Over time I’ve learned that I make better decisions when I keep track of the things that I’m consuming. However, I never really stuck with it due to my inconsistency. This time around I vowed to enter everything that I eat in MyFitnessPal. I figured that I may actually stick with it this time since I’m working on my consistency throughout this journey.
I usually try to enter the food that I want to get before I even make it or buy it so that I can decide if it’s really worth the calories. There have been so many instances where I changed my mind immediately after entering a meal or a snack into the tracker. Some stuff just isn’t worth it! It also helps me get a better understanding of why I did or didn’t see progress during any given week. If I didn’t see the results that I thought that I should see I’ll go back to my meals and water intake for the week to see if I can figure out where I could’ve improved.
I have my MyFitnessPal app connected to my Fitbit app so when I log meals and water in MyFitnessPal it shows my calories consumed and the ounces of water that I drank on my Fitbit app. Also, when I log my weight with my Fitbit Aria scale it automatically updates on MyFitnessPal. Another feature that I love is how my calories adjust automatically on MyFitnessPal based on my steps and activities that are being tracked via my Fitbit. I love it! It helps me avoid entering information in multiple apps. To be completely honest, if I had to deal with adding information in multiple apps I probably wouldn’t stick to it.
I use another site by the name of Calorie King. I’m not a member of Calorie King, but their site has some pretty useful calorie information that you can see without signing up. This site not only gives you the calories for food, but it also gives you suggestions to burn the calories. I ran across this site a few weeks ago when my manager took us out to lunch. Everyone was ordering dessert and I was thinking about getting a slice of lemon cream cake. The calories for the cake weren’t on the Olive Garden menu so I decided to Google it. As I’m looking at the Calorie King website to get the calorie and nutrition information I saw the Burn It section pictured below.
When I saw that it definitely made me think twice. Was this little slice of cake really worth walking for 169 minutes? Or jogging for 70 minutes? I was like if I walk or jog that long I’m eating more than this skimpy piece of cake! LOL! This really helped me put things into perspective so that I could make the right decision. For those that really don’t pay attention to calories this is a good way to help them understand how much it’s going to take to burn off the food they’re about to eat. I know that it’s very likely that this is a little off because everyone is different, but it’s enough to make you think twice. Sometimes thinking twice is just what we need to avoid making impulsive decisions.
If you’re on MyFitnessPal be sure to send me a friend request. My user name is TiannaJackson. If you’re not on MyFitnessPal and you’re looking for a free app to track your food make sure you check them out.
Mrs. Accountabilitee 