Tracking The Numbers

I have fallen in love with this new tool I found online. Well, it's probably not new, but it's new to me. It's a part of the LIVESTRONG.com site, called The Daily Plate. It allows you to search thousands of food items to find what you have eaten and it tracks all your nutritional info. You can also enter in your fitness level for the day and it will calculate that, as well, to give you an accurate snapshot of your health.

My brother is getting married in May, and I want to trim down a bit for the bridesmaid dress. I have recently read in several places that nutritionists and scientists say to stop counting carbs and doing the fad diets -- that hands-down, it's all about the calories you're taking in. I was actually wanting to start counting calories on my own, thinking I would just read packages and keep a notebook, but this is WAY easier. I can just enter my meals as I go.

It also shows you the breakout of your food intake of carbs vs protein vs fats. I'm not entirely sure how this breakdown should be, but I'm concerned with how many carbs vs protein I'm consuming, and so I'm working to address that. I would have never known this without this awesome tool.

I'll throw some screenshots in, so you can see what I'm talking about -- the example shows what I had for breakfast this morning and then my activity so far (a brisk walk with Jakers, of course!). But once I hit the gym tonight, it puts a solid dent in my calories, so I can eat more than the 1,700 I've been "assigned" when I set up my account. It asks if you want to maintain your weight, lose 1 lb/week, lose 2 lbs/week or more. I selected 2 lbs/week and it gave me the amount of calories based on my height and weight.

Even if you don't need to worry about weight, this also calculates things like cholesterol, so it's just a great overall health tool. (Although I don't eat ANYTHING with cholesterol, being vegan yet have very high cholesterol. I obviously blame my genes.)

Anyhow, check it out yourself and see if it's something that could help you. Anything to simplify my life AND help me lose weight -- I'm on board. :)

Have a great day!