I’ve Died and Gone to Weight Loss Heaven

As I previously mentioned, when I started on this journey, I began following The Best Life program. Essentially, I am still following that, but I have not been happy with the website. Tracking food is time consuming enough, but when the program/site you are using is not user-friendly, it practically becomes a full-time job. I found the food tracking particularly annoying on The Best Life site because it automatically has a daily menu entered for each day, which if you aren’t using, you have to delete each meal before entering the foods you actually ate. Also, many of the foods I ate were not in the database so I had to manually enter them using the nutritional information on the package. Other complaints I have are:

1) I contacted Tech Support twice. The first time, I never got a reply. This was during my first week of using the site. I am still awaiting a reply to my second question sent earlier this week.

2) You can only enter your weight in whole numbers. This may not seem like a big deal, but as someone who has gone down this road, there are some weeks that you hold on to that .4 lb weight loss for dear life!

3) There is no place to enter any other body stats such as measurements and body fat percentage.

Then, this week, I discovered the most amazing website! Seriously, I think I am in love. The website is My Food Diary. Food tracking is easy. There are so many different tools that make it user-friendly and SUPER motivational. Listen to this! You can view a detailed report of your food intake that breaks down your calories, fat, protein, carbs, etc by meal. It also shades different parts of your report in dark green for “very healthy”, light green for “healthy”, light red for “unhealthy”, and bright red for “very unhealthy.” This is so great, particularly if you really are trying to improve your overall health and not just eat low-calorie crap to lose weight. THEN (yes, there’re more), if you scroll your mouse over the shaded areas, it tells you what was good or bad about it, and how to fix it (if it was bad).

Now, here is the best part. After you enter your food and exercise for the day, you get a daily report that gives you a Food Summary and an Exercise Summary. That’s pretty basic, but here is what is so motivational. You get a chart called “If Every Day Were Like Today…” and this is what it tells you:

• You would lose ___ lbs per week.
• You would reach your goal weight of ____ lbs on (specific date).
• In one month, you would weigh _____ lbs.
• In three months, you would weigh ____ lbs.

HOW AWESOME IS THAT?!?! I think it is the greatest motivation I have ever gotten from tracking calories. What’s more satisfying than knowing the exact date you could reach your goal weight? Or knowing what your weight could be in one or three months if you keep up the good work?!?! I LOVE IT!

Other things I love:

• Overall, the whole site if very visually appealing. Neat, organized, lots of graphs & charts to highlight all of your progress.
• You can use decimal points in your weight.
• You can track other body measurements and body fat percentage.
• You get smiley and frowney faces at the end of each day highlighting what you did really well and what could use improvement. I even got a smiley face for drinking a glass of wine yesterday!! It said, “You consumed 14g of alcohol, which is within the healthy range for women (0g-14g).” Awesome! Smiley face, indeed!
• I contacted customer service and got a reply in less than 24 hours.

Now, keep in mind, despite my tremendous following, I am not being paid to review either of these sites. I just think it is my civic duty to do so! I'm currently enjoying my free 7 day trial, but you can be sure I will be paying my $10 a month to keep using it. It is so worth it! Happy tracking!