Tracking Calories and Exercise: Key To My Plan

Before I started my journey I ate without thinking. Mindless munching and grazing on snacks, breads, juices, ice cream, pasta, cookies, etc. with no thought about how many calories or what nutritional elements I was consuming. I knew I had to turn that around if I was going to be successful. Part of my strategy had to be keeping exact track of my caloric and nutritional intake.

For the first few days I did this in my head and kept a running count of calories. This was a good first step but I knew I needed more detail and accuracy. Plus I wanted to know more about my nutritional intake. Then the light bulb went off... "I have this Blackberry Storm, maybe there's a calorie tracking app for it". I check it out and there are a number of them.

I looked at all the free apps and they were well intended but not as detailed and easy to use as I wanted. I wanted an app that I could weave into my daily lifestyle. Something that would allow me to quickly track the foods I eat and the exercise I do. Something that had both web based and mobile access.

Enter MyNetDiary.com. Exactly what I was looking for. A web based service with an easy to use mobile app. It's not a free ($60 per year) but it has all the bells and whistles you would want. I figure $5 a month is well worth it if it helps keep me on track.

I've been using it for a few days and I'm very impressed. For each meal you do a search on the food you eat (thousands of foods), enter the amount you ate and whamo... it's logged. After you exercise you enter that into the Activity section and that gets figured into your daily calorie burn. You can track your weight loss, nutritional intake, get reports and charts... on and on. It also can post updates to Twitter about your meals, activities, weigh ins, etc. Look to the side bar on the right to see a sample.

While entering info is easier on the web interface, the Blackberry Storm interface is pretty darn good. I believe it works with both IPhone and Blackberry. You can check it out at http://www.mynetdiary.com/. I feel good that this will help me. Hope it helps you too.

ETL