Ever wished there was a user-friendly and readily available tool for scientifically monitoring your weight-watching? What about a reliable method for determining whether the foods you eat are in fact helping you lose weight or making you gain? Well, I’ve found such a service on the Web. They call themselves a free calorie counter, diet & exercise journal: MyFitnessPal.com.
I’ve tried it out myself, registered for an account, and it’s really free-of-charge. It’s amazing because the site offers a detailed and exhaustive system of keeping track of three goals: weight loss (or gain, as the case may be), nutrition, and fitness. You feel that the makers of this calorie counter website really have your health interests at heart because the moment you sign up, you are asked for your age, weight, height, etc. And your physical goals.
The system won’t ask you for credit cards or any financial information. It’s straight to your health and fitness program as soon as you login. And your homepage is organized clearly, with links to your Food intake, Exercise program, Reports and Community.
The Food journal of your account lets you input your daily meals and snacks. MyFitnessPal.com’s food database appears to be quite extensive, and the search facility is awesome. Let’s say you ate a hamburger for lunch. Just type in “hamburger” and you’ll be shown various types of hamburger orders. If what you had wasn’t quite any of the offered choices, you can add your own gastronomical entries. And then you get to be shown a table of your daily food intake, organized by date.
The Exercise journal works just like the Food section, but is subdivided into two: Cardiovascular exercises and Strength Training. This is, for me, what makes MyFitnessPal.com a serious service: it correlates your daily exercise (calories burned) against your food intake (calories consumed).
And of course, they have reporting tools as well. You can view your progress at any time — and if you religiously journalize your meals and exercises, i don’t see why these reports won’t be accurate enough to give you an idea of your actual progress.
What’s more, the site also hosts a community of users. There is a forum that can act as your support group for when you just don’t get to reach your goals. Or you could be the one providing support if you’re successful in reaching your health and fitness objectives!
Just one thing about the whole site… I wish they’d have an option to use metric measurements instead of pounds and inches. Otherwise, the calorie counter is an online service I definitely recommend.
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June 12th, 2007 at 1:31 am
nice
i’ll sign up there soon. (myfitnesspal.com)
what about swimming? it gives nice shape I believe.
June 12th, 2007 at 10:50 am
hi katharine, thanks for dropping by!
yes, i believe too that swimming is a good way to trim the body. my coach back in college told me, though, that you have to swim continuously for at least 20 minutes for it to have an effect.
June 26th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
will starving urself till ur stomach gets ulcerated and bleeds till kingdom come help?
June 26th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
hahaha!! i suppose that would work too, bananachoked!
actually, i’ve tried that sometime ago. i also tried drinking lots of milk every night — i’m lactose intolerant, yous see…
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:05 pm
i agree with katharine swimming is very helpful to keep the body fit