Food / Exercise Tracking Systems

[impaul99]

What do you guys think about tracking systems for food / exercise? I'm implementing some major changes in the health/fitness category of my life and I'm trying to think of a way to track my progres.

For example, with my cardio workouts I bought the Nike + iPod tracking combo which puts a sensor in your shoe and tracks your progress. It records your workout, speed, time ran, distance, calories burned etc. all automatically. You can then upload your info to Nike's website and view your data online. This is super cool and just visually seeing your results gives you more motivation to keep going.

On the other side though I'm wondering about things like tracking my food intake. Like for example the types of foods I eat and the calories they have, protein, carbs, fats etc. I know there are some websites that do this but I'm wondering if anyone's been using any of them.

Is it a good idea to track this info? Or is it just a major pain in the butt? I know it becomes useful once you have the data in there for a few months because you can monitor and be aware what you're eating, what kinds of patterns you go through etc., but the hard part is getting the data in there in a simple way. Any ideas guys?

Also, on the same note, what about tracking your workout routines? When I did my 30 day trial earlier this year I used the pre-packaged software which came with my bowflex which was pretty cool, but I'm wondering if anyone has any other ideas of what would work.

The hardest part is typing in the data I think.

[Frans]

If your goal is to train as efficient as possible, you must measure everything: not only your workouts, but also your calorie intake.

It is absolutely necessary to first determine your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) (= the calories you burn per day, depending on your age, bodyweight and activity level).
When you have this, you know how many calories you should have each day for maintenance and you can adjust this amount for fat loss (- 500 Kcal) or weight gain (+ 500 Kcal).

To track whether your daily calorie intake is on schedule, you must count your calories and look at the macro nutrients rate (proteins:carbs:fat). If you don't do this, you're only guessing and this decreases the efficiency of your training.

Here's another tip: visit Tom Venuto's Burn The Fat Inner Circle community: Burn the Fat Inner Circle
This is a paid membership site ($9.95 per month), but the information you find there is invaluable (and the site is completely ad-free!): articles, spreadsheets to calculate/track almost everything, and more than 20 specific forums, like: "Fat loss after 40", "Recipes", "Home Training", "Female Fat Loss", "Fitness Equipment", "100 Pound Club" (for people who want to lose 100 lbs or more!), "Find a Training Partner", "Cardio", "Goals and Motivation", "Weight Training", "Gaining Muscle", "Contest Preparation" etc.

[added]I'm not affiliated with this site.[/added]

[SmellyOrc]

@impaul99 Just a question. How much did that iPod nano and Nike+ cost you, assuming you didn't already have an iPod.

[impaul99]

Originally Posted by SmellyOrc

@impaul99 Just a question. How much did that iPod nano and Nike+ cost you, assuming you didn't already have an iPod.

I'm in Canada here so you'll have to conver the prices to USD if you're in US, but the iPod was $220 for the 4Gig version and the Nike thing was $39.

You can also use it with the 1Gig Nano, but I got the 4Gig just to hold more songs.

You can attach the sensor to Nike+ shoes underneath the sole of the left shoe or you can get a sensor holder that its on top of the laces if you don't like Nike running shoes or already have a pair.

[New Every Day]

I use My Sport Training for my workouts & Pocket Diet Tracker for food. They are loaded onto my Pocket PC/Phone so I take it with me wherever I go.

I've had to load a lot of my food into the Pocket Diet Tracker (which was a pain originally), but I do like having it on my phone.

Honestly, I use My Sport Training more often than I use the Pocket Diet Tracker, but that's just me.

Godspeed!
Ed

[dpgiffin]

Does it have to be the nano? I have a 60 gig video ipod.

[WanderingOak]

I've been thinking about the Nike-iPod deal. Does she shoe widget work in any shoe, or does it have to be a Nike? I have an odd sized foot, so I tend to wear New Balance because I can actually get them in sizes that fit...

I just found my own answer here. There was a homebrew hack here, but it's either been taken down or my work browser doesn't support their site.

[impaul99]

Originally Posted by WanderingOak

I've been thinking about the Nike-iPod deal. Does she shoe widget work in any shoe, or does it have to be a Nike? I have an odd sized foot, so I tend to wear New Balance because I can actually get them in sizes that fit...

I just found my own answer here. There was a homebrew hack here, but it's either been taken down or my work browser doesn't support their site.

It will work on other shoes with a lace add-on. Even with other Nike shoes that don't have the + on them. I think u can find the add-on on eBay.

[impaul99]

Originally Posted by dpgiffin

Does it have to be the nano? I have a 60 gig video ipod.

Hmm, i'm not sure. Google it.

[Podophile]

Originally Posted by WanderingOak

I just found my own answer here. There was a homebrew hack here, but it's either been taken down or my work browser doesn't support their site.

Hello all - The homebrew shoe hack linked above is mine. The page should be working fine (it gets several thousand views per day), so please let me know if anyone continues to have trouble accessing it.

Since posting that page in July, several products for attaching the Nike+iPod sensor to non-Nike+ shoes have been released. I've compiled a list of 11 different products and shoe hacks, all of which work quite well. It's pretty much every thing you need to know about the subject.

To answer one other question, the Nike+iPod kit only works with the iPod nano.

Let me know if you have any other questions about the Nike+iPod Sport Kit. As you may be able to tell, it's one of my favorite subjects.

[stephencp]

Keeping track of info is absolutely essential to understanding what works for YOU, versus trying to find someone else's "answer" that might work for you.
You have to understand WHY things work (or don't) or else you'll always be wondering if something else would work (or work better.)

Stephen
Power-Book Library: Free personal development, success, inspiration and motivational classics
TSTN | The Success Training Network

[WanderingOak]

Originally Posted by Podophile

Hello all - The homebrew shoe hack linked above is mine. The page should be working fine (it gets several thousand views per day), so please let me know if anyone continues to have trouble accessing it.

It works find with OSX and Safari. However, all that would load was the top of the page and the shoe-pouch banner on my work machine running XP and Netscape. About half your site was like that actually. All plugins are disabled on that machine as is Java and Javascript I believe. The network people are a bit paranoid where I work...

[elainevdw]

That Nike+iPod thing always sounded nifty!

For fitness/nutrition tracking, I've used two programs: one a software program, the other a Web-based subscription system. I liked them both.

My favorite is the software, Nutribase. It's absolutely fabulous, and very flexible. You can add your own food items and recipes. You can track predefined workouts or input data from a heart rate monitor (HRM) or piece of gym equipment. There are several different packages of different prices, suitabe for the basic user to the professional nutritionist.

My boyfriend and I used Nutribase when we first started trying to eat healthfully and work out. I already knew a lot about calorie counts, but he didn't -- thanks to Nutribase he can estimate the calories of just about anything, and can immediately tell if a packaged food or a home-cooked meal is nutritious or not, the proper serving size or not, etc. He lost 15+ pounds with Nutribase, I think. He doesn't use it much now, prefering a more intuitive approach, and has lost another 15 pounds.

The online program I used was iShape.com. It was a lot like Nutribase, except scaled down and a litte more annoying with the custom food items. The best part about iShape is the community forum, where you get really quick and helpful responses from both users and iShape nutritionists and fitness experts on how to tweak your program, deal with plateaus, etc. It's a little more fun than Nutribase in that they have cool ways of tracking your overall fitness progress. You can view your total cardio time logged in the system as a map of how far (or how many times) across the United States your mileage accounts to (whether your cardio is running, walking, skiing, yoga, etc.). Your overall weights workouts can be viewed by total poundage. Like, your first workout, between all those reps of 5 lb weights, can add up to the weight of a VW bug! iShape.com is affiliated with Shape magazine.

No matter what you choose, though, here are a few tips:

The first two weeks of inputting food and fitness will be very time and labor intensive, because you have to put in all of your custom habits by scratch. After that, you'll probably be able to reuse most of what you put in before. Humans are creatures of habit.

Get a good food scale! I started with an "analog" one, and moved on to a digital one. Use whatever you prefer. And get lots of measuring cups and spoons, too. If you don't measure what you're inputting, your data will be completely wrong, and therefore completely useless.

A heart rate monitor isn't necessary, but it helps with accuracy a lot. Otherwise, you'll want to learn how to take your heart rate by hand, or use the rate of perceived exersion scale (RPE).

Hope that helps. Have fun!

[impaul99]

Originally Posted by stephencp

Keeping track of info is absolutely essential to understanding what works for YOU, versus trying to find someone else's "answer" that might work for you.
You have to understand WHY things work (or don't) or else you'll always be wondering if something else would work (or work better.)

Stephen
Power-Book Library: Free personal development, success, inspiration and motivational classics
TSTN | The Success Training Network

Please elaborate with an example.

[Frans]

Originally Posted by impaul99

Please elaborate with an example.

May I?

There are no two persons with the same kind of body constitution (ectomorph, mesomorph, endomorph in an endless variety of combinations).
What works for one person doesn't guarantee that it also works for others, it may be even counterproductive.
You are the only person who knows and feels your body.
Nobody can tell you what a good training program is for you, you must discover it for yourself.

This means also that you can't tell people what they should do to reach the same physical objective as you. Everybody has to find out for himself what works for him.

Let's take an example: the "hitting a plateau" phenomenon.

When you don't change your workout routines regularly, there comes a time when you hit a plateau, meaning: you don't make any progress anymore, and it is even possible that instead of losing fat, you're gaining fat.

To overcome this, you must keep track of all your workouts (you can make a spreadsheet and print it out, so you can fill out your data on the spot).
When you hit a plateau, try to change one parameter in your workout.
If you don't notice any changes, try to change another parameter until you make progress again.

[impaul99]

Originally Posted by Frans

May I?

There are no two persons with the same kind of body constitution (ectomorph, mesomorph, endomorph in an endless variety of combinations).
What works for one person doesn't guarantee that it also works for others, it may be even counterproductive.
You are the only person who knows and feels your body.
Nobody can tell you what a good training program is for you, you must discover it for yourself.

This means also that you can't tell people what they should do to reach the same physical objective as you. Everybody has to find out for himself what works for him.

Let's take an example: the "hitting a plateau" phenomenon.

When you don't change your workout routines regularly, there comes a time when you hit a plateau, meaning: you don't make any progress anymore, and it is even possible that instead of losing fat, you're gaining fat.

To overcome this, you must keep track of all your workouts (you can make a spreadsheet and print it out, so you can fill out your data on the spot).
When you hit a plateau, try to change one parameter in your workout.
If you don't notice any changes, try to change another parameter until you make progress again.

Oh cool, yeah I totally know what you mean. No"body" is the same. This is precisely why I'm trying to find a good software or system to track progress with so I can have a basis for comparison. It's the quest to quantify the experience into a trackable result. That way I can have a basis for making changes to my plan.

So far I downloaded one software, can't remember the name of it yet, but it kind of sucks. I've give it another chance, and if I still don't like it I'll ditch it.

It might just be that I need to first change my diet before I can track better. RIght now I don't know what's inside the food I eat so it's hard. Like when I order a spinach pie from the greek food place, I have no clue what's in there in what quantities. I only know there's spinach and pastry and some form of cheese and oils. When i start to prepare my own meals it will probably be easier to track things. On the working out side, my Bowflex came with a software which is pretty decent, but still not perfect.

[ahimel]

I found tracking my calories consumed and calories burnt extremely effective. Without setting any goals or making any attempt to change my lifestyle, just tracking calories improved my diet enormously. A lot of times I didn't actually care whether I had another cookie or not, or whether I ate potato vs. tortilla chips, I just did whatever was easiest. Although it was kind of a pain, the act of entering everything I ate into a spreadsheet caused me to be aware of it, which meant I could change it if necessary.

It's a pain. But do a 30-day trial and see if it's worth it.

[Cathy]

I'm a big fan of tracking all-diet, exercise, etc. especially when first starting a new program. I'd also recommend a food scale when you get started to help with learning what 4 oz of fish looks like, for example. You will be amazed at how tiny most real "portions" are vs. what you are served in restaurants.

Lots of people I know use fitday to track nutrition and workouts. You can get your own free online account. I personally created my own system in Excel. Other folks I know like dietpower.

While I tracked every gram of food, every spare cashew, for 2 years, these days, I only start tracking rigorously when I get off track. It helps me identify where the issues are and helps me clean up my program.
I also like muscletank for tracking my progress.

[jbischke]

You may want to try Traineo. I've heard good things and it's a very well-designed site.