Tracking My Daily Food and Exercise

For the first nine months of my fit journey, I haven't kept a journal or tracker of the food I eat or the exercise I do. I know, I know, lots of experts say you should. I've done it before (first on Weight Watchers, later on South Beach).

But I resisted tracking because it felt like such a pain. And the last thing I needed was any more hassles standing in my way of being healthy.

Here I am in my 10th month of fit living, with 31 more pounds to lose, and I'm re-examining the tracker thing.

Reason #1: My employer is kicking off a new health and wellness challenge, which involves earning points for healthy behaviors and being rewarded with prizes for participants with the most points. I will get extra points if I keep a food journal, because doing so has been proven to help people eat better.

Reason #2: I know weight loss tends to slow as you get closer to your goal weight. I want any advantage I can get, and maybe paying closer attention to calories consumed and burned will help me achieve my goal sooner.

OK, so I'm doing it. After checking out a few different (free) online food tracking sites, I joined MyFitnessPal and have found it refreshingly easy and helpful so far. Most of the foods I eat are already in their database, so a quick search and add puts my foods right into my daily food diary. By plugging in my current height, weight and activity level, as well as my weight-loss goals, the site tells me how many calories I should have. And when I enter in the exercise I've done, it calculates what I've burned and adds those to my daily allowance.

After just a couple of days, I can already see why tracking works. You can so easily lie to yourself when the numbers are floating around in your head. But when it's all in the system, there's no denying how many calories you wolfed down at last night's Bunco party or at this morning's company Belgian waffle breakfast.

I look forward to seeing better results soon as I confront the truth on a daily basis!