Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Coming to you live from a beautiful sunny Tuesday

First things first.  The lovely Lori-Ann, Amazon Runner, gifted me with my very first award ever.  Thank you Lori-Ann!  Words can not describe how this makes me feel. 




I know I should pass this along, and I will, but for now I'm just going to savor it :)

Next in the order of importance, a big cilley welcome to my two new followers:  the fabulous (and famous and inspiring, and I am so honored that you have chosen to spend some of your limited free time here reading me) Tall Mom and Amanda Ashe.  Amanda, do you have a blog or are you more sane than the rest of us? 

Lastly, because I'm starving and my lunch smells great and the phones won't quit ringing at the office, here's my recap on my calorie experiment for November:

Min intake 1589

Max intake 3350

Min expend 2571

Max expend 3087

Average intake 2142

Average expend 2676

Total est weight loss 4.4 lbs

Ha!  4.4 lbs!  Yeah, that didn't happen.  But, I did mostly meet my November goal of average calories of 2000-2100.  It probably would have been in between the two except for last night's fish stick adventure.  Although, it's not the fish sticks that get you, it's the tartar sauce.  Stupid tartar sauce.  That max intake figure of 3300 and change is from Thanksgiving day.  There was some damn good gravy at Thanksgiving.  I'm having the last of it tonight.
 
As I mentioned yesterday, I switched online food diaries.  I was using Nutridiary, but while it was better than a sharp stick in the eye (or a pad and paper or some other food diaries I've tried/seen) there were a few key things I didn't like about it.  Mainly, the food database was tiny with few "name brand" items and no access to other user entries.  In other words, if it wasn't in there (and it usually wasn't) then I had to add it in myself.  The number one feature I want in a food diary is to have the stuff there for me to select.  On the other hand, I don't want a database that is overwhelming name brand items; it makes inputting the things you cook yourself kind of a pain in the ass.  The foods you had chosen in the past, that you hadn't inputted yourself, were also limited for recall purposes; it had only the top 10 recent items and your top 10 favorites.  Supposedly you could upgrade to a paid membership and get greater access, including to a bigger database, but no one was officially running the site anymore so you couldn't upgrade.  Not the smartest business decision IMHO.
 
I tried My Daily Plate for a while, which is now part of the Livestrong empire, but found it slow to switch between screens.  My time is valuable, people!  I also tried MedHelp, which had some nice features including tracking of not only weight but measurements, but again the database was small even with access to user entries.  I think it was because it was a fairly new and/or lesser known site.  Typos in the user entries also bug me, and I couldn't even correct my own typos.  So somebody somewhere is wondering just what "Slow Roasted Beer" is.  (It was supposed to be Slow Roasted Beef, one of the Marie Callendar lunches.)   A local runner/blogger mentioned the food diary available through MyFoodPyramid.  It tells you where you are deficient in the pyramid areas, which I thought sounded cool, but the interface sucked.  Hugely sucked. 
 
So for December I'm trying out Everyday Health, which was previously known as My-Calorie-Counter.com.  It's day two of using it and I really like it.  If you try it out, or have been using it already, let me know what you think. 
 
'Kay, I really need to finish my lunch and print out some spreadsheets.  Job security, that's what I keep telling myself!  That, and there's a five day waiting period to buy handguns. 
 
Cheers,
the CilleyGirl
 

2 comments:

  1. I loved using my-calorie-counter when I did. I always found it so easy!!

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  2. I really like the Daily Plate. It is a little slow but I use it on my iphone and it's great.

    I started with FitDay but it was super annoying since it didn't have a lot of brands.

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