Chapter 2: Keeping Track of it All

Chapter 2:  Keeping Track of it All:  A Great Tool For You 

And so it continues.....

Chapter 1 introduced us to our main, uh....only character, a 39-year old, husband, father of two, School Counselor, Health and Nutrition Coach who, like anyone, has had his ups and downs with food and fitness.  In the past year, he's found himself in a great place with his fitness and food and plans to never return to The Food Place That Shall Not Be Named.  We learned about goals, planning, and how to find new purpose when one has had a string of success.  

One of those goals involves tracking food.  Now, before you give me this......

......consider this:  We live in a society full instantaneous gratification i.e. cell phones, texting, laptops, iPads, fax machines, Twitter, Facebook, cloud services, and much more. 

 

It goes without saying that most people will find at least seventeen excuses why tracking food will not work for them.  Instead of wasting precious cyberspace listing a few, let's see what great tool our protagonist is using.

MyFitnessPal is more than a calorie counter.  But it is a smart tool that encompasses that very "give it to me now/instant gratification" mindset into something that takes time and patience:  eating well and weight loss.  This tool literally has over a million food entries in it's library making it easy to find what you are logging.  It provides graphical data on how much protein, how many carbs, and how many calories you have left to consume each day and allows you to set your own goals regarding what percentage of each need to consume.  Even more, it has a whole social networking component for support.  Remember that team our protagonist joined in Chapter One?  The one that is trying to achieve new fitness goals?  With this tracking tool, now he can see what and how his friends are eating.  The benefits to that?  You can get ideas of what to eat, when others eat certain foods, and you can offer support and encouragement by posting messages back and forth.  And one more piece of that "instand gratification-give-it-to-me-now" mindset.  You can enter your information from any computer and then continue from any phone with the free application.  It's available for any iPhone, Android, or Blackberry device.  

DISCLAIMER:  This literary piece of opinion does not receive any benefits from MyFitness Pal, rather we find it to just be a very simple, easy-to-use, intuitive, and motivating tool to aid in doing something that historically takes time, persistance, and patience.  

Speaking of patience....in Chapter 3 our main character will face a few evil villains.  Stay tuned to see if he can ward of these calorie sucking, carb loading enemies!