It allows you to sign up for free, create a profile, keep a daily food and exercise journal, take challenges (such as the "drink more water" challenge), and has tons of great articles about getting healthy. Jason and I both started our food journals yesterday and we were both astounded at the calories we ate!! Jason wants to lose about 10 pounds. He wants to lose about a pound a week, so it calculated how many calories he needs a day to do just that. He went over by 700 calories yesterday!!! Holy cow! Most of it had to do with the fact that we went to PF Changs for dinner, but still... holy cow!
I am at a good weight now after gaining some weight post-transplant, but I desperately need to get in shape. Think... deflated balloon... haha. According to this website, I should be eating 1600 or so calories a day and of course exercising to maintain that weight. I ate over 2,200 calories yesterday. I burned some on the treadmill, but not that many.
I see now why my diabetes educators have always told me to keep a food journal. You can really monitor what goes in!! It even breaks down the percentage of protein, fat, and carbs you are getting. How cool is that? To build muscle, of course I need to be getting a lot of protein. I'll be watching that closely.
For those of you needing to drink more water, journaling will help you do that, because after you add all of the foods you eat, you don't want to have to go back in and add all those sugary, calorie-filled drinks. It is amazing how many calories you get if you are drinking several soft drinks, coffees and sweetened teas a day. I read an article last week about how those who drink diet soft drinks might be gaining weight. It increases your appetite for sweet foods. More reason to drink water!
A big thing for me is eating a low sodium diet. I have to do that for the rest of my life. Being on prednisone causes a lot of sodium retention, and anyone who has had a kidney transplant has to eat a low sodium diet to protect their new kidney. The website gives you sodium content of all of the foods you eat. I will now be able to easily track the amount of salt that goes in.
Livestrong.com also has all of your popular restaurants listed, so there is no more guessing about how many calories you are consuming when going out to eat. We put in the dishes we had at PF Changs last night, and it gave us all of the nutritional information on that dish. Since it was Jason's and Mom's birthdays, they were given these 2 mini-desserts. I mean they were tiny. Well, they had over 300 calories each in them!!! Amazing!
This is a way to start the New Year off right. Start journaling, and I bet you that you will have more willpower to not only eat fewer calories, but to eat healthier in 2009!!
11 comments:
Yeah, I keep track of what I eat and drink and it is amazing. The first thing I caught was I was eating the wrong carbs. A few minor changes and-- blood sugars are back to normal.
Amazing what we put in our bodies when we live on autopilot.
Water.... thanks for the reminder... I am off to get another glass to drink.
Very interesting! I will check it out. And since you are a CF'er, I assumed you would be on a high-sodium diet...interesting to know that you are now on a low-sodium diet due to the kidney transplant. I learned something today. Woo-hoo! :o)
Yeah Cindy, things completely changed with my diet after getting kidney disease. As a CFer, I could always eat fast food, and high sodium foods, but whoa.. all that changed after having kidney problems. They tell me it's imperative that I eat a low sodium diet now, and that's really tough to do.
Prior to kidney transplant, I was on a low sodium, low concentrated sweet, low phosphorus, low potassium diet. In other words, I couldn't eat anything.. haha. But now, I don't have to watch my potassium or phosphorus, so that's good.
Isn't that website great? That's what made me realize that in one day, I could easily put away over 5,000 calories with breakfast at a diner, lunch at McDonalds and Pizza for dinner! Yikes!! I'm much more cautious with what I eat when we go out because of what I learned at that website.
Thanks for the website darlin!
PF Changs is one of my FAVS- yummmmm
Kansas City, MO has one of the BEST!
:)
I kid you not, as I was reading this post I was drinking a coke and eating FUDGE. I feel like a cow now, haha!
Thanks for passing on this awesome website. I'm with you, I'm at a good weight but I SERIOUSLY need to get in shape. No tone at all on this bod!
Christy, your scarf is on its way! I hope you enjoy it.
Becca
love your new pic ur very pretty! good luck on the eating healthy, im trying too. yes im on predisone and imuran. trying to not gain from those steroids its soooo hard though but iv been lucky so far. iv been on them for almost a year now and am acually loosing weight except for the days im really swollen! hope you have a good week. hugs
((holds soda close to her chest)) you can't take away my Diet Dr. Pepper!! nOoOoOooooOO!
Yes, I am that hooked on my soda ((sighs)) but I do know it isn't good for the body. Why does water have to be so boring, whhyyyyyy? A friend of mine wrote about becoming disgusted with soda after drinking nothing but water... perhaps it'll happen to me, who knows.
I checked out the website, it looks very informative. Thanks for sharing! It reminds me of sparkpage.com which is also a fabulous tool to document calorie intake, cups of water per day, and it has plenty of groups so you have other people to encourage you.
Okay I better stop rambling, thanks for an awesome post as usual!
P.S. Wrong url, I meant sparkpeople.com
Good luck on losing weight!! I too am starting my own weight loss journey. I also have a weight loss blog that helps me out a lot!! Your blog is very cute and inspiring!!
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