For the past couple years now, I have been making efforts to be healthier and more active. I officially started this 2 years ago with
Weight Watchers Online. I’m going to go ahead and get a little personal now and be completely honest. At my worse I weighed between 165-170 lbs. and I’m only 5’4”. Not good, not good. Of course I didn’t like the way my body looked, but more importantly I wasn’t healthy. With WW I very quickly
[but not easily] took off about 10 lbs. and kept it off for a good year or so with the things I had learned. Earlier this year I decided it was time to get serious again and I am happy to report that I am down to 140-145lbs - which is in my healthy weight range, go me!. Unfortunately, my focus has been lacking lately at the worst possible time -
HOLIDAY SEASON! I thought it would be beneficial to myself
[and hopefully others out there] to do a little biweekly post on health, weight loss and my personal experiences.
Today, I thought I would just talk about tracking calories and a couple sites to help out! First off, tracking calories has been essential to my weight loss, at least in the beginning. I haven’t been doing much of it lately, but I’m starting up again today! When you track your food intake it really puts everything into perspective. It’s right there in front of your face how much crap your eating...or how bad it is for you. It was a major wake up call for me. It shouldn’t have been really, but I guess I just never thought about sodium, calories, and such. I also think it’s just as important to track calories burned, aka. your activity.
Like I said above I started with
Weight Watchers, but let’s be honest I’m always broke and cheap, so I did that for a few months and then moved on to some free options.
Sparkpeople.com
This is a great community website. I don’t love the interface, but it works. It also has lots of articles packed full of information and tips. When you sign up you will put in your weight, weight loss goals and other information and it will spit out a calorie plan for you. I haven’t used this site in awhile, but I definitely recommend it for when you are just starting out. It has all these goals you track and “stages” that help you build healthy habits. My “healthy habits” are not so great lately, so I think I will be revisiting this site.
Myfitnesspal.com
This is the site I am currently using, mainly b/c it has a super sweet [and simple] app for my android. There aren’t articles and all in information like SP.com, but there are some good user forums. Basically, this is a calorie counting site/app and it’s my favorite I’ve found so far!
Do you use any online resources to stay on the healthy track?
