I have been looking and looking for a free site that didn’t look like a free site that allowed me to track my diet and workout routine with ease while providing me with all the reporting features that any programmer type might be interested in. I have to say that so far SparkPeople.com has delivered. I came across them in the latest issue of MensHelth. It took me a matter of minutes to create an account, get verified, logged in, and then I was off and using their system. I went in to log my food for that day (to test the waters) and found that not only could I search for and add food items with ease, I was also able to mark food items as a favorite so that I didn’t need to search for them again. And more importantly when it was time to add a food item that the system didn’t know about (such as MuscleTech Meso-Tech meal replacement bars) I was able to easily add in all the data about that product and then add it to my food log for the day (all from the same interface).
Now calorie counting is soo much easier. And this is not just a calorie counting system it gives me detailed reports about where each calorie is coming from, what my food break downs are, trending, and so much more.
So far so good. Now it was time to track a workout. Initially I did this by clicking through the interface to add individual workout items. Then I noticed that I can easily create a “workout” which contains all the movements for a days workout session. With this in place I can then go in to a given day, edit any weight differences, and add the whole workout to my exercise log. Done!
And they provide similar functionality for tracking your cardio sessions as well.
My only wonder about this system is exactly how they determine how many calories are burned by each exercise/cardio session. An example of this is that before my workout I generally spend 20 minutes on a stationary bike. This is my warm up and is performed when I am freshest. In this cardio session I am generally able to burn 300 calories or so. I know this because of what the bike guestimates for me (right or wrong…it is my baseline). Now the reason I bring this up is that at the end of my workout session I hop my butt back on the bike for an additional 20 minutes. Here is the kicker…by this time I tend to be warn out. I still spend 20 minutes on the bike but at a totally different capacity. The 20 minutes burn different amounts of calories. The cardio tracker doesn’t really allow me to capture this variance without setting up my own item for “Stationary Bicycling: moderate – pre workout” and “Stationary Bicycling: moderate – post workout”. This is fine but not something that the ordinary dude is gonna put a whole lot of thought into.
Other than that I would have to imagine that the system is using the Nutrition Information databases that are publicly consumable out there…as well as similar data for workouts. As long as one uses this data as a baseline…rather than gospel…you should be ok!
Wonderful site and product. Keep it up!
Andrew Siemer
Teacher, Author, Engineer, Architect, Build Master, Scrum Master, Father of 6, Husband, ex Army Ranger
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