Nov 28, 2010 Jennifer Magnesi
Yoga is one of many exercises in the MFP database - adria.richards
My Fitness Pal is a website offering an extensive diet and exercise journal that is completely free to use. You have access to thousands of choices in the food database, exercises, calorie calculator as well as calories burned when you enter workouts, and an active community forum.
Since 2005, My Fitness Pal has helped hundreds of people lose weight and keep it off. I never run out of reasons why I love it, and I will try to mention them all. An important thing to remember is that the services at My Fitness Pal are completely free to use, at all times. There are no VIP memberships, upgrades or annual fees. It might be the very best part!
The First Step
All you need to get started is sign up! It's a good idea to weigh yourself before signing up, as they will be asking you for your height, weight and goals. You can also enter your measurements so go ahead and get those if you choose to. During the registration process you will be asked to choose a username which will also be the name you use in the forums, which by the way are awesome.
They will ask you to enter you height, weight, current activity level (sedentary, lightly active, etc), measurements and weight loss goals. You can choose to lose between 0.5 a lb. a week and 2 lbs. a week. You are not able to set the calorie and fitness goals at more than 2 lbs. a week because losing more than that is not recommended. The amount of weight you choose to lose each week, is what will determine how many calories you eat a day. Now you're ready to get started!
Your Daily Summary
From the home page you will notice a daily summary for your progress in the current day. It tells you how many calories you have remaining, and when you enter exercise you get something called "exercise calories" that I will discuss later on.
Food
As you have noticed by now, My Fitness Pal does all the calculating work for you, which is such an amazing part of using their website. There is no more wondering how many calories you are supposed to be eating or burning! Their database is enormous, so it is very rare that you look for a food you can't find, but you also have the option of adding a new food as well. Every day, add each food and drink item you consumed for the day. Don't forget to enter condiments, dressings and any cooking oils you used as well. These all add into your daily amount of calories. Every time you enter a food or meal, it automatically calculates how much food you have left for the day.
You also have the option of creating a "recipe" which is great for those of you that cook a lot of your meals from scratch, and want an easy way to enter your meals later on.
It's really up to you if you want to enter all of the food in advance, or at the end of the day. Keep in mind though that you want to at least write it down on paper throughout the day so as not to go over your calories. They also have apps for both the iPhone and the Android so you can enter the food directly from your phone.
Exercise
You will also be entering your fitness routine, as well as daily exercise I like to think of as "accidental exercise". These would include activities like cleaning, gardening and grocery shopping. You might be surprised how many calories you burn from pulling weeds!
You can enter both cardiovascular and strength training exercises. They have a database for exercises like walking, running, yoga, treadmill, elliptical, Wii fit and more. If you do a specific workout not already in the database, you can enter it yourself if you used a HRM and know how many calories you burned. If you don't have a HRM, you can also find another exercise that is similar to it. For instance when I do Turbo Jam I enter it as High Impact Aerobics because it's close enough to how many calories I would burn.
Once you enter an exercise, you will notice that the calories you burned get added to your daily allotted calories. Wondering why this is? The thread here explains it better in mathematical terms but basically it boils down to this. My Fitness Pal sets your calorie goal without factoring in exercise calories, meaning that without exercising at all, that is how many calories you can have and still lose weight. So if you exercise on any given day, you now have a deficit.
Say for instance your calorie goal every day is 1500 calories, and on Monday you burned 1000 calories through rigorous exercise. Well technically you now have a 1000 calorie deficit, and you must eat those 1000 calories in order to maintain the 1500 calorie a day goal. If you don't eat your exercise calories, your body only consumed 500 calories a day, and that is extremely bad for your body!
You will see other members of the site say they don't eat their exercise calories so they can lose more weight. This of course works in the beginning but then your body hits a plateau that is extremely difficult to get out of. Do it the healthy way and eat all of your calories!
Tools
My Fitness Pal has apps for the Android and iPhone and are currently working on an app for the Blackberry. This allows you to do everything directly from your phone and it really comes in handy on the go!
There are also tickers and badges for your blog and other message forums, calculators to figure out your basic metabolic rate (BMR) and your body mass index (BMI) as well as a recipe nutritional facts calculator for when you are building your own recipes.
Reports
You have the option of checking out the report for your nutrition, fitness and progress. You can choose the length of time you want the report for, and choose a printable version as well. This really helps to see your weight loss progress and for how many days you ate the right amount of calories. If you ever get stuck in a plateau, it's nice to look back at the reports and find the pattern so you know what to work on.
Community
The last thing I want to talk about is their message boards. This is one of the most helpful and amazing parts of My Fitness Pal. Here you can get help from others going through the same difficulties as you, including recipes, nutrition, exercise, general weight loss questions, motivation and support, and success stories. I love the success stories as these are people that followed My Fitness Pal's very simple weight loss program and have the results to prove it.
I urge everyone to try My Fitness Pal when they are searching for an easy to follow weight loss regimen. All you need to lose weight is diet and exercise, but it can be confusing knowing how much and what types of food you should eat. This is a website helping you with that and much more. It is completely free to use, so you have absolutely nothing to lose but weight.
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