avoid missing anything important, keep a calendar for each child showing all ball games, practices, meetings and other appointments so the whole family has a clear view of what's happening each day.
• As your children grow along with your business, try to get them involved in it by giving them certain responsibilities and paying them accordingly. In addition to the tax advantages of hiring your children, this will give them a greater respect for what you're doing, and may even spark entrepreneurial efforts of their own. Don't take advantage of a good thing, however. Sue, the owner of a sewing business, once told me about her youngest child, Jason, then five, who had been brought into the business as a "runner." Her business was spread all over the house, on different levels from the garage to the attic, and Jason's job was to carry work in progress from one location to another or "gofer" things other family members needed as they worked. One day when I was speaking to Sue, she told me Jason wasn't happy at the moment. On that day, he had literally stomped his foot and said he was tired of doing all this "home business stuff," tired of running all those errands! Hiding her amusement, Sue simply gave her youngest some time off--plus a special reward for being such a big help to the business. For starting your own business today click here