Fitness Friday: site highlight

today's version of fitness friday is a bit abbreviated.

i'd like to introduce you to a new discovery of mine.

eat drink better

they have recipes

food safety articles

a whole section on vegan living (which i passed on to my friend who is currently eating vegan -- great resource!)

general nutrition and health articles 

brainy laws about food and stuff

what i REALLY like about this particular site, is that it's not preachy at all.  so many sites that fall into this vein of healthy lifestyle and living are honestly kind of judgmental about those of us who aren't quite as crunchy as others.  granted, i haven't read EVERY.SINGLE article on the website, but what i have seen is balanced and informative.

and that's kind of my thing.  as long as i'm well-informed about it, there's nothing wrong with once in awhile making the choice to eat a pop-tart or cheeseburger.

so visit the website or their facebook page and enjoy!

disclaimer: this is simply a site i stumbled upon this week.  i doubt the creators of the site know that i or this blog exist, and they certainly didn't ask me for a plug.  consider it a freebie, eat drink better gurus :)

fitness friday: tracking, tracking, tracking

so, anyone who is serious about losing weight or getting more active intends to track their meals and exercise

i don't know about you, but food diaries always worked for me for awhile. then i'd forget to put a meal in, continue forgetting, and then try to think back to what on earth i'd had the day before much less the previous week!

enter websites that have saved my calorie counting life

the only one i have any experience with is sparkpeople. i found it, liked it and stuck with it. so i'm going to chat about it a bit, list a few others that seem to be similar, and then ask for your input. if you've had any experience with any of these or have one to add, please leave it in the comments so everyone can see it :)

first the rundown:

sparkpeople is free...which was important

it was easy...which was also important

and it has cool features that i'm STILL finding out about.

i've been using it off and on for a few years. here are my favorite things about it.

goals:

on sparkpeople you can set a goal for weight loss...or you can simply set some lifestyle goals. examples of lifestyle goals include "drinking 8 glasses of water a day" or "keep a journal" or "listen to a get-up-and-go song every morning"

you can also fill in the blank and create your own goals.

nutrition tracking:

every bite you put into your body can be tracked!

most restaurant nutritional info is available online, so you can enter it yourself

OR you can search entered info from other members--chances are that someone has tracked the same meal

any food you buy in the grocery is either listed or easily entered

and there are extras!

not only are there meters for fruit/veggie servings per day and glasses of water per day

but there are also ways to create food groupings of things your often pair together (my coffee with sugar and creamer, for example) so that you don't have to enter each one separately

and my very favorite part, which is an entirely new category...

recipes:

enter the ingredients, the number of servings, and save it in your recipes

you can choose to share with everyone else on sparkpeople if you wish

or just keep it for your handy info

i LOVE this

finally, there's fitness tracking:

you can plan to work in cardio however many times a week you want

strength training

etc

there are plenty of extra features--message boards, motivation tools, etc. i find that i don't really use them or the sparkspoints system, but you might find it helpful.

the only extra i do use? the iphone app.

:0)

here are a couple of other sites that seem to do similar things

fitday.com

nutrition data

calorie count

the daily plate

so

have you tried any similar tracking sites?

did you stick with it?

were you happy with the features?

what's YOUR recommendation?