Monday, July 14, 2008

News

I have fallen in love with this site: The Daily Plate. Tracking everything I eat has made me want to eat better, and at the same time it is a cause of stress that worries and/or motivates me.

I went to the Scottish Festival on Saturday. Regrettably, I didn't get to stay very long, but the time I did get to spend there was enjoyable. I want with my friend and her family. We looked around the booths and watched part of the Scottish games (such as the caber toss). Afterward we had a delicious and fattening breakfast at the good ol' IHOP. Mmmm, pancakes.

5 comments:

J said...

oh, how i adore pancakes too!

as far as the daily plate goes...
i've used that site before and wasn't too happy with it just because there were a lot of things i couldn't find. and then i would look up, say...a 1/2 cup of strawberries or something. it would give me like 3-4 different results for the same thing. one would tell me a certain amount of calories, and another would tell me something different. i wouldn't know which one to go by. of course, stuff like that didn't matter much when it only varied by a few calories. but there were some foods i'd look up and it would be a HUGE difference. i think i like www.thecaloriecounter.com more.
anyway, regardless of what you use, it's kind of cool to see what you're actually consuming and paying attention to eating smarter, right?

J said...

oh, p.s., i was going to ask you how the exercising stuff was going. didn't you say you and dave were jogging together now and stuff?

Unknown said...

you know, i used to hate pancakes, but i've really come around. :)

i used TDP a lot not too long ago, but i gave it up. it became way too time-consuming to figure out the ingredients, and the amounts of each, for every single meal and snack i ate. having to figure out percentages of stuff was also hard for me; i'd sit there with a calculator thinking, okay, if i used 2 tbsp. of olive oil for the whole meal and there were five servings and i had half a serving... i hated that. after a while it seemed like the site was really geared for people who eat a lot of packaged food, and if i wanted to look up something more specific but also generic, like brown rice or tofu, i wasn't sure about differences between brands and my OCD side hated seeing brands on my list that i didn't really use. does that make sense? just one of those things, i guess. i really like the accountability side of using a calorie site, but i just couldn't keep up with inputting every little thing i ate - which is the point, after all. :) i also didn't like that it doesn't give any nutrition information.

i've tried a bunch of different sites now and i feel that TDP has the largest list of foods, especially natural foods - the litmus test for me with a new site is if it identifies nutritional yeast. :) most of them don't. so i keep thinking about going back to it, but right now i'm trying to just keep track of it myself as i go along - then i can get the nutrition, too.

anyway, i'm glad it's working for you! and the scottish festival sounds fun.

Karen said...

Jamie: Yes, it annoys me as well that The Daily Plate retrieves so many results for any given food. I've tried to pick the ones that I think best represent what I ate, but I still never know EXACTLY what is in the foods I eat. Sometimes I just guess. It can definitely become annoying, and because of that I don't use the site every single day (like on weekends, for instance) but it does give me a general idea of my caloric/fat/etc. intake and that's all I'm looking for. I'll have to try the caloriecounter too.

As for exercise, we haven't been jogging but dave and I do go for walks just about every evening. It has become part of our day. I know we won't lose a ton of weight that way, but it is still good exercise :)

Karen said...

Chandelle: That's one of the reasons the daily plate does work for me better than most...I don't often make big, elaborate meals with many ingredients. I am a girl who likes to keep meals really simple. When I do actually cook something more involved, I just try my best to guess the amounts of what I ate. All I need is a general estimate, and I'm good with that. It does bother me, though, that sometimes I have to list things from a brand I didn't actually use because that's the closest to what I actually ate.

My hope is that the site will get me on the right track, so I can see how much I need to be eating to achieve my goals. I'm certain I'll be sick of the site soon enough, but it's teaching me a lot already.