My Fitness Pal

UPDATE: For whatever reason the link I posted won't work. I keep trying and double checking but it won't so just go to www.myfitnesspal.com .

So recently I have felt blah about myself. Now when I say this to most people I hear "You don't need to lose weight" but my scales beg to differ. I am not huge. I am not even considered overweight but I have been slowly gaining a pound here and there that I'm not to happy about. I also don't usually exercise. Well for about the past month my husband, my kids and myself have been walking anywhere from three to five nights a week. We go to our church parking lot b/c it is pretty big and walk a mile to a mile and a half each time. Tegan takes a bike to play on or goes to the church playground. Rylee actually exercises with us...usually she runs. My husband runs and walks. So far I just walk. Running makes my heart hurt but I'm going to start with little short very brief moments of jogging. I can't tell you how much better I have felt just since I started this little amount of exercise. I have so much more energy and just feel tons better.
Even though I have went from zero exercise to a regular routine, I just lost my very first pound that seems to be staying off this week...at least so far. I don't really have a huge love for food. Ask anyone who knows me, I don't sit down and eat a whole lot at one time at any meal. I don't walk away from a restaurant saying that was the best food of my life. I just eat to sustain life:) But what I do love is two things: 1.) My diet or regular coke. I can not live without carbonated beverages. Recently when we were out to eat I tried to get water as a money saving thing and it really ruined my dinner. 2.) The other thing I love is snacks. I can literally just live off of snack food. All day long I snack. Now this would be great if it was light and healthy snacks or fruit or something but it isn't. I snack on chips (my weakness right now is kettle cooked jalapeno chips), crackers, cheese, fudge rounds, ice cream, pretty much any bad for you snack. It is so hard to break the snack and coke habit. I have done it for 31 years!!! I have ZERO self control or will power when it comes to snack food and coke.
I also have no idea how to count calories or any of the other stuff you are suppose to count. So I just joined a free website that is super easy to join, My Fitness Pal. It takes my height, weight, age, and other factors to tell me what my daily calorie intake should be on a daily basis so that I can lose one pound a week for 5 weeks. You can tell it how many pounds you want to lose and how many you want to lose a week and it will factor all that in and tell you what your calorie intake should be. But the VERY BEST FEATURE EVER is the food diary. You go on there for each meal and snacks and type in what you had for lunch. It will tell you how many calories, fat grams, carbs & proteins that you used for that meal or for the day so far and how many more you can use before hitting your goal of intake for the day. You can even enter meals from restaurants (including fast food) so that you can really keep up with everything. You also enter in your exercise to know how many calories you are burning.
It breaks it down and is keeping me in line! I have so far lost my one pound for the week and just started using it this week. Anyone wanting to make a change, this is a great place to get started!
There is a tool on there to add friends to have support and motivation while doing it together but you don't have to tell your weight to your friends. So if any of you decide to join up...let me know and we can connect through there!