Day 36

Weight: 173.5

Wow!  I am so surprised and pleased!  I thought for sure I wouldn’t lose anything, with having had the nuts yesterday, and therefore the calorie count was up, too.  Maybe my body is telling me that it would lose weight better with more protein!

I’ve been researching calorie counting software for two reasons.  First, I am looking ahead to see what tools I will need to maintain my new weight easily, and paying attention is the first avenue in that effort.  Keeping track of daily calories has been proven to work.  Second, FitDay.com has consistently said I am eating way over 500 calories, and I need to have complete confidence in the tools I’m using.  They also need to be easy to use and easily accessible.

One item that has really been bugging me is the calorie count on the broccoli.  Who would have ever thought that there are so many choices for fresh broccoli and that they could add up to 200 calories per cup!?!  I ended up finding another entry for broccoli on FitDay.com that was about 50 calories per cup which is much more acceptable but I am at this point not going to go back and change all of my entries.

Another free site I found is called Calorie Count, and the URL is http://caloriecount.about.com One of the first things I noticed about this site is that it doesn't time out after you've logged in which FitDay.com does.  The advertising is a little bit more obvious and therefore looks more cluttered on the page than on FitDay.com but it also has a free downloadable app for my Blackberry Pearl Flip that I do not have a data plan for.  I am able to connect my phone to a wireless access point and use the service to look up calorie counts, which is quite convenient.  I haven't played without enough yet to know if it synchronizes my account, although I suspect it doesn't.

CalorieKing.com offers such a service however it costs five dollars per month.  They are offering a summer special right now at $57 per year which is only $3 savings per year.  It also would probably require a data plan which I'm not ready to go out and purchase.  CalorieKing.com is an industry standard in calorie counting, diet, and nutrition tracking as it's been around for 20 years so I am pretty sure that they have a fairly solid following and no one could probably go wrong with using their service.  My preference is to avoid ongoing monthly fees however, so I am unconvinced that I will be using that service.  I supposed it will depend on how easily I can manage my weight!

I did, however, download the free software trial for CalorieKing Nutrition and Exercise Manager and installed it on my PC.  After using it only one day I found that the interface is pretty clean and easy to use although it has quite a bit of fast food information which is annoying for my own eating habits, as I rarely eat in restaurants.  The price is also pretty high at $45 for the downloadable version, as compared to FitDay.com's $20 software offer.

FitDay.com also hides the link for the $20 offer, and you mostly see only the $29.99 “discounted” offer; such bait and switch tactics always raise my suspicions.  I also need to check whether FitDay.com offers an option for the elliptical machine in their fitness tracking portion of the installable software.  They don't offer it as an option online and there have been many comments posted in the forms requesting this commonly used item, it but it still hasn't happened.  If it's not in the software, and I find discrepancies for calories, then their $20 software is really no bargain and I will probably go with the higher cost CalorieKing.com version.

I'll let you know what I think in a week.