SparkPeople

I am loving Organic Liaison.  However, just not a total organic nut.  Not that I’m not trying to make adjustments as I have mentioned before.  I was trying more natural products to find from OL that a “natural” product doesn’t mean a thing.  The use of natural on a product is not regulated by the USDA.  It can mean processed food and you don’t know how ‘processed’ that is.  Here’s Wikipedia’s information on natural foods. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_foods

One thing I find hard is the preplanned menu on OL.  It’s great to suggest things, and you can adjust it.  But, I don’t want to spend time preparing the meals, pay for the items to make the meal.  Then, more than half the stuff I just don’t like or eat.

What I love is SparkPeople.com.  They rock.  http://www.sparkpeople.com/about/index.asp  Read more about them if you’d like.  But, I’ll tell you my reasons for using SparkPeople and the main one is it is free.  A diet tool that’s free online.  Amazing isn’t it?  They have the most awesome food tracker.  I can put in the foods I eat and it will calculate the totals for me.  Can’t find your favorite oatmeal, snack cracker, or deli meat in the food tracker?  You can add any food you want.  It will even keep it in a favorites folder where you can find the foods you eat often with ease.

They have a so so fitness tracker.  I always balk at fitness trackers.  I think the formula to calculate the calories burned it not as accurate as it could be.  Exercise machines at the gym ask me my weight and age, but how does that calculate that I’m 5’7” and that most my weight is fat.  This means I will burn different calorie stats on a treadmill at the same speed and incline as a male my age that weighs the same and might have more muscle mass.

It does have an excellent library of articles and recipes.  I enjoy many of the articles.  I have even printed a few, for example, exercises for lower back pain.  Not that my doctor hasn’t given me such information, but never know where I put them.  They have excellent support and a community of people sharing their stories. 

I have used the site for a few years now on and off the diet wagon.  I’m happy to have it there for me now through this journey.  One I’m taking more serious than I think I’ve taken any other diet endeavor.  Ok…ok…life style change endeavor.