Great Stuff at livestrong.com 


Jim finds a WONDERFUL tool for loosing weight. 

I'm writing to tell you of the most effective dieting tool that I have yet found. It's called Calorie Tracker. I have downloaded the (free) iPhone version, but you can do everything I'm talking about here at the website livestrong.com. But before I describe the program, I need to backtrack about five years.

When I retired, I was given a scary diagnosis and told I had to loose 30 pounds, which I did in 8 months. I wrote about it then in my old "blog" website, back before blogging became the rage. There is still some good stuff there, because I know from tracking visitors that some people still read the stuff. I know there are all kinds of diets and not every diet works for everyone, but the one that works for me is keeping track of how many calories I eat and weighing myself when I get up and when I go to bed. I kept charts of my weight loss, and when you view them, they are dramatic, because for me, just exercising lightly and keeping my calorie count below about 1600 works. Of course, I try to eat a "balanced" diet, too, whatever that means.

Over the five years since then, I pretty well kept my weight off, but the last year, the pounds have been inching up. The final call to action came when I weight myself upon returning from my last visit to see mom and my sister and brother. I got on the scales and it read 180. I had already decided if I gained 10 pounds over 170, I would have to seriously loose them. Resolve enveloped me, and I went to bed. Next day, I pulled out my iPhone, and searched for "calorie" in Apps. Several programs came up, but the main free one was Calorie Tracker. I downloaded it and started to learn how to use it.

Maybe the first thing I will show you is how much weight I have lost in the 4 days since I started using it. I lost 4 pounds! Of course, I'm not dumb enough to think I am going to loose a pound a day; this kind of dramatic weight loss always happens to me right after I start dieting. The real test of a diet is the challenging weeks following the first three days. As you can see from the Calorie Tracker graphing function to the left, a pound came off each of the first three days, and then a fraction of a pound. I know from past experience that loosing more than .2 of a pound a day will be unusual from here on out. But Calorie Tracker let me set my goals, and I decided to loose a pound a week. So, if I just stick to this (even through Thanksgiving), I should show up with 170 on my scales sometime before Christmas.

Calorie Tracker lets you create a daily record of the things you eat just like the image to the right. It works a little clunky at first, but use it for a couple of days, and it becomes easier. It does take some time, however. You can see five buttons at the bottom of the screen. Right now, the screen is looking at My Plate, which is selected in blue. However, to enter data, you click on the middle button, Food, and a search screen comes up. You type in the name of the food you want to enter, and search. You get a sometimes long list of various items that correspond to the search key. Jockey around until you find what you want, and then, after adjusting portion sizes, and noting what meal of the day this is for you, click on the big yellow button: "I Ate This." As you can see from the image, one of the things I had for breakfast this day was 1 serving of english muffin and 1 serving of cream cheese. The calories are listed right beside the serving. Also you will note at the top of this screen a breakdown of what you have eaten for the day, including your calorie goal, your progress toward your goal, and your calories remaining. This may be the single most useful feature for staying on your diet, PROVIDED THAT YOU ENTER YOUR CALORIES EACH TIME YOU EAT! I am doing that.

After a couple of days using this handy software, I discovered something even more useful about it. Low and behold, it keeps track of your activities, too, and when you burn extra calories, it adjusts your progress towards your daily goal. It also keeps a list of these activities at the bottom of the page, below the calorie intake. you can see an example image to the left. Chronic health conditions keep me from exercising too vigorously, but I do lead a normal live with lots of activity. As you can see from the list, the tai chi and yoga that I do every morning gives me about 150 more calories a day to consume than I otherwise would. Also I normally go up and down stairs in our three story house and do a moderate amount of housework. That amounts to another 250 calories to deduct from the restriction. Probably there's at least another 50 calories of extra exertion, so I get 500 extra calories, total—instead of aiming for 1600 calories on this particular day, I can consume 2100 calories and still loose weight!

Like I said, you can do all this stuff at the website, even if you don't have an iPhone, but it would be a lot harder to keep track of all you ate then, or check what your dinner allotment is at a restaurant. I am excited and impressed with this tool. You would pay $20 or $30 for a comparable carry around gadget. So if you have an iPhone, check it out!! 

Posted: Sat - November 22, 2008 at 03:28 PM          

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