Free! For Food & Fitness "Fun"

After that whole Tracy Anderson thing I did last year, I swore I would never go on another diet. At the same time, having free reign doesn’t exactly help one slim down for summer, even if you’re being good about exercising.

Since I returned from my vacation in St. Lucia (and saw certain bikini pictures) I have been trying to eat better. I’ve been laying off the sweets and cheese for example, and trying to eat more fruits, vegetables, and “superfoods.” I feel pretty good, but I want to focus a little more on what I’m eating. Am I getting all the protein I need? Enough good fat? Too much good fat?

Yesterday, I signed up for MyFitnessPal. Actually, I just logged in, because apparently I signed up for it last year. I assume my plan was to “maintain” the three measly pounds I took off starving myself on the T.A. Diet. According to the log from ten months ago, I promptly gave up on it. (Probably because I was so sick of dieting taking over my life, or it might have been when my hair started falling out, which both doctors I saw told me was caused by my diet.)

Anyway, since I refuse to diet in the traditional sense, but want to keep track of (and be held accountable for) what I eat, I thought a food diary would be a good idea. I had good results with one I tried a few years ago, MyFoodDiary.com. The best part about it was that it encouraged me to work out more frequently so I could earn more calories.

These interactive food diaries work by taking your current weight and your goal weight, then calculating how many calories you can have per day in order to get to where you want to be. It even estimates how long it will take you to get there safely. If you exercise, you get to eat more food and still be on track to meet your goal, so it’s good incentive to get moving every day.

MyFoodDiary was great because it also takes your build into account, but it cost $9 a month, which is why I’m not going back to them. MyFitnessPal is free, and is otherwise just as good as Myfooddiary.com. I think the 75,159 people who downloaded the five-star app would agree.

It’s available for both iPhone and iPad, or you can use the website: myfitnesspal.com. OR, use all three! Once you sign up, you can log in to your account anywhere and everything is in sync. I have been using MyFitnessPal for two days and have logged my food and exercise on three different devices because I am a supernerd.

The food diary tracks overall calories, carbs, fat, protein, sugar, and sodium in the main food section, but on your “home” screen there is also a pie chart tracking carbs/fat/protein and a button where you can see how you did on all your nutrients for the day. You add foods to each day by inputting the data yourself, choosing foods from their database, or using the barcode scanner. (Yep!)

The first day I used it I went over my fat by 5g, (even though it was all “good fat”) and took in double the protein and sugar I needed. This is while trying to be healthy! And I have a pretty good understanding of nutrition.

I didn’t have any actual sugar, but I did have half a banana and 1/2 cup of fresh apple juice in my morning smoothie. It was blended with a whole cup of raw kale, but it’s still sugar. And I know those things have sugar, but I figured if I was eating mostly fresh fruits and vegetables in general, I didn’t really have to worry about it. But I was wrong! Now I know I have to try to reduce the amount of juice and banana in the recipe, but I might not have bothered otherwise.

Sugar! If I went over my limit when I was trying to be good, I can’t imagine how far over the RDA I go when I’m not really paying attention. What if I ate a handful of jellybeans or half a sea salt caramel chocolate bar? And what about that doughnut?!

Don’t worry! I can assure you, that has NEVER HAPPENED.
This week.

Generally though, I came in under on calories, thanks to a really big workout, and there were a few things I didn’t get enough of. Since I ate barely anything processed, my sodium intake was really low. I think that’s more “allowance” than “recommended” though. I was 63g under in the carbs, I assume because I still have a bit of that “low carb” idea from doing the South Beach Diet years ago, which also explains why my protein intake was so high. I assume the default setting is based on the RDA, but it turns out you can adjust the settings in the “Goals” section if you want, which is nice.

Just like with the foods, for the fitness part, you can choose exercise from their database, or input your own thing. Since I use machines for my cardio, I just go with whatever the machine tells me my calories burned were. Even though it might not be entirely accurate, I figure it’s more accurate than the generic option. (I guess I could wear my heart rate monitor though...)

MyFitnessPal offers a little thing you can buy called a FitBit Ultra Tracker, which is sort of like a more accurate pedometer, which tracks your movements all day. It even syncs with your MyFitnessPal account, which is awesome. This is probably the most accurate and effective way to track the calories you burn, but personally I’m not going to go there, especially for $99.95.

MyFitnessPal also has a social aspect to it, because everything does these days. Basically, you can have “friends” and offer each other encouragement and see each other’s diaries and recipes (but not each other’s weight! Nicely done, MyFitnessPal.) I’m assuming you can see what they’re eating and their workouts, but I don’t have any “friends” yet, so I’m not 100% sure. You can also keep the whole thing entirely private, or entirely public.

I just made my diary visible to the friends I don’t have yet. If anyone signs up, and you want to be “friends” you can find me by going to Community> Find Members and then searching for punkahontas. If a few readers join, I can start a group so we can all be “friends.”

Otherwise, it will just be me and MyFitnessPal, and my three devices, and we will find all the calories and BURN THEM.