Happy Wednesday ladies! So, I was too speedy and got all of my morning and early day work completed by 11:00 today. This is good because it means that I'm being productive but it's bad because then I have nothing to do at work. Now, you might be asking yourself, "what does being bored at work have to do with our weight loss blog?" The answer, it gives me time to surf the net and stumble across new, fun websites!
Lately, I've been trying to keep track of my caloric intake. My ultimate goal is not to be a devoted calorie counter but to just have a better sense what's what in nutritional breakdown. Since I haven't been feeling well, I've been drinking a lot of tea and lemon water both of which I sugar, not heavily but calories are calories. I was trying to determine the caloric value of sugar when I stumbled across this website that I think could be a really great resource for someone who is trying to get an overall impression of his or her diet. If you're interested in tabulating your diet and exercise you should check out livestrong.com and create a daily plate.
I can count and you can count so getting daily caloric intake isn't that difficult or even time consuming. What's problematic is when you want further breakdown. It takes a lot of time and effort to manually calculate nutrient percentages and how many calories come from them. I've tried using online programs before, such as the Mypyramid application from the government and have hated all of them. My issues with these programs are always the same.
Problem 1: they are often times very restrictive from a food list stand point. I remember being so frustrated using Mypyramid for Dr. Franke's class because so many of the things that I ate weren't available so I had to fudge the facts. This is one of the first sites that I've ever used that has had everything that I've tried to enter. They even had the cough drops that I ate, which are 15 calories apiece if you're interested!! They also have extensive listings of restaurant foods so you can still track if you eat out.
Problem 2: None of the free programs ever incorporate exercise in with the diet. This program does. Not only can I track daily, weekly and monthly caloric intake and nutritional breakdown of my food, on the same page I can track daily exercise. Even better, my remaining caloric intake immediately changes to reflect calories burned in exercise.
Problem 3: Websites like this are not friendly for the home cook. I don't know that this site will be much better than the others. While I want a site like this to have everything, it's not going to happen. What I would really love is for a site like this to have a place where I can enter a recipe and then have it spit out the nutritional information for me. Short of that happening I guess we have to just breakdown dishes to the best of our abilities.
While there are things that I like about this website there are things that I don't like immediately and probably things that will come up as I use it more...let's face it, I've spent all of 1 hour exploring it at this point.
Things I don't like 1: it's slow. I don't know if it's the website or my Internet connection at work. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt right now.
Things I don't like 2: While I do like that it took my sex, age, height, weight, activity level and desired weight loss per week into consideration when calculating my daily calorie goal, I feel like they need to work on their formula. I realize that I'm a big girl and will drop pounds faster in the beginning than a skinny-minny however, there is NO WAY that I should be eating 3000 calories per day, which is what the calculator told me to eat if I wanted to lose 1.5 pounds/week. I had to set my goal at 3 pounds per week to get it near 2000 calories which is where I should be right now. As I start to lose that 2000 limit will come down but for now, 2000 is at a level where I will still lose if I stick to it. Because of my background I knew right away that the estimated caloric intake was much too high, I'm afraid that others who aren't as knowledgeable in this area will be lead astray.
Finally, there are a few things that I really do like about this website that I want to briefly point out.
Things I really like 1: there is an online journal. Not only can I track my calories and exercise, I can do any journaling that I like on the same page.
Things that I really like 2: the weight tracker that they use is a line graph, you enter the date and your weight and it makes the graph. I love a good line graph over time because it is usually very representative.
Things that I really like 3: this website seems very user friendly and I like user friendly technology!
Things I really like 4: there are a lot of breakdown over time options on this website not only for calories but also exercise. I like seeing graphs and representations because it makes something like time spent doing an activity so much more tangible.
OK, I'm going to stop now and go play around on the website some more because there is more to explore. I hope that you're having a great day ladies!!
4 comments:
Oooo yippee for online resources. I also struggle with the calorie counting sites. I had to use MyPyramid for a nutrition class I took a couple years ago and it frustrated me so much. It took too much time.
I've never been too hung up on calorie counting. I just like to keep nutrients in check. I check out fat content (and the type of fat). I'm also very big on fiber content. I want foods that will fill me up fast so I can evaluate my hunger correctly. One of the things that makes me shut down is the organization and time it takes to keep track of "stuff" when losing weight. That's why the points system at Weight Watchers was my friend and foe. I loved it at first but the restriction of it started to eat away at me. I don't want to run my life on point usage.
Starting to take tangents now....it's a sign to stop commenting.
I'm the same way. I hate the thought of being a 'calorie counter' because they always seem so busy counting that they forget that food should be enjoyed. I'll play around with the site for a while and then when I have my eating habits more in check I'll move away from it.
I agree about the taking too much time thing. One of the nice features I found on this website was that they let you create meals. So anything that you group together and eat regularly can be a meal. Its nice because I don't have to add my Enlgish muffin, egg, miracle whip and cheese every day. All I have to do is hit my 1 egg breakfast button and it's all there.
Good luck starting day 1 Jenny...I'm waiting for you at day 3!!!
Well I think you used your free time wisely (non-sarcastic comment, I swear). I'll have to take a look at that website sometime when I have enough time to explore. My friend Sara also told me about a very helpful website. She is losing weight too and has lost 25 pounds over the past few months. She said the website she uses is helpful and free. I have it written down somewhere so I'll have to post it some other time, but soon I promise.
I also like the idea of a line graph to show progress. I have never been one to count calories either, it was just too tedious and impossible at times. I used to watch my carb intake pretty heavily, but I never paid too much attention to fat or calories.
Like I said I will have to give your website a try sometime soon and check out the one my friend suggested. Having these online resources could be very helpful since we're all online quite a bit. Having it all in one place, online is attractive in our busy lives.
So the website that I referred to before is www.sparkpeople.com. Honestly, I haven't spent a lot of time on the website, but I plan on doing it soon. As I said before, my friend uses it and she likes it. Maybe it's worth a look. I just blogged so take a look when you're not busy. :)
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