Why I love FitDay
I’ve recently started re-using FitDay. I’ve had accounts on FitDay several times in the past, and each time I’ve adored using it. I’ll use it religiously every day for months, and then I’ll stop… usually because it just becomes too much to constantly track.
What is FitDay?
FitDay is an online service which tracks calories, nutrient intake, exercise, and mood, and it gives you all kinds of pie charts and bar graphs to show you calorie balances and how you’ve progressed over time. You can create various goals for yourself too. It’s an excellent system for anyone to use who wants to learn more about just how well they’re doing in terms of nutrients.
A week ago or so I opened a new account for myself, and I’ve been having a great time using it. It really keeps you accountable, and it shows you the brutal truth behind your state of health. These are my top reasons for why I have a huge love for FitDay*:
1) It’s free. I have expensive tastes but I’m also very budget-savvy, and I am always happy to find free services! You can upgrade to the premium version which costs something, but I’ve never used it and I’ve never found any need to when the free version offers so much awesomeness.
2) You can learn a lot about what you’re eating. Reading labels is one thing, but when you actually see the results of your day in a pie chart, it’s really fascinating. For example, my diet is much higher in fats than I expected. Mostly it’s in the form of walnuts or extra virgin olive oil etc., but the percentage of fats in my diet (compared with proteins and carbs) has consistently been about 30%. That’s quite a lot! I also consumed 18% protein on average and 52% carbs on average. It’s all right where it “should” be according to my age group, but I’m definitely at the higher end when it comes to fats. I’m going to see if I can lower that and bump up my carbs a little more.
Carbs: purple, protein: brown, fats: blue
3) Graphs and charts. I don’t understand why I never enjoyed science and math in school when I love graphs, charts and numbers when it comes to measuring health. Very odd. Anyways, the graphs and charts and tables are numerous on FitDay, and it really makes everything much easier to interpret if you aren’t a numbers person (trust me on that).
4) Nutrient breakdown. Not only do you get the macronutrient breakdown of carbs, fats and proteins, but you also get the micronutrient breakdown to see which vitamins and minerals you’re getting enough of and which you need to include more of in your diet. Very cool.
5) Measures of progress. You can create your own goals and input new data daily to see your progress over time. You can also measure that progress on a daily basis, weekly basis, bi-weekly basis, monthly basis and so on. Lots of options!
Have you tried FitDay? Do you know what your nutrient intake is like?
*Everything expressed here is entirely my own opinion. I wasn’t approached by the makers of FitDay to write a blog post about them or anything like that. I just really really like the concept and wanted to share it with all of you 🙂
thanks! off to check this out. I used to use Sparkpeople for all the same things (also free) but I find the site overwhelming now and overcrowded.
I thought about joining Sparkpeople for a while and then never got around to it… I think you’d quite like FitDay though!
I used Fitday quite regularly for about a year and a half, and it was fascinating to see the nutritional analysis, but the time it takes to load each page, and to register each Add Foods, just got to be too much. At least this time, unlike the time around 2002 (?) I haven’t forgotten my user name and password, so I can go back to it from time to time.
fd, I tried Sparkpeople to see if it would load faster, but I couldn’t stand the overwhelm.
The forgotten username/password is something that’s frustrated me – I think it would be quite fun to look at what my diet was like a few years ago, but I haven’t got a clue what my old username/password were. Ah well!
I haven’t found a problem with loading the pages, to be honest – and the smartphone app works pretty quick too. Maybe it’s the browser used that can make it finicky?
Whatever it is, it affects Facebook, too, in any browser I’ve tried. My iPhone FB app is far speedier than the computer, but the Fitday iPhone app doesn’t work well on an iPod touch–I forget why, but it wants it to be a phone or something.