"my fitness pal"

I downloaded an application on my Android phone the other day which is pretty cool. It's called "My Fitness Pal." It is an app for tracking exercise and journaling food.

What I really like about it is that it is also online, so I can record food I eat on my phone (convenient), or if I have the computer handy I can log on to the Web site and record food there.

I cannot express how tedious it is to write everything down that goes in my mouth. I seriously feel like eating less just so I don't have to log it! I guess that's a good thing.

My full official day of food tracking was today. Per the site, I earned 488 extra calories from my 45-minute (absolutely killer) workout. At the end of the day, my breakfast was where I ate the most calories -- two waffles with butter and syrup, scrambled eggs, and sausages. More than 600 calories!

I had a late lunch, after my workout, for about 400+ calories -- a sandwich of leftover pot roast meat and cheddar cheese, plus baby carrots.

Dinner was 400+ calories as well, two English muffin pizzas and a huge salad.

My only snack was a glass of chocolate milk, whole milk mixed with almond milk.

It was interesting. Who actually knows what they eat each day? Not me. I put on my personal blog last year that I didn't realize that half a frozen Tombstone pizza was more than 1,000 calories. And I'd eat that at least once a week. I've since stopped that habit, thank goodness. I don't buy frozen pizza nearly as much after learning that calorie count.

Anyway, after all my tracking, the site says I consumed 1,700 calories. My goal for the day was 1,200, so with the 488 exercise credit, I was 15 calories over my goal. And I didn't even eat anything extraneous! No munching on M&Ms, no sneaking goldfish from my son, no sodas or fast food. I can only image what a "normal" day when I don't think about what I'm eating would add up to. Maybe that is why I have been having a hard time losing weight?

The web site is www.myfitnesspal.com. Even if you don't have a cell phone that gets apps, you can use the Web site to track your calories. It can be an eye-opening experience. I am pretty impressed at how extensive their "database" is... I found my brand of almond milk, the sandwich bread for my lunch, the exact yogurt I ate the other morning, and more. If you make the same salad over and over (I do!) you can create a "meal" and add all your salad toppings, and it'll estimate calories for it and save it so you can re-use it.

Well, I hope we all have good luck with this this year. Maybe I need to count calories for awhile. I have to thank BlueDragonfly for inspiring me... she showed me some of her reports and she was eating under 1,200 a day! Wowsers! Impressive! I hope I can be successful, I hope we all can.

Game on!