I'm using www.fitday.comthis go 'round to help me zero in on my goals. It's a great program and the basic version is free, which is nice. I've been entering in everything that I eat and what I have found in the first three days is that I'm undereating. That's so not like me and we'll see how long that goes on. It's not like I'm starving myself. So far, my average daily calorie intake is 2,006. Look, I'm on the 2,000 calorie diet that every percentage on the nutrition label is based off of.
FitDay also tracks a lot of the vitamins and minerals that you take, measured in that percentage (based on a 2,000 calorie diet). Because I take Universal's Animal Pak multi-vitamin, I've got all those percentages spiked out. FitDay quits counting at 200%.
My favorite feature (at least for today) is the goal tracking graph. You put in your goal weight and the target date and it graphs out what a steady loss to that date would be. Another section tells you how many calories per day you would need to eat to reach this goal (in a perfect world). Every time you enter in a new weight, it places a mark on the graph to show how you are doing in relation to your goal.
This is what mine looks like so far. The purple line shows what a progressive weight loss to my goal would look like and the green line is my weight.
It looks like an impressive start but it's a bit misleading because the first time I weighed was in the afternoon while wearing clothes. The second time was the typical second-thing-in-the-morning weigh-in. This second weight would be what I would actually classify as my "official" weight if I was being technical. It does give you a good idea of how the graph will work.
I would imagine that my weight will zigzag across the goal line as I move forward. It will give me a good idea of when I need to tweak things.
I checked out the BMI portion of FitDay just to see where 175 pounds would put me. Right now, I'm obese. 175 will move me into the overweight category. I would have to get down to 169 to be healthy. To get there I would probably have to give up all weight training and do excessive amounts of cardio to try and break down my muscle and get rid of it. Not going to happen. Then again, I haven't been down to 175 for a long time so maybe I have no idea what is possible.
FitDay also tracks your Protein/Carb/Fat/Alcohol intake and does up a pie chart to show you how you eat. This would be great for people who are doing something like a Zone diet or something where you aim for a certain amount of each of these. I'm not aiming for anything (other than severely limiting grains and sugars) so I check the chart just out of curiosity. Right now, I'm eating about 50% fat, 27% protein, and 23% carbs. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues and what effect it will have. That may be why I'm undereating. Taking in fat can help make you feel satiated.
Here's a cool little tidbit that I learned on FitDay. When a 43 year, 204.4 pound, male has active vigorous sex for 10 minutes, it burns 1,206 calories. That lends some credibility to my NPC Workout. I was looking over all the activities that FitDay has to pick from and saw "Sex" so I, of course, had to go check it out. No wonder people that take Viagra have heart attacks. My 3 mile run burned 407 calories (and it's still burning - at least my quads are).
I don't know why I haven't used FitDay more in the past. I don't think I really understood everything that it had. The foods are easy to add to the diary because of 3 drop-down menus on the left side. One of which is your recently eaten foods so if there is something that you eat often, it's super easy to add. You can create your own foods. I added the information for my multi-vitamin and my protein shake. Now they are entered into my diary with a click on the drop-down menu.
It tracks everything that I need and there is a premium service that tracks even more but I can't imagine what else I would need to track.
If you are making a weight loss goal for this year, you might want to give FitDay a try.
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