How to Track Your Nutrition and Weight Loss with FitDay

It you're anything like me, the idea of counting calories is about as exciting as counting sheep.

Caloric intake is always the statistic of choice for diet programs, and tons of research has been done into how many calories you burn per day per activity per pound etc, etc, etc. Regrettably, when it comes right down to it, a lot of the same people obsessed with calories have no idea what a calorie is.

If that cookie you're about to eat contains 170 calories, it's tempting to picture a herd of 170 tiny little things stampeding down your gullet as you gobble it away. In reality, it is much more complicated than that. 1 calorie is the approximate measure of energy it takes to increase 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. (Thank you, Health 101) So, calories are not things at all, but a measurement of the energy the human body gets out of a particular food. Eat more calories than you need– more energy than you expend– and you get fat.

At least, that's the theory. Wouldn't it make dieting simple if that's all you needed to know? I'm here to tell you that proper diet and nutrition requires a much more holistic approach.

So, bad news. Not even the tedious practice of counting calories is enough. Ouch.

In fact, if your goal is healthy weight loss, or just improved health in general, there is a whole myriad of nutritional elements, vitamins, minerals and the like that should be monitored. (I won't even mention fat content!) Looking at it this way, the process can seem perfectly overwhelming. Luckily, there are some perfectly useful services at your disposal.

I won't go into every calorie-counting, fitness log site I've ever encountered. It would take forever. I would, however, like to recommend my favorite to date: a site I recently started using called FitDay.

FitDay provides so many services all on one site that it's hard to believe everything is FREE. (There is a home PC version of FitDay available for purchase that includes additional features, and you can also become a Premium FitDay member for 5.49 a month, but so far, the free online version has been more than enough for my needs.)

That's right. It's free. It takes approximately 30 seconds to sign up for the site. After that, you have access to all its features and you can return every day. Some of the useful services include:

Foods: From their searchable database of everything from Apple, raw to MCDONALD'S FILET-O-FISH, all you have to do is choose the food you just ate, select "add to food log," and all the nutritional information is inserted into your daily food log. If you eat something you can't find on the database, it's easy to "create custom food" and fill in a few basic nutritional facts from the label. At the end of the day, you have a comprehensive list of all the foods you have eaten and all the calories, fat, vitamins, minerals, etc that you have consumed, listed alongside the recommended daily allowances. It also shows you a pie chart of where your calories are coming from, divided into Fat, Protein, Carbs and Alcohol.

Activities: A drop-down list allows you to select your amount of daily activity. Currently, mine is "Seated, Some Movement." (Ah, the life of a writer...)  The selection approximates that I expend (based on my gender, height, weight and age) 2,674 calories daily. You can also add activities like Running or Light Workout - General, and others from a searchable database, along with the amount of time you spend doing each activity.  It then takes into account the calories you have burned. The "Calorie Balance" option shows you, based on your Foods section, the comparison of the calories you have approximately taken in versus the calories you have approximately burned.

Weight: This section allows you to enter your weight daily, so that you can track it over a period of time. The Weight Goal section allows you to input your desired weight and track your progress toward achieving it.

Journal: This is a basic section where you can save text daily. I use it to log my daily workout routine and supplement intake.

Moods: I find this especially cool. Each day, you can select from corresponding drop-down menus how you feel in the following categories: Happiness, Stress, Anger, Energy, Clarity, Hunger, and Health. This allows you to track your mood over a period of time. This might sound trivial, maybe even gimmicky, but different dietary habits actually have a huge effect your mood. By allowing you to track your mood alongside your food log over a period of time, you can find correlations between how certain foods effect not only your physical but also your mental health.

Body: Here, you can input your body measurements. While some sites only take into account your height and weight, on FitDay, you can track the measurements of your Neck, Bicep, Forearm, Chest, Waist, Hips, Thigh and Calf muscles. This is particularly useful for people trying to lose weight or for bodybuilders trying to gain weight, because it can help you pinpoint which body parts you need to hone in on.

Additional sections include Stats, Calendar, Reports, and Profile.

The only drawback I've found about FitDay is that it's somewhat lacking in resources to track your supplement intake. I've created "custom foods" to account for my daily multivitamin, protein powder, etc, but the nutritional facts are somewhat lacking in this department.

Another thing, nowhere does it seem to list Sugar content. On a site that seems to offer just about everything else, this seemed so strange to me that at first I thought I was just not looking hard enough. If you find it, please let me know.

Also, it would be much more useful to have more things in the searchable database so you didn't have to take the time to create custom foods. Perhaps if FitDay made the custom foods created by members available for other members to find in the searchable food database, it would be easier to expand these options.

FitDay is a free, easy and user-friendly online service for not just counting calories, but tracking just about all the nutritional information you could ever want to know. It's not hard, after taking a look at your daily nutritional intake, to see the departments in which you are taking in too much, and also the departments in which you are lacking.  You might be surprised.

I recommend this site to anyone looking to improve their health and nutrition. You owe it to yourself to check this out. And remember: a diet is not essential for people trying to lose weight. A diet is essential for everyone.