Tracking Food

Today's good thing is a web site called Sparkpeople. It's an amazingly valuable and FREE tool for anyone who is either trying to lose weight, manage a diet, or track their health.  It does for free what I paid the Weight Watchers web site $30/month to do -- and more.  Yes, there are advertisements, but get over it, it's FREE. 

Some of the things I like about it are:

• It allows you to make "food groups" for things you commonly eat.  Like, I typically eat the same thing for breakfast every day. So, I just have to click "typical breakfast" and it enters all my normal food choices.
• It gives you feedback on your nutrition every day.  At the end of the day, there's a report that tells you whether you met your goals for protein and several other key nutrition factors. It tells you whether you were over or under or just right on each of them. And it keeps a running chart of how well you've done for the week.  And it either gives you encouragement or helpful tips to improve.
• Other web based food diaries that I've used have limited food choices -- and if it's not in their database you have to enter all the data yourself for each food you eat.  In this program, you can access the food entry data for all the other users of the program so you never run into a food that SOMEBODY hasn't already entered. 
• You can enter and save recipes (and access recipes from other people) and the computer will calculate the calories and nutrition of each serving. 

In addition to the food diary feature, there is also an exercise diary and a lot of other stuff too that I haven't accessed.  :) 

So, this is a really boring post for people who don't need a food diary.  But for people who do, it's an invaluable tool.  And did I mention that it's FREE?!!!