Sparkpeople.com!! I'm loving it!

dani21496

dani21496

Cathlete
Whoever posted this link thank you SO much!!

I'm loving www.sparkpeople.com!!! It's FREE too BTW!

I'm tracking calories, fat, carbs, protein and SODIUM!

I'm obsessed with it I think now, and it's really motivating. I love that you can track your fitness too. Awesome site you guys!!!
The food database is huge. Instead of using their meal plans, I'm just tracking my own stuff. You can choose either one or both.
 
Hey Dani,
I just took a quick look at this and it looks great. Have you used Fitday before? If so, how does it compare?

Fitday to me is pretty rudimentary, but it keeps me honest when I need to be. I have so much data in there it is hard to want to change but Sparkpeople looks SO NICE!


Melissa

Keep your head in line. Your butt will follow.

http://www.picturetrail.com/pellmel
 
Here are some tips I received in my email!

TIME SAVERS

-After entering a food in the nutrition tracker, check the box that asks you to save that food with your Favorites. Next time you track, you can simply grab that food off of your own personal list.

-Have a regular meal that you eat often? Click the Food Groupings tab inside the Add A Food page and you’ll only have to enter all the food items for that meal once.

-If you search for a food and you don’t have time to enter the nutritional info yourself, there’s usually no need to find an exact match; the info is pretty consistent. Take the closest match you can find and run with it as a guideline.

-When posting on the Message Boards, you can follow the conversations of all the threads you’re posting to just by clicking the Subscribe button on the posting page. Whenever someone posts to that thread, you’ll be alerted.

SMART USE OF INFO

-The weight tracker tool is even more useful if you weigh yourself at least once a week, and at the same time of the day each time. Your body goes through changes during the course of the day that can skew results.

-Having trouble figuring out what’s going wrong? Revisit your Reports and look for trouble spots. Can you see any patterns?

-To see the relationship between your emotions and your eating, make a small comment in your online journal. This especially helps identify emotional eating patterns.

BOOST OF POSITIVE FEELING

-Post on the Message Boards as much as you can. They’re full of positive people and a positive attitude.

GET QUESTIONS ANSWERED

-Again, use the Message Boards. There are a lot of people in our community with common experiences and possible first-hand knowledge of what you’re going through and potential solutions.

-Use the Search feature on the Message Boards. Many times, your questions may have already been covered.

-Many nutrition and fitness questions, and even site-related questions, are covered in the Help page.

TAKE IT OFFLINE

-Print up your daily meal plans, grocery lists and recipes a few days or a week ahead of time.

-Give yourself plenty of time to get to the store.

-Tell friends about what you’re doing!!
 
>Hey Dani,
>I just took a quick look at this and it looks great. Have you
>used Fitday before? If so, how does it compare?
>
>Fitday to me is pretty rudimentary, but it keeps me honest
>when I need to be. I have so much data in there it is hard
>to want to change but Sparkpeople looks SO NICE!
>
>
>Melissa

Hi Melissa!

It is leaps and bounds beyond Fitday! The food database is much bigger. There's a customized fitness plan and tracker. There are message boards and motivational tips you get in your email every day. Some awesome motivational articles too. You can take a picture of your food with your camera phone and send it to your Spark account so you can enter it in later.

They have meal plans and grocery lists and recipes! It's awesome!! The list goes on and on! It's FREE for life too!

The also have Expert Assistance. Their programs are designed by diet and fitness experts:

"Nutrition recommendations come from our registered dietician and the American Heart Association. Our fitness plans are created by our certified personal trainers. All of our experts are available to answer you questions on our message boards or via e-mail."
 
hmmmmm....think I might give it a shot. Thanks for posting this. I never saw the first one.
Fitday has kept me way on track. When I keep up with it, I really get focused. Many of the things you mention - food database, etc are places that I wish Fitday were stronger. I also like the grocery list idea.

I'll let you know how I like it. Thanks again for the quick feedback. I was actually entering my breakfast into Fitday when I read your post!

Melissa

Keep your head in line. Your butt will follow.

http://www.picturetrail.com/pellmel
 
My favorite part of it is that you can plan way ahead; I know that later in the month I can be more dedicated to a mealplan, so I'll plan ahead when I get the time and then I'll be set and ready to go! :)

-edit: I also want to add that their pre-planned meals aren't too shabby..not much different from eDiets which I joined for awhile and eDiets was certainly more pricey! So while I also like doing my own thing, I'll give the preplanned a shot at some pt.
 
I'll take a look at it Dani but I'm like Melissa, I have tons of recipes logged into fitday, it'd take a lot of work to redo all that.
 
Dani, thank you Thank you Thank you. For some reason I was doing fitday and now I can't for the life of me get my username and pass word to match up.I had so much in there but now it's gone to waste.I am going to start new with spark. Anyway I am loving this. They have so much more than fitday and are easier to locate. I just logged in my breakfast luch and snack. If I got any question I hope you don't mind me email you. Karen
 
Thanks, Dani. I've signed up and will try it for a while. I'm like everyone else, I have so much stored in my Fitday PC version, but I like the addition features sparkpeople offers that the Fitday on-line version doesn't have. And since I spend half my day at work, I need a consistent way besides my messily scribbled notes to track this stuff.
 
I've used spark for a few years now. It's free now, but it wasn't always. I paid $10 for a renewal in 2004 for the year 2005. It's funny cause I didn't know it was free now and thought they were giving me free months. Yes, I'm that special -LOL! I did spend a lot of time putting my food into spark cause I used fitday once upon a time.

One feature that fitday has that spark doesn't is if you put in a custom tablespoon of something (ex. flax meal, peanut butter, etc.), fitday can give you a count for a teaspoon. Spark doesn't automatically pair it down, you have to put this info in as another custom item.
 
That's great everyone!!!

I recently added sodium to track and I'm really shocked how much sodium I'm eating every day!!!! Wow!!! This is going to really help me stay on track!!!

:)
 
It's driving me crazy because it won't allow me to schedule 2 strength training days back-to-back. It must be assuming that I do a WHOLE body workout, which of course I don't. x(

-Nancy
 
>It's driving me crazy because it won't allow me to schedule 2
>strength training days back-to-back. It must be assuming that
>I do a WHOLE body workout, which of course I don't. x(
>
>-Nancy


Hi Nancy. Just schedule it the way they want you to, and then when you actually go to log in your excersice, you can enter it in the way you actually did it. If you have nothing scheduled for that day, or let's say cardio scheduled...you can click on "Add Strength" and then click on the tab that says "USER ENTERED" and you can log in your own strength workouts.

The screen looks like this:

http://pic9.picturetrail.com/VOL280/1863976/8843029/124279311.jpg
 
I agree with Nancy, that part drives me a little nutty. Also, I just want to put in a number of minutes of upper body and not the reps. But I do love that all of the cardio stuff has calorie counts!

I think I am willing to give up my kajillion custom food for the Sparkpeople!!!!

I'm getting used to it. I tracked on both (hmmm....how's the obsessiveness going, Melissa) for the weekend. Now I stopped tracking Fitday and I am way into Spark. I do miss the Fitday report "Am I burning the calories I eat" and the little bar graph. I know I am burning them, but it is so gratifying to see that little bar graph!

Melissa

Keep your head in line. Your butt will follow.

http://www.picturetrail.com/pellmel
 
I'm finding things that I like and things that I don't like (that non-consecutive strength training days thing is making me growl.) But I have far more likes than dislikes so far. It's just so nice being able to keep everything handy all day long no matter what PC I'm in front of. There are still some awesome features Fitday PC has that I wish were on sparkpeople. But you can't have everything.

Whooo-hooo pretty soon, I'll be able to toss the sticky notes out the window.
 
Is it necessary to track your workouts? I have my own "system" for doing that and would prefer not to duplicate. I would however, love a plan that calculates for me, c/p/f and vitamins.
Susan C.M.
[link=http://lilypie.com][img noborder]http://bd.lilypie.com/2BB3m5.png[/img][/link]
 
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