Tuesday Tips: Food Journaling: FitDay.Com
by Alice Shaffer
As professional nannies we often keep journals on our charges’ day for their parents. These journals include such things as food intake, their moods and activities for the day amongst other things. Have you ever kept a journal about you and your daily food intake, mood and activities?
For several months, I have been on a journey of healthier eating and exercising. I have been working with a personal trainer and a nutritionist in this journey. The main hurdle in healthier eating is to figure out what exactly you are eating and how much. I was told I would need to keep a food journal. I was not super happy about this request. I have always had issues with keeping a journal in the past. The nutritionist recommended a website called FitDay. This is such an awesome site that I wanted to share it with everyone.
FitDay is a great FREE resource for your food journaling, exercising, measurement tracking and feelings/moods. These are just the tip of the iceberg in which FitDay can do.
The Pros I have found with FitDay:
- It is a free program
- You can enter any food label nutrients and it will calculate your intake-no matter how many servings you have
- It compares your nutritional intakes with suggested dietary guidelines
- You can input your measurements and it gives you a visual graph/chart of your progress
- You can print off your charts to take with you to the doctor etc
- Journal about your moods and feelings in general
- Various charts that can be configured to show your fat intakes, calorie averages, weight loss and activity levels, calorie intake planned vs actual etc
The Cons I have found with FitDay:
- I had to do some initial adding of foods into the database. This wasn’t bad because it took less than 2 minutes per food. This was then in a category called “my customs foods”
- Some may find the ads distracting and if so you can pay for a premium account for $5.49 a month (this doesn’t bother me at all though)
I have found that this is a great for when I have plateaued in my weight loss, had sleepless nights or experience mood changes. I can go back and look at the past few days, weeks or month to see what was going on.
I encourage you to try out FitDay and track your nutritional, physical and mental activities for the coming month. Let us know how you are doing.