Monday, August 03, 2009

Livestrong application for the iphone (AKA The Daily Plate)

Tue
Total cals:
800

Net cals:
800

Wed
Total cals:
913

Net cals:
913

Thu
Total cals:
1,176

Net cals:
1,176

Fri
Total cals:
1,019

Net cals:
1,019

Sat
Total cals:
1,334

Net cals:
1,334

Sun
Total cals:
1,294

Net cals:
1,294
Above is a summary of my daily caloric intake for the past week. Keep in mind that this was a week of horrible dental nightmares so my diet wasn't normal by any means.
What I can say after more time playing with the Livestrong application is that I love it! Really, I have only one complaint and that is when syncing my food entries from my iphone and then checking them on Livestrong.com later, I have noticed a couple of times when a food has been entered twice. But that has only happened twice. That's my only complaint. Only one food that I have eaten wasn't in their food database and that was the Mort's frozen custard. I can't say I was surprised because it is a local establishment and to be fair the food database had several listings for frozen custard. I chose the one that listed the highest calories for approximately the amount I ate. I always do this, error on the more calories side so I feel that I am over estimating instead of under estimating my calories. I also think having the application on my iphone and being so easy to use has helped me be 100% accurate for the first time ever with a food diary. I always have my phone with me and it only takes a few seconds to open the application and enter a food. Try that with an old paper diary. Heck, I have and it's a pain in the butt! I also think using this application really has affected my eating for the better. I set a weight loss goal of 2 pounds per week and listed myself as sedentary (again erring on the negative side so I don't end up overestimating my caloric expenditure). That gives me a calorie goal of 1,252 calories a day to lose two pounds per week. I ended up going over that twice last week but only by 82 calories on Saturday and by 42 calories on Sunday.
I have to be honest here and say I KNOW if I wasn't keeping track of my calories and getting a visual reminder every time I enter a food of how many calories that I have remaining for the day, my caloric intake would have been way more than it was. Especially on some of the high stress days I had last week. I seriously stopped myself from eating something bad a couple of times because I had too few calories left for the day to stay within my goal. That in an of itself makes this program worth it for me, maybe it will make it worth it for you too. I highly recommend it. I also have to say that I love the twitter option although I can understand why some people wouldn't want to enable it (you have to enable it, it doesn't automatically broadcast your intake to the world!). At Livestrong.com, you can even enable Facebook too but not on the iphone application yet. Nothing makes you rethink what you eat like knowing others are going to be reading about it! Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to make Livestrong.com upload the foods that I have entered on my iphone to Facebook. I don't think you can but I could be wrong.

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