I've completed my first week of Kaizen using MyFitnessPal.com. From this experience, I now know that I drink a lot of coffee and eat a lot of popcorn. Oh, and I also lost 3 pounds so far.
Use of Metrics: I didn't realize how powerful this would be when I started. As a result of metrics or tracking, I now know exactly how many calories I'm ingesting every day and where those calories are coming from. This is such an important piece of info because I can now rank my foods in order to decide what I'm going to eat and when I'm going to eat it. I also know that 1 strawberry tastes the same as 5 and that sugar has fewer calories then I thought.
Visual Controls: Knowing my calorie count and seeing it in the green is helpful...knowing that YOU readers also can check up on me at http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/diary/LeanJon is keeping me honest.
Putting my goal out there and keeping my metrics visible to everyone is extremely helpful. There were times that I didn't want to type in my foods and just give up. However, because everything is public,it helped me stay on course and keep it up. I know this is the right thing to do and I'll be healthier in the long run. Nevertheless, the threat of self induced public shame is also a helpful motivator.
As for MyFitnessPal.com itself I haven't spent much time on it other then entering info into my Food Diary. It does have a lot of other features like tracking protein, cholesterol, sugar and about 15 other nutritional items. It also has support groups, forums and reports you can generate for better information. I'll speak more about the reporting functions later after I've entered in more data.
I'm looking forward to the next update to share what I've learned. Also on a side note my wife K. is the one who got me started on this trend and she just weighed in yesterday. She is currently down 10 lbs since starting 4 weeks ago. She's an amazing woman and I thank her with all 222.5 lbs of me that's currently left.
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Lean for Health: I'm performing a Kaizen on myself at MyFitnessPal.com
