Gear Guide: myfitnesspal.com

If you've been following my video blog, or know me in person, it should be fairly obvious that I have reached the age at which my body no longer maintains the fitness level of an Olympic Gymnast without effort while I consume endless quantities of cheeseburgers, onion rings, and milkshakes.  In fact, if you have known me for any length of time, you will have probably known this a lot longer than I have, since I spent close to half a decade in denial of this fact.  During that five year span, I continued to eat the cheeseburgers, onion rings, and milkshakes, which caused me to gain quite a bit of weight.  I also didn't do any serious exercise, which didn't help.

I tried several times to "lose weight" using methods varying from Weight Watchers to a basic guideline of "just eat less".  As is common in this situation, I had some short-term success, followed by long term failure.

I decided to look at the problem differently.  I didn't need to "lose weight".  I needed to "balance my calories" the same way I "balance my chequebook" (not that I have a chequebook.  I have a spreadsheet for my finances, but you get the idea.)  I would try not to overspend my calories, and if I did, I'd have to cut back to "get out of calorie debt", and lose the weight that is the result.  The other thing I learned in my researches is that bodies don't like to lose weight, so the trick is, like any good manager, to spend all of your budget, but not go over.  For my own body, there's only about a 10% window of calorie intake where I lose weight.  Too much, and I gain.  Too little, and my body goes into "starvation mode" and hangs onto its fat for the lean days it thinks are ahead, and I stay the same.

So, with this new mindset, I started using a free online tool called MyFitnessPal.

MyFitnessPal is a free online tool that allows you to quickly and easily record your food intake.  The interface is clean, and the database is excellent.  When you eat something, a quick search will find the food, and a click will fill on all the calories, fat, and other food information.  Should a food not be in the search, something that has only happened once or twice in the several years I've now been using the product, you or any other user can update the database, for the benefit of everyone.

The system also has a large database of cardiovascular exercise.  If you do exercise, you earn more calories, which I often spend on cheeseburgers.  Other features include social networking (which I don't use much).

The product also has a number of apps (iPhone, iPad, Android), and integrations with wearable smart-devices including the FitBit (space-age super pedometer).

Whether you are trying to lose wait or manage calories, I recommend MyFitnessPal as a tool to keep track of your caloric activities.