Food Diarys

A food diary is a great way to keep track of what goes in your bod.  There are several methods for this, of course.  Online, pencil and paper, spread sheet... you get the idea.

Being the geek that I am, I use the online method.  This has several advantages.  First, it is on the web (in the cloud for the geeks in the room) and available from just about anywhere with an Internet connection.  Second, the site generally has a large catalog of items including serving sizes and nutritional information.

One of the best parts of online food diaries is that, these sites usually support thousands if not hundreds of thousands of other users.  Discussion groups for support, recipes and fitness, just to name a few.  You also gain the benefit of sharing your information easily with friends and family who use the same service.

Here are three of the more popular sites:

MyFoodDiary.com  - $9/month
This site is my choice.  The interface is clean and easy to use.  The catalog of items is extensive and very accurate as far as I can tell.  It also provides a recipe calculator, body log, exercise log, forums, charts, graphs and much more.  I have no problem paying for a good product.  This site is a great deal for just $9 per month.

SparkPeople - Free
SparkPeople was recommended to me by a friend who has used the site daily for a year or more ... she swears by it!  It is a great site that offers a TON of features for free.  This site has a very large community.  It's focus in on sharing and community involvement.  The tools are very useful, if just a little "clunky" to use.

MutiMirror - Free
Also recommended by an enthusiastic friend, The MutiMirror online food journal is also very community based.  The tools are very similar to SparkPeople and MyFoodDiary.com.  The main difference is the emphasis on nutritional balance and analysis.  This site is packed with ways to measure and analyze your daily/weekly/month/yearly intake.  At this point in my plan, this site is a little more tool than what I need.

There are others: Fit Day, The Daily Plate ... Lots and lots.  Click here to search Google for even more!

Using a food diary will help you keep track of what you ate, what worked, what didn't work so well and a great way to share ideas and recipes with others that are attempting the goal.

I hope this has helped one or some of you!

Thanks for listening, and I hope to see you back here soon.
- Randy