In addition to joining (and using) Planet Fitness, I wanted to make some changes to my eating habits as well. In pursuit of that goal I tried out several websites to track what I'm eating and tell me what's good and bad about what I'm doing so I could make gradual changes so after I get into shape it will be maintainable.
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| You might as well eat this! |
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| If you order this... |
I didn't want to spend an enormous amount of money, if any at all, but I was willing to fork over about $10 a month if I found the right tool. I signed up Jan 1 for about 4 sites that looked good. Weight Watchers, while popular, was out before the trial because
of their arrogant monthly fee.
of their arrogant monthly fee.
I settled on My Food Diary, MFD, ($9.00/month) because it's list of foods was very comprehensive, even including HEB brand items. The site was very easy to use, entering food was just a couple of clicks, the activity log was already pre-filled with hundreds of activities(even 2 kinds of sex!) but you can customize the list to only show the activities you will use, so you don't have scroll the whole list every time or you can enter your activity manually. Unlike most sites that track your weight, MFD also allows you to track inches which is of course more important that weight.
There is also a section for notes on each day so you can put in a reminder about that day. The reports section includes a whole slew of different reports you can run based on the information you provided, based on calories, content, activities, alcohol, vitamins, etc... This tool is handy for me to monitor my sodium intake as one of my medications decreases the amount of sodium in my body so I have to maintain a good level everyday.
I also liked that I didn't have to track my water consumption and in fact, this feature is disabled by default. When you enable it, it asks you how much water you want to consume everyday, not just the strandard 8 glasses. Using my doctores advice, I entered half of my body weight, which is way more that 8 glasses :-).
When you look at your daily report, it tells you how much you have eaten, how much you have left for the day to lose 1 poind/week, 1.5 pound/week or just to maintain your current weight. As you log different weights, these numbers fluctuate slightly. At the end of the day, when you click Daily Entry Complete, it tells you how you did for the day and if every day was like that day, how much you would lose per week, when you would reach your goal, how much you'll weigh in a month along with a few other tidbits.
I could go on, but if you want to learn better ways to eat on your own, for $9.00/month you cannot beat this site. I was surprised at some of the things I was eating that I thought were good, that REALLY weren't.
Take the free trial My Food Diary Website
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