The Spark!

For anyone else trying to get in a little better shape, I have to suggest this website: www.sparkpeople.com

It's a totally free site where you can track your nutrition and fitness. I'm loving it! It's a little time-consuming at first to enter everything you're eating and all your activities, but it lets you save things you eat often to a short list so it gets much quicker as you go. It gives you the option to make your own workouts or have them create one for you. And when you input an activity you do and for how long, it tells you how many calories you've burned. Way cool. It tracks everything for daily goals as well as weekly. So you know if it happens to be a rainy cold Wednesday morning and you're still bruised and sore from your soccer game Tuesday night and are just bumming on the couch updating your blog with no intention of going to the park for a run (hypothetically speaking), you can take a day off. And still make sure at the end of the week, you've put in the time to burn enough calories cumulatively over 7 days.

But my favorite feature is the daily report. Each morning after I've entered in everything I plan to eat that day, I can look and see if I'm within my optimal range for calories, fat, protein and carbs. This is so helpful, because getting the right amount of those things can be difficult! It's tempting when trying to get healthy to cut out all fat and really reduce calories, but that's not good for your body. So it's great to be able to see if everything's balanced.

So far it's been really helpful when it comes to planning my meals and workouts and tracking them. And it's keeping me motivated! I highly recommend it!