My Pal, Fitness.

There is this amazing website called My Fitness Pal that you can join for free and keep track of your diet and exercise. You take a short assessment and tell them your weight loss goal, then they calculate how many calories you should be eating per day to attain that goal. They have a huge database of foods including restaurant dishes so you can keep track of every single little thing you eat. You can log your exercise too and it will keep track of how many calories you burn. It's a really great tool. They even have a smartphone app so there should be no excuses as to why you didn't log something.  I have been a member of this website for years, but my use has been intermittent at best. I do pretty well for a week or two, then have a day where I consume everything in sight and I don't want to see the total calories I ate that day. Then I'll do the same thing the next day, and the next....you get the picture.

So today I decided I would start tracking my progress again. I logged into my MyFitnessPal page and it remembered me...it even greeted me by telling me how long it has been since I logged in and that I might need some encouragement. It also told me that I should make some friends on the website because people who partner up with others tend to stay on track better and lose more. I don't think I'm ready to share every detail about my weight and what I am eating with other people, though. It would seem too much like a competition and if I'm not in the lead I'll probably start starving myself or fudging the truth about the progress I'm making. That seems counterproductive to me. I'm just going to start small...if I just remember to log everything for a week straight I'll be happy.

I have yet to finish logging for today. I did great until lunch time, but when I got home I was so hungry that I started picking at everything in my fridge and now I have to try to remember it all. I'm hoping it is so difficult to remember everything that I'll make sure to eat fewer things tomorrow so I don't have to spend so much time doing this. If it's not easy I'm probably not going to do it, so I have to make sure it's easy.

I'm off to see how many extra calories I consumed today. Until tomorrow....