Happy 2008. It’s the new year, and many of you are dieting. I know I am. This time, I needed something to hold me accountable. I needed to get serious. My husband and I are newly married. We had a destination wedding but look forward to a reception in late spring. I know I could have looked better in those wedding pictures. I have one more chance to look great in the wedding dress. Time to get serious. I had “heard” of web sites that track your calories, but had never really looked into them. Scared, I guess. I love to eat. I looked one up the other week, www.thedailyplate.com. I love it. This website can truly help you.
The Daily Plate is easy to use. It offers free membership as well as extended membership. For now, I’m doing the free membership. On this website, you are able to track your daily caloric intake as well as your exercise. To get started, you should set up your profile. This just takes a few minutes to do. Under the calorie calculator, You put in general information such as your height and current weight. You then put in your average daily exercise. I put down possibly less than I actually do, so I can be assured that I will (hopefully) lose weight. I entered that I do lightly active (seated and standing activities, such as computer use). This is true, since I do have a desk day job. However, at night I often run around doing errands a lot, and I have not counted these possible calorie burning activities. Under the calorie counter, you will see a weight loss goal. I first entered that I wanted to loose 2 lbs a week! Let’s make this quick and easy, right? Yeah, not so much. If I would have done that and not exercised any more than my “lightly active” computer punching, I would have had to get by on about 700 calories a day. I don’t think so. I like food too much, and a desk job makes you hungry. I have also heard that losing about 1 lb a week is safe. So I easily changed the calorie counter to losing 1 lb/week. The calorie counter told me I could eat 1,264 calories a day. Better. I can live with that.
After setting up your profile/calorie counter, all you have to do is click on my plate, and begin entering what you have eaten. This is simple. It took me a minute to realize all you have to do is scroll up to the top of the website and enter what you have eaten in the BIG box labeled “Enter any food, restaurant, or activity. For example, you enter “apple”. Several apple possibilities pop up. Maybe you ate a figi apple. It’s probably there. Click on it, and then there will be a link that says “I ate this TODAY, or I ate this YESTERDAY”. Just click on the day you ate it, and it adds it to “your plate”. Simple! Many times, there may be a few pages to search before you find the right “apple”. The great thing is, once you enter apple, it stays in a screen of “foods you eat often”. If you eat the same type of apple the next day, you can just click on the item on that screen.
O.K. So you’re thinking, I don’t have time to scroll through 100 pages of “pizza” possibilities. I understand. That’s why you can use “generic calories”. Just find out how many calories you were ingesting w/ that Pizza Hut pizza (check their website, google it, whatever) and go to the top of the the Daily Plate page and enter 300 calories. A “generic 300 calorie” image will pop up and you can then add it to your daily plate. I have done this before.
Creating “meals” is another option on The Daily Plate. For example, I’ve been eating a lot of cereal. I have created my cereal meals (Golden Grahams with milk, for example) under the Meals porition of the website. It stays right above the Foods you eat often part of the website, so you can easily click on meals and add them to your daily plate.
The website also allows you track your exercise, of course. You ran for a half hour. It will calculate the calories burned and subtract that from your daily plate.
Other features of the website include a fitness section, forum section, and group section. You can ask other members questions and they will be discussed, in a chat room style section. This may help you, by having support from other group members.
The Daily Plate can be a great diet tool. It’s amazing how fast food adds up. Keep yourself stocked up on 100 calorie packs and other low calorie snacks. Low calorie packs of cookies make dieting much easier 🙂
