My Fitness Pal(s)

Have you heard about the girl who lost 130 lbs, (then gained 15lbs just because), and then gained 65 lbs of pregnancy weight?  Oh yeah and then that same girl lost ALL of that pregnancy weight right back to her goal again….true story.

I AM ONNNNNNNNN my game bloggies…ONNNNN it!  The last part of that story is unfinished or unwritten, but you can trust me on that and mark my words. Bookmark this post in fact, or I will and re-visit it again when it’s official.

There are so many times where I wrote posts about getting on track, but their sole purpose was really for me to outlet for the purposes of getting there and then a few days later the sparkle of back on track would shy away.  But I can honestly say this: I’m soooooo back on track that there is NOTHING that is going to stop me get back to my goal weight.  Nothing. I’m exercising every day (usually an hour) with the odd day off here and there whenever I see fit.   For the most part I’d rather not take a day off of exercise unless I really want to because I feel like I’m on a roll and it’s becoming a real part of my routine and it helps to have a buffer of extra calories to feel satisfied for the day. AND exercising automatically perpetuates eating clean and making healthy choices.

The other thing that I’m totally digging is that I’ve returned to My Fitness Pal.  I’m done with Weight Watchers. I couldn’t get back into the new Weight Watchers Points Plus program for some reason.  I wasn’t seeing much success there. I don’t know if it’s because I wasn’t “into it” or if the program isn’t really working for me. 

I was a member of MFP back 2009 but haven’t tracked in about 2 years.  I can’t even remember if these features where there when I first joined but here’s the reasons why I love it so much:

• It’s FREE
• It has a twitter/facebook-esque feel to it.  You can update your status as you see fit and you have a “news feed” on your home page that gives you the updates on your MFP friends.  For instance, when someone logs their exercise for the day, it goes up on the news feed automatically and you can comment on it.
• You don’t have to feel intimidated by the community because you can just interact with your friends on your news feed if you don’t want to jump on the message board conversations (if you’re the shy type. I tried to get back into the WW online community again, but I wasn’t feeling the vibe for some reason).
• There is a “complete this entry” button on your food journal so when you are finished logging your food and exercise for the day you can “complete” it and it will go up on the news feed that you’ve completed it and will note if you came in under your target for the day. (Mentally, by clicking that button it’s like the kitchen is closed!) Also when you click that button, it will give you a message something to the effect, “If every day is like today, you will weigh X in 5 weeks” which is really motivating.
• If you make your food diary public to your friends, it will let them click on your diary and see what you’ve eaten! This is optional and you can keep it private.  I’ve decided to open up my food diary not only to MFP members, but to anyone who wants to see it, so you can click HERE to see it or on the widget on the side of my blog (which will be up shortly if it’s not already) at any time to see what I’m eating and where my calorie counts are! I used to blog my menus, but that takes extra time and this Mama doesn’t have any 🙂
• You can blog there too if you like and your news feed will notify your friends when you have.

I think what’s making participating in the MFP community so exciting and appealing right now is that there’s already a nice little group of us from Twitter who have joined together and we are all participating and encouraging each other. It truly makes a difference when you can have others review your journal for the day and give you a thumbs up for a great day etc. 

If any of you are MFP members and would like to add each other as friends, please send me a friend request (“AngieAllTheWay” – of course!).

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