Weight Watchers - 2nd week of May, 2011

Hey Shereta. I wish I could say I love it.....but I don't.

Here's what I DO like......

Suggestions are offered on snacks/meals to help round out your nutrition profile for the day.

There is a lot of info available.

There are a LOT of measurement options to choose from for your portion sizes.

It's easy to copy and paste from one day to another and within the day.

I like the voice of the guy who does the tutorials...he sounds so relaxed.

Here's what I DON'T like.......

You can't go straight to the tracker..you have to fake your way in by clicking on Custom Foods or Recipes.

The foods to choose from are the USDA list, I guess, and there is much craziness contained - and you can't specify to narrow the choices. I'm not much interested junk food from chain restaruants or baby food........

And there are foods that are oddly hard to find or just not in there at all that really should be in there from the standpoint of clean eating - kefir, chia seeds, nutritional yeast. And then there's the whole macaroni vs. pasta thing. Oy.

You can't easily program in your own choices - macros, or RDA exceptions - I like a lot of omega 3's for instance. And the RDA for potassium is truly outlandish - I don't know what's up with that. And I'm always WAY over on one of the B vitamins. It's frustrating.

The info that's available, i.e. detailed breakdown of nutrition is just a graph....a big graph, but that's all. If you want more info you are directed to a government website that has all manner of scholarly articles but nothing that's really relevant without a lot of digging. Or a biochemistry degree.

My biggest issue is that it doesn't "talk" to the workout manager at all - and I think it really should. You have to enter all your info separately.

So, the search continues.

I'm trying this next.....

Nutrition facts, calories in food, labels, nutritional information and analysis – NutritionData.com

I'll let you know. Did you try Cathe's program?
 
No, I chickened out. Thats why Im asking you. Have you tried Sparks People? Ive heard good things about them.

Shereta
 
Yep. I've been on SparkPeople. Given a choice of the two SparkPeople is a little easier to use, offers custom settings, gives a more user friendly type of feedback.

BUT it's a free site and loaded with ads. Not quite as easy to copy foods to a new day. And the fitness section was annoying to me.

Here again, I want these things to "talk" to each other, or be easier to use. In SparkPeople it's great adding cardio - you can do it any way you want including just dropping in your calories burned from your HRM if you use one or they have a decent list to choose from. But adding strength training isn't as nice. If I can't add in my Cathe DVD's (and that's what I'd like to do) then they should just offer - Upper Body, Lower Body, Circuit, etc. as categories. But they don't. They break it down to individual exercises, reps, weights. That's fine if you are building your own but I'm not.

I took a little time with the plan I'd mentioned earlier and.....well.....ugh. They offer portion sizes oddly. Seriously, why is this so hard? "They" tell us to weigh our food and then don't offer a breakdown by grams! :mad: I'm not HAVING 100g of something or any typical serving size.

So, that's my rant. I think someone mentioned MyFitnessPal previously. I think they're next on my research list.

I'm still hoping Tom Venuto will announce his and offer some kind of detailed sneak peek.
 
I've been messing around on sparkspeople and that's my only beef - not being able to add in weight work sensibly or even add in weight work calories burned. I'll keep trying for a little bit. There are some tutorials I need to try also.

Shereta
 
I did Back and Triceps....the 3rd week of Mesocycle 1. I feel I'm finally get back to my baseline strength. Today I couldve gone heavier on more than one exercise. That's just in time for Mesocycle 2! I plan on taking a week off of STS btwn Mesocycles to do something non-Cathe to avoid burnout, maybe some Jillian or some circuits. I feel ready to tackle some other cardio besides walking on the treadmill and riding my recumbent bike, let's hope my knee is ready too!
 
Hi everyone
Shereta I see the activity tracker on WW and you can input min and intensity...just wish you could put in actual calories from your hr monitor...I hate that weight training gives us so few points:mad:

I have been playing around sparks people but mostly to read the article. Stacy have you tried the Livestrong site? they have some trackers as well. I don't know how good they are as I have only really started tracking and am getting the hang of the WW one right now.
Yesterday i did plyo legs ( the second disk) and then i decided to torture myself and did lower body blast last night (-flooor stuff) Today i am pleasantly sore..I must be a masochist but i love it when I get sore from legs workouts.
Today is gym style back, shoulders and bi-ceps..

As for the food...well chocolate is my best friend and it uses all my points!
I have managed to track faithfully all week and my goal is to keep it up all next week as well!
 
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