MakeUseOf » weight

Track Your Weight The Smart Way With Libra [Android]

Erez Zukerman — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 23:31:59 +0000

Today I’d like to tell you about an Android application I have been using every day since March 16, 2011. That’s over 300 days of use, day in, day out. It’s a free application called Libra, and it’s used for entering your weight every morning and then getting a picture of where you are going. Libra is so good, that it is one of the applications hand-picked for our Best Android Apps page.

If you care about your weight and health even remotely, read on. As you will see, Libra will not solve all of your problems, but it makes it easier to get a clear picture of where you stand.

About Tracking Your Weight

Above is a screenshot of my own personal weight graph, extending back from May 27th, 2008. That’s over 3.5 years worth of data, more than 1,300 data points in all. That is not a screenshot from Libra: Android didn’t even exist when I started this graph. It is my own home-brew weight tracking solution. I coded the first version with AutoHotkey, and the next one with Ruby, and I use it to this day, in tandem with Libra. But the idea is certainly not my own, and it’s the same idea Libra uses.

Let’s take a closer look at how the graph works:

As you can see, there is a trend line, and dots which go over or under the line. The dots are individual data points, while the line is a moving average. Having a trend line is extremely important, as it is the only real way to see where your weight is going. The trend line is calculated according to a formula from The Hacker’s Diet, a book by John Walker, founder of Autodesk. The Hacker’s Diet is a classic reference for geeks trying to lose weight, and that’s the graphing system Libra implements.

Looking at the graph above, it is easy to see that I’ve been gaining weight over time. The lowest point on this graph is September 2009, and since then it has been going up in fits and starts. Despite all this (actually, because of it), I remain confident that graphing your weight is essential to losing it. I will tell you why later on, but first let’s look at Libra itself.

About Libra

Let’s look at the same period within Libra:

As you can see, the principle is exactly the same, only Libra adds a bunch of vital information. It knows my height, so it can tell me I am considered overweight now according to the body mass index. Overweight, by the way, is 25.0 and above – so I am just barely above normal. It also shows me I am actually gaining weight at a rapid pace, which is why it is “unknown” when I will get to my final weight goal (62.0 kg, which is about 136 lbs). I know this post would have been more dramatic if I could show you an impressive weight loss, so here is a screenshot of a real one from my past:

This is a period of several months during which I am steadily losing weight and tracking it with Libra. Note that the stats down the bottom don’t change, because they reflect the current situation and project the future.

Entering Your Weight

Every morning when I wake up, I enter my weight using the screen above. The date is automatically selected, and the tape scrolls smoothly when you flick it left or right. It’s a beautiful way to enter your weight, and it sure beats fiddling around with the keyboard. Libra lets you create a shortcut that launches you right into the “Insert value” screen, for maximum speed.

Statistics

Apart from the graph, Libra lets you see numeric stats showing your trends over various periods of time, as well as “records” of highest and lowest weight/trend values. Libra also offers a homescreen widget showing three quick stats:

Why Tracking Your Weight Is Important

Now we go back to the big question – why even do this in the first place? Well, because it is usually easy to gain weight, and it is easy to ignore the problem until it is way too late. Tracking your weight on a daily basis and graphing it is crucial, because that way you know where you stand. And as they say, knowing is half the battle.

I know some people who are overweight, and are actually afraid to know how much they weigh. But if they can’t face even that simple number, how will they be able to face the slow process of weight loss? I think that without tracking my weight, I would be much heavier right now, and would feel more hopeless about it.

Of course, once you do begin losing weight, tracking your losses is an essential part of staying motivated.

Why Tracking Your Weight Is Not Enough

Above is a period of several months when I was tracking my weight daily, but also gaining a lot of weight. So, sadly, tracking your weight may not be enough. You need to make some lifestyle changes to lose weight, as well as some public commitments. We’ve featured social fitness websites before, as well as 8 Websites That Help Couch Potatoes Take Up Running For Fitness & Fun, and I feel these are an important part of the equation. The idea is to care, and not give up.

Tracking your weight is the first step – once you take it, it may be easier to take the next one, but you will need to do something more. I’ve recently started exercising again – maybe next year I will be able to share a different-looking graph. At any case, I will probably still use Libra to plot it.

Let us know what apps and methods you use to track and lose weight. What do you think of Libra?

Lose More Weight Faster With The Help Of These Communities

Dave LeClair — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 02:30:40 +0000

The fact is, losing weight is never going to be easy. No matter what method you try to use there is just this simple formula: eat less, burn more. There are a million ways to carry out eating less and burning more, the key is finding something that works for you. I weighed 225 pounds about 7 months ago, and now I’m coming in a lean and mean 175 pounds (that’s 50 pounds lost for my non-math major friends).

One key reason that allowed me to lose weight was motivation from others. I had friends who were either dieting at the same time as me, or had recently dieted to help me through it. I also had a wealth of people on the Internet who were happy to offer some motivational words, or a friendly tip. The key is knowing where to find such helpful people.

MyNetDiary

This is the website/app I used during my dieting process. I found the user interface of their iPhone app to be the best, and most importantly, they integrated their community features into the mobile app. Obviously, cheating is most likely to happen at a restaurant, and chances are slim that you will have your laptop sitting in front of you. If you need a quick tip on how to avoid temptation you can pull out your phone and jump on the forums to plead for help.

They have a full-time dietitian on staff who is always in the forum answering questions, as well as thousands of helpful dieters who will be ready to help. Outside of the community, they also offer a calorie counter and exercise tracker.

MyFitnessPal

The features of MyFitnessPal have been detailed in a full article here, but it’s worth repeating. They obviously have a calorie counter and exercise tracker and the basic features that any app or website of this sort has. Where they really shine is in their social networking and community part. When you meet goals, it posts them to your followers and lets them know.

They also have an incredibly active forum filled with success stories, before and after pictures and people giving and receiving helpful tips and advice. You can also look on the forum for user-created healthy recipes; for those times when you get bored with eating the same diet food over and over.

Reddit’s Lose It Subreddit

It is impossible, in my opinion, to have any post about a community without looking to Reddit. We have already shown you many ways Reddit can help people in need, but they are also great at helping you stay motivated to lose weight. They have over 23000 readers on their Lose It subreddit, and they are all quick to offer a helping hand. Users also post before and after pictures, along with detailed descriptions of how they lost weight.

They are also big on Non Scale Victories (or NSV) on Reddit. They love hearing about things like pants not fitting, people giving complements, borrowing a younger sibling clothes that didn’t fit before and things of that nature. A lot of times people forget about these little victories while losing weight and they concentrate too much on the number on the scale. It is important to remember these NSV’s and Reddit will not let you forget. Also Reddit.com/r/fitness is a great community to learn more about exercising and burning those calories.

Traineo

Traineo’s whole site is based on community. Every piece of content on their site is posted by one of their over 200,000 members. It is filled with tons of tips, stories, workout plans, recipes, diet plans and pretty much everything you could want. There are thousands of photos of members to help motivate you. There is even an entire section of the site dedicated to just motivational tips for members, by members.

They also have a really cool groups feature, which allows you to link up other people losing weight who share similar interests with you. For example, there are groups of college students, Wii users, runners, and a slew of other kinds of people.

If you are looking for a pure community filled with hundreds of thousands of people who are all in the same struggle as you, this is the site you must check out.

Conclusion

If you are trying to lose weight and you feel like giving up, know that you don’t have to go it alone. There are people on the internet who are struggling with the same challenges as you, and they are happy to offer tips to help keep you motivated. Keep these communities in mind when you feel like slipping off the diet. Dieting is hard, but having a good support system will help immensely! Just keep at it, and don’t be afraid to lean on others for help.

Have you lost weight? How did you do it? Did communities such as these help you along? Let us know in comments!

Image Credit: Pixabay

MyFitnessPal – A Cross-Platform Calorie Counter & Diet Tracker

Matt Smith — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 15:31:12 +0000

Dieting is a serious issue for millions of people. Over half of the American populace is actively trying to lose weight. It’s not just the USA, either; approximately 46% of Britons are looking to shed a few pounds, and numerous countries in mainland Europe are dealing with similar weight-loss desires. Even countries you might not suspect have serious problems with the pounds – over 50% of the population in Mexico, Chile and Greece struggle with being overweight.

One of the most effective ways to combat weight gain is to count the calories and keep track of your intake, as well as your exercise, in a diet diary. The only problem is that you can’t take a diary everywhere – and so you might forget a meal here, or a snack there. MyFitnessPal solves the problem by having a presence everywhere – on your phone, your tablet or your PC.

Calorie Tracking Where You Are

Perhaps the biggest advantage of the MyFitnessPal free diet tracker, beyond the features we’ll talk about soon, is the number of platforms on which you can use it. There are MyFitnessPal apps for iPhone/iPad, Android and Blackberry. Windows Phone 7 is the only major mobile platform left out.

In addition to this, the MyFitnessPal website can be accessed online from anything with a web browser. Your account ties information between all of these platforms together, so you can count your calories during lunch at work on your smartphone, then finish up the day by counting dinner on your PC.

Massive Calorie Database

MyFitnessPal has been around for several years now, and since the introduction of the service it has constantly added new information to its food database. The database is easy to search and now includes over 750,000 items. The only food that isn’t commonly found on the database is food from local independent restaurants. If the restaurant is a chain, or if you’re eating something from the grocery store, you’ll find an entry for it in the MyFitnessPal database.

Once you’ve found what you’re looking for you can add it to your meal. MyFitnessPal is very flexible when it comes to adding food; you don’t have to pick one particular type of serving. You can also add servings in any multiplier of the base serving size. If you eat half a bagel, for example, no problem! Just search for the type of bagel you ate, and then enter .5 as the serving size.

If the food isn’t in the database, that’s also not a problem. You can always “quick-add” a given number of calories.

Tracking Your Progress

One problem that often trips up dieters is long-term calorie intake. Going crazy at a favorite restaurant can defeat an entire week’s work of careful, healthy eating – but without a clear way to track calories over time, a dieter may be prone to think “I met my goal six out of seven days, but I’m still not losing weight! What’s wrong?” That’s understandably frustrating.

MyFitnessPal keeps track of your daily calorie intake and provides information showing how you’re doing over time. It also provides information about how your current eating habits should impact your weight in the future.

When you start your MyFitnessPal account you are given a target calorie intake based on your current weight, your height, and the amount of weight you wish to lose each week. This information can be reviewed in the goals section, and helps you keep on track by reminding you that every calorie counts. Exercise is factored in as well, so you can see how your exercise program is impacting your weight loss.

Social Motivation

Perhaps the coolest feature, and the most likely to keep you on track, is the social networking functionality. If you like, you can hook up MyFitnessPal to your Facebook or Twitter account. MyFitnessPal will automatically let friends know when you’ve met a goal. Being put on the spot like this can feel embarrassing at first, but if you can become comfortable with it, the additional motivation is great.

There is also an active forum community on the site, and the site provides “badges” and “tickers” that can be added to a forum post or a blog post. The badges can be used to show off an accomplishment, while the ticker actually updates over time to show how much you’ve lost.

Conclusion

MyFitnessPal is an excellent free calorie counter and diet tracker. You can input your calories from anywhere with your phone, you can track your progress and calculate your estimated weight loss, and even get your friends in on it! It really doesn’t get any easier than this.

What effective online methods do you use to lose weight? Let us know in the comments.

2 Interesting Ways to Track Your Weight Loss Using Twitter

Ann Smarty — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 01:30:15 +0000

Twitter evolved incredibly since it was launched. Actually (and ironically), the service itself hardly changed at all, unlike the way people have been using it.

Started merely as a “What are you doing now?” concept, the service has now such an overwhelming number of alternative uses that you could never believe it! You can use Twitter as a poll or a survey tool, as a money management tool and now also as a way to track weight loss.

But why use Twitter to track your weight?

Well, first of all, because it’s fun! Sometimes having some fun is the key to achieving your weight loss goals – this helps you to stay motivated and enjoy keeping fit.

And secondly, you are on Twitter anyway! Why not use it to get reminded of your weight loss stats? It can be an easy way to record and track your weight, so give it a try!

Now let’s take a look at the tools I managed to find:

1. Track Weight Loss With Twackit

Twackit is a fun tool I found through this post listing some cool Twitter apps for fitness. It allows you to use your Twitter account to track any metric (like your weight!) and watch trends over time with help of a Google-driven chart.

The good thing is that it needs no registration. Just tweet a numeric value and a hashtag to @twackit:

The bad thing is that the process is totally public. Everyone sees your weight and aside from that, everyone can go to the site to see your weight loss chart (just in case you are one of those who, quite understandably, thinks that this data should be private).

Once you’ve started twacking, view your report at

http://www.twackit.com/your-username/your-hashtag

Another similar tool that tracks various metrics you Tweet and requires no registration is gtFtr but it mostly focus on workouts and supports a limited number of hashtags/commands:

Stats (or Day or Daily) – this has to come first so the parser knows it’s recording daily stats.
Steps 9000 ““ How many steps did you take today? You can also use S or Step for short.
Cals 800 – How many calories did you burn (that’s what it’s all about after all)?
Dist 3.9 – How far you went?

2. Weight Loss Charts

Weight Loss Charts is another interesting Twitter-based tool which my friend, Eric of buildmuscle.org found for me. I don’t think I would be able to find it myself as it appears to be quite new.

It does require registration which went quite smoothly. On signing up, you are offered to add Twitter and Gtalk bots to your buddy list. After waiting a while, the bots add you as their friends. You will also need to set your preferred unit of measuring (I am using kilogram).

Now all you need to do is to send any of the bots your daily weight and the info will be recorded on the site.

One of the most useful features of the tool is its reminder because it is really not easy to remember to record your weight on a daily basis. If you forget to tweet your weight, the Twitter bot will remind you to.

You can access your weight loss (hopefully) chart any time after logging in:

Let me know if you would use any of those tools to track weight loss! Also, if you’re not already following MakeUseOf on Twitter, you really should.

The Best Websites For Dieting On A Budget

Tim Lenahan — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:31:53 +0000

People diet for many different reasons. It could be that they have an illness such as diabetes that would require a special diet. It could also be that in order to be healthy, some weight loss could be in order. Whatever the reason for the needed diet, we all would love to do it without spending a huge amount of money.

The Internet is good at helping us to save money. We used to have to buy books (and other information sources) in order to learn about dieting and cooking healthy food. Now we can now hit up the ol’ Internet and find stuff for free! We can also find free online diets and diet tips to keep our costs low.

You will find four different categories of links in this article that should get you well on your way to dieting on a budget: nutritional guides, recipe sites, counters and calculators, and journaling.

Nutritional Guides

In order to begin eating healthy, you’ll need to figure out what foods are good and what foods are bad. Some of these guides will help you see what is in some restaurant foods while others will offer some overall good nutritional information on many different foods.

Fatburgr (MakeUseOf Directory mention) – find out what is in that fast food restaurant food with this site.
FitBuff.com’s Fast Food Calorie Counter: Nutrition Facts and Statistics – This is another fast food nutrition guide and calorie counter.
DietFacts.com – This site offers nutrition facts about many different restaurant establishments.

Recipe Sites

Cooking at home can be a great way to control your diet. This way you don’t have all of that junk that restaurants put into their food. True, you could hit up one of those bookstores and find some good healthy recipe books but isn’t it easier to find recipes for free online? There are sites that will help you avoid eating out, sites that will help you cook on a budget, and sites containing healthy recipes. Any of these sites will help you eat healthier and keep your costs low.

notakeout.com (MakeUseOf Directory mention) – By offering simple recipes and simple instructions, this site will help you avoid eating out so much.
Budget Bytes (MakeUseOf Directory mention) – This is a cool site containing low cost recipes and includes the cost per recipe and serving.
Healthy Eating via the Food Network – This site contains some top notch healthy recipes from the Food Network website.

Counters & Calculators

While on your journey to dieting, you’ll want to make use of some tools that will help you “see the numbers.” Use some of these tools in order to find your target weight, count calories, and even map an exercise route.

CaloriesPerHour – calculate your calorie intake goal (how many calories should you be taking in)
Halls.md Ideal Body Weight Calculator (MakeUseOf Directory mention) – This site will help you find what your healthy weight goal should be.
Gmaps Pedometer (MakeUseOf article – great how-to guide) – Map a route and find out the distance and the probable amount of calories that will be burned with this Google Maps tool.

Journaling

What better way to keep an eye on how you’re doing and to get back on track than to keep a journal? This list of links will give you instructions on how to keep a journal and one even has a free online journaling tool for you to make use of.

How to Maintain a Diet Journal for Life – This is a great how-to article about how to keep a diet journal. (via wikiHow)
Keeping a Diet Journal – This is an article outlining 2 types of diet journals and why they are used. (via 7habitsofweightloss)
FitDay (MakeUseOf Directory mention) – This is a free online diet and weight loss journaling tool.

Sure, you can go out and buy books, pay money for those diet tips and plans, and even spend money on tools to help you diet. The purpose of this list of resources is to help you get it done on a budget. The tools here are free and many of the recipes are inexpensive to make (avoiding restaurants alone will help your diet and your pocketbook).

What tools and sites can you suggest to help someone dieting on a budget?

Lose It! – A Calorie Intake Calculator for the iPhone

Sharninder — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 12:00:01 +0000

If you have a desk job like I do, and are as fond of food as I am, you really must be having tough time dealing with all the (unwanted) calories. I know I do.

Working as a code churner by day and a writer by night hardly leaves me with any time to exercise those (lazy) muscles, so the only other thing that I can do is limit the number of calories I take in.

That, as you all know, is easier said than done. For example, how are you going to stop yourself from eating that Big Mac (with extra cheese!) for lunch or the Chicken Tikka Masala with Cheese Naan for dinner unless you know how many calories it has before ordering it. Nothing better to lose your appetite than a guilt trip!

That is exactly what Lose It! will help you with.

Lose It! is an iPhone calorie intake calculator that acts as your personal guilt trip service by telling you exactly how many calories each of your meals has and how much you need to exercise to reach your weight loss goals.

When you run Lose It! for the first time the application asks you a couple of questions like your current weight, your goal weight, your height, and how much do want to lose per week. Lose It! will then set a daily calorie budget for you.

Now, as you go through the day, you need to either Add Food or Add Exercise to Lose It!. The goal is to remain below the daily calories budget that you’ve been assigned. Easy enough for you ?

Lose It! has a pretty large database of the common types of food that we eat and the calories that they add. For example, I ate a Big Mac for lunch today. Let’s add that bit of info to the Lose It! calorie intake calculator.

Tap on Add Food and select Lunch. Since McDonalds is a pretty famous name, we’ll just search for it under Brand Name Foods -> Restaurant Foods. Type in McDonalds.

Select what you ate from the list and Lose It! will show you the number of calories that your meal contained, and ask you to enter the quantity that you ate.

As you can see, I’m not doing too well with my diet plans. The Big Mac for lunch and the Burger King Whopper for dinner really doesn’t help me with my goal of losing 1lb a week.

So, let’s exercise a bit and add my workout to Lose It!. I love playing squash and since I have a squash court close to where I live, that’s what I’ll play. Of course, with my current fitness levels, an hour of squash is all that I can last for!

Click on the ‘+’ sign and select Exercise. Browse for the extensive list of sports available, select Squash and move the counter to 1 hour.

Ha! I’m still under 1685 calories for the day! I guess I can reward myself with that dessert!

So, you see, Lose It! is not only a very good application to help you track what you’ve eaten, it’ll also tell you just how much you can afford to splurge on yourself and still be on track to losing those extra pounds.

How do you guys plan your diet? Do you like to keep track of the calories you’re consuming?

Image credit: bensonkua

6 Great Free Weight Loss Resource Sites

Paul Coffman — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:01:42 +0000

As I’m watching television, eating chips and writing, I notice that the new season of The Biggest Loser has just started. I empathize with the contestants. At one time, I was seventy pounds overweight. I slowly lost twenty pounds over three years. Then, three years ago, spurred on by the show, I got serious. In six months I lost over forty pounds through diet and exercise. A lot of both. My wife (and weight loss partner) lost over thirty pounds.

Now, I’ve gained some, but not all, back. I’ve become a little more serious lately and hope to work my way closer to my ideal weight again. As I’m about to doze off into a carb-induced coma, I realize why I’ve gained some of my weight back.

No matter the amount you want to lose, it can be very difficult. A “weight loss” search is likely to yield a myriad of websites trying to sell you gimmicks, pills, powders, or exercise equipment. You rarely find free weight loss sites that are actually free and helpful when it comes to weight loss.

After scouring the internet, here are some of the best free weight loss sites to help you on your weight loss journey. Remember to consult with a doctor before beginning any special diet or exercise regimen.

The Mayo Clinic weight loss website provides some basic, yet useful information. Count on this medically oriented site to guide you reasonably and safely on your journey. If you are a beginner, this is a key place to start. If you have hit a brick wall in your weight loss, this is a place to return to the basics. Sometimes just doing that will spur your weight loss once again.

WebMD has a Healthy Eating and Diet Center, which much like the Mayo site, provides doctor approved tips and tools. There are calculators, galore and a “Diets A-Z” section that includes the low-down on various diets like the Cookie Diet, the Atkins Diet, and the Cabbage Soup Diet (never mind that retching sound in the background ““ just gimme a sec).

A cool feature of this site is their free Food and Fitness Planner. You enter the basics and the Planner takes you step-by-step through providing a meal and exercise plan to reach your goals. The Planner’s settings only allow you to pick modest goals, but research has shown that slow weight loss equals longer term success.

As a huge (no pun intended) fan of “The Biggest Loser”, I am disappointed in their “official” site. It appears simply a sales and marketing tool. Almost any selection will take you to products you can buy. There are a few free resources, like an occasional recipe here and there, but nothing substantial. However, going to NBC’s Biggest Loser website will provide better results. The site has video, blogs, recipes, exercises and tips ““ all free!

If you think you need community motivation, try The Biggest Loser League. This is free to join, and requires a simple registration. Complete your profile, set your goals, and track your progress. There are League challenges that you can sign up for and earn points. You can set up your own individual challenges or form a team with family or friends and create challenges for the team. Points simply allow you to move up in rank in the League, but earning points may keep you losing weight. The variety introduced through the challenges will keep your journey fresh.

You can upload your photos, and view a weight loss time-line. The site’s targeted feature is that of creating community, or building a team. The added accountability of partners may be all you need for motivation.

Prevention Magazine is a Biggest Loser partner, so it’s no surprise that their sites are linked. However, Prevention itself offers some additional resources. The coolest thing I found was their Weight Loss Simulator for women. This offers a 3-D comparison of your “virtual” body now versus what you might look like when you lose weight.

You enter specifics about your body, including height, current and goal weight, and you can even change your avatar’s look. To save the profile you have to register with My Virtual Model, which is a free process. Since Prevention is primarily targeted for women, many of the tools, like the Simulator, are geared for women, but there are charts, calculators, food diaries, and many other free resources anyone can use.

Weight loss is about the basics ““ intake versus output; keep your online weight loss tools basic and you will see results! Remember, when using weight loss tools like calculators, be honest! You have to have a true assessment of where you are now to accurately measure results.

Which weight loss tools or free weight loss sites do you use to plan and track your diet progress? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit : jmacphoto.com

SparkPeople – Free Online Health & Weight-loss Community

Gary Reichel — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:00:46 +0000

It is easy to gain weight, but to lose weight is another story. It is kind of like a credit card, really easy to charge up the bill but when the time comes to pay it off — well, it’s not quite so easy. For example, those fast food burgers after midnight slide right down the ol’ hatch, just as easy as charging up a new plasma TV. And just like paying off that purchase, trying to get those burgers and fries off the hips is much harder — although, it’s not impossible. As a matter of fact, people lose weight every day. They will also be the first ones to tell you that it requires a change in lifestyle that includes: fitness, nutrition and community.

One of the first steps in being healthy is changing how you spend your time, which will include getting rid of some bad habits. For many, this will mean no more snacking on potato chips, popcorn or soda. For others, it means quitting smoking or consuming alcohol; and still others will have to do all three. Either way, Ryan recently found a website called Joes Goals and this is a good place to start if you’re trying to break a bad habit. He also wrote about the best workout websites that combine technology and fitness. Both these articles are great and I hope they will come in handy.

However, there’s another website dedicated to helping their community to lose weight and feel great – SparkPeople.

SparkPeople’s motto is “Lose Weight. Get Fit. Look and Feel Great!” and they have really done a fantastic job at developing a site that has multiple tools and features to help you achieve your weight loss goal! It has everything from:

expert advice
blogs
weight calculators
fitness videos
meal planning
custom workouts based on your goals

SparkPeople is a HUGE website so I suggest checking out the Getting Started Guide to learn how to use the site.

After you sign up, you will see the main area with three primary tools:

Nutrition Tracker – create a menu and shopping list based on your goals.
Fitness Tracker – create a workout based on your goals.
Weigh-In – calculate your calorie and nutrient needs based on your weight loss.

Each of these tools is a link to various options and features. For example, when you click on the Fitness Tracker, you can view an auto-generated workout based on your goals. One of the nice features with SparkPeople is you can also watch a demo on how to do each exercise.

There is also a section where you can modify an auto-generated workout or create one from scratch.

Notice the screen shot above is just showing the exercise options based on “crunches”. There is a plethora of exercise options based on selections, such as: upper body, lower body and core. Furthermore, each of those areas have beginner and advanced sections.

For those who are looking for expert tips and video workouts for the home or gym, SparkPeople has a free video section as well.

I have only skimmed the surface of what the SparkPeople website has to offer you on losing weight and feeling great. I have not yet started to get into the: blog, message board, receipes, teams and other SparkPeople tools; you can even create your own Sparks web page.

If you use SparkPeople and have a favorite section that I did not mention, please let us know. Also, if you use a different site to help you lose weight, share with us in the comments.

Image credit: N!el from Flickr

Lose Weight For Free With The Daily Plate

Ryan Dube — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:01:56 +0000

One of the more difficult aspects of being a writer is sitting on your backside for so many hours in a row, and being far too busy to search for ways to lose weight for free. Poor writers like us can’t afford Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers!

The best way to lose abdominal weight, or even just to control your weight overall when you can’t seem to get much exercise, is through controlling your diet. However, keeping track of what you eat and the calories you consume can feel both overwhelming and annoying. Who wants to waste time jotting down the calories of every little snack or drink?

Being a geek who’s always interested in Internet resources that will do all of my work for me, naturally I decided to turn to the Internet for my weight loss needs. MakeUseOf has touched on weight loss solutions in the past, such as Tina’s article listing 6 cool sites to help you keep New Year’s resolutions in 2009 as well as a number of calorie and weight loss calculators.

Lose Weight for Free With the Daily Plate

If you perform a Google search for “how to lose weight,” you’ll get back an entire truckload of weight loss scams that will leave you as fat as ever. Why don’t diets work? Because, as any professional dietician will tell you, there’s no magic formula that’s going to make you magically lose weight. Physics still comes into play. As a biological creature, if you take in more energy (calories) than you expend, you’re gonna plump up like the Goodyear Blimp.

So what’s a body to do? It’s simple. The best way to lose abdominal weight is to find an easy way to keep track of the food you eat and the energy it holds. By doing so, you can control the way you eat in order to get to your ideal body weight. I’ve found that there are foods that can help me lose weight by suppressing appetite, but ultimately you need a tool that will help you lose weight for free by tracking and calculating the total calories in the food you eat. The DailyPlate does just that.

Keeping Track of Calories and Nutrition

Once you get through the one-page registration, you can immediately get started tracking your food intake, looking up nutritional information, taking part in the DailyPlate forum community, or, heaven forbid, calculate the calories you’ve burned by working out (in an alternate universe).

The food diary is fast and easy, and by using it you never have to count a single calorie again. After each meal, you simply click on “My Plate,” search for the food you’ve eaten and add it to your diary.

One of the things that surprised me was the accuracy and size of the DailyPlate food database. For example, when I searched for “multigrain bagel,” I not only found thousands of results, but I found the exact bagel from Dunkin Donuts that I’d purchased that morning. To my dismay, it turned out that a Dunkin Donuts multigrain bagel is one of the most calorie saturated bagels in existence. Luckily, the website application also offers suggestions for foods that can help me lose weight. I can use all of the advice I can get.

Once you click on the item you ate, all of the data gets loaded into your “daily plate,” including calories, fat, carbs and all other nutritional content. The website automatically tracks all of the nutrition that you eat during the day. As you add the food, the items show up on your My Plate page.

Cool Features For Lazy People

You probably got to this point because you’re too lazy to get on a treadmill, let alone constantly keep a log of the food you eat. That’s why The DailyPlate is perfect. To make the process even easier, the folks at The DailyPlate created a few extra, cool features to the site. The first of these is a “meal” system, where you can pre-load specific meals that you eat often.

Now, when you click on your “Standard Work Lunch,” it automatically loads the ham and cheese sandwich, pickle, and chips that you eat almost every day. Underneath this widget in the right menu, you’ll also find the “What I Eat Often” box, where the foods you recently entered are listed.

After a while, you’ll find you can simply log into the system, click on the foods you eat often, and then log out – in a matter of seconds. There are a few calorie management systems out there that are as easy as this. The right menu bar also saves the exercise and activities that you add to your daily calorie log, also for easy point and click use.

As you add items to your log of food and activities, the system gets easier and easier to use, because all of those items get loaded into these right menu widgets. As you add the food you eat, and the exercises that you’ve done (if any), the page lists your calorie and nutritional totals at the bottom.

As the day goes on, each time you log in you can see how much of your daily calories and nutrition that you’ve already consumed. As you can see above – I love salt.

Monitor Your Progress With Graphs & Charts

Everyone loves a good chart, especially when you’re not the one who has to put it together. The cool thing about the DailyPlate is that as you’re entering your food consumption and activity details, the website constantly keeps track of your progress. Just check out the charts, calorie goals or weight goals at the top of your My Plate page. As an example, I’ve clicked on my weight history for a graph of my weight from the beginning of 2008 into 2009.

Okay, it’s obvious I’ve been on the wrong track. But a guy has to start somewhere right? The system also tracks the calories you’ve consumed versus your calorie goal (based on your weight and activity level). This progress is displayed on a dot chart.

Best of all, from the main page, you can monitor a pie chart that instantly updates as you add the food you’ve consumed. Just above that, you can even monitor how much water you’ve had throughout the day, to make sure that you hit the daily recommended limit (about 1.9 liters a day).

All of the information on your My Plate page, and the charts and data in the background, are constantly updated and tracked as you quickly click on the foods you eat throughout the day. Counting calories has never been this easy.

Do you have a favorite website or application that you use to keep track of your health and fitness goals? Share your insight in the comments section below.