My Plate

It has been 2 weeks since my New Year, New Beginning post…have you forgotten or abandoned your quest to lose weight?  Better not have!

As I mentioned in that post, one of the best tools for weight loss is a food/exercise journal.  It helps to keep you accountable because at the end of every day, you see exactly what you have accomplished (or totally bombed on after hoovering up half a dozen leftover Christmas cookies, hence your impending doom of guilt) and can feel good in your efforts to lose your excess baggage.

My favourite tool (and has been for a few years) is the ‘My Plate’ feature of the Livestrong website.  I can not tout it enough, it really is fantastic.

Here is a typical day for me, the screen capture doesn’t show everything as all I could manage to fit on it was my food intake.  Down below that are your totals for the day as well as your workouts performed and water intake.  It keeps a running total of what you ate (caloric wise) and what energy you expended to give you a net total for the day.

There is a data base of foods to choose from as well as you can ‘create’ your own meals by listing the ingredients into a recipe creator and voila! It portions the meal out and tells you how much a serving is – I love that part of the site the most. 

My Plate Sample Day

It also keeps track of items eaten regularly so you don’t have to keep going back to the database to search for the same item either.  Really, this site is so user friendly anyone could use it. Plus, it is FREE!  A major plus in my book!

Looking at this each and every day and logging what I do keeps me on track.  The days I don’t do this?  My eating habits are crazy.  It is amazing how a simple on-line tool can make you feel accountable for your actions (or inactions).

I hope I have prodded you off the fence and into action – you will not regret it!

 

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