As I ramp up plans for my upcoming midlife crisis I’ve shifted focus back to diet & exercise. I’d been slacking lately… time to recover some recent gains and get back on track.
The only way I have ever lost weight has involved logging everything I eat. Paper or programs don’t matter much, but I have to log it. I’ve used tons of different methods in the past. Those that “stick” help me succeed. Those that are a pain or tedious get dropped by the wayside along with my goals.
Last time around I built a little web app with Zoho Creator that I used for about 6 months. It worked well, but over time it grew a bit cumbersome due, mostly, to my lack of truly thinking through the design. I’ve recently been sampling other online options but hadn’t really found anything that clicked until a couple of nights ago.
Wednesday night I had just read Rich’s mid life crisis post (lot of that going around!) and he mentioned a site I hadn’t heard of before: SparkPeople. I had a look and have decided to give it a shot for the long term.
At first glance, it’s a bit “busy” but once I had a chance to look things over and mentally filter out the clutter I like it quite a bit. Things work in a way that I expect them to and tracking foods and fitness are very easy to do.
Note on food tracking: It’ll offer to setup a diet plan based on your goals. The plan didn’t look too bad, but I opted to turn that off and just log my foods. Even going that route it still shows me how I’m doing each day against the plan for targeted calories, fats, carbs and protein. That method suits me just fine. (those targets being based on my goals of course).
Fitness is about the same. You can let it setup plans or you can setup your own and just tell it what you’ve done (which is what I’m doing). The calorie calculator has been very close to what my bike computer tells me which is welcome surprise.
Final bonus? There’s a mobile version that works great from my Windows Mobile phone. You can even use that to look up restaurant and other foods without having to log in. Or you can log in and log stuff.
Did I mention it’s all free?
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