Fitday, You Demon
I've come to the conclusion that Fitday is a kind of drug. From the first time you use it, some evil molecules get under your skin and make it impossible to abandon the site forever.
I should know; I have tried.
I started using Fitday during my semester at Virginia Intermont, mostly cuz I needed something to do besides sit around and dwell on how much my then-current situation sucked. For a period of about a week, every year since, I have returned to Fitday and was even compelled to start a new account last February. Although, as mentioned, I only stuck with it for about a week, just this morning the idea seeped back into my brain: "Must. . .record food obsessively. Must find out how many calories I burn walking around for 8 hours at Brooks. . .Aaauughhh. . ." ::drool::
Now, in case you're wondering what the hell I'm talking about, here's what Fitday is. Every day, you keep a list of every little thing you ate, either by selecting foods in their database or creating "custom" foods. The program tallies up how much of each nutrient you are getting (most prominently calories, fat, carbs, and protein) and you can also record any physical activities you do throughout the day to find out how many calories you are burning. It sounds like a good idea, but here's the catch:
Fitday is just downright evil.
Besides the weird annual soul-stealing I already described, there's a damn good reason why sticking with Fitday for long periods of time just doesn't happen. Using it is frickin' annoying! Except for very generic foods, such as tomatoes and apples, almost everything needs to be customized, assuming you want your nutritional evaluation to be accurate. THAT means writing down the nutritional info for every single "custom" entry you have to make. And if you have no way of knowing what the nutritional info was, you have to just choose from whatever Fitday offers in its database that's close enough and hope for the best.
For example, I ate a blueberry bagel with lf cream cheese from Dunkin Donuts today. Since "Dunkin Donuts bagels" don't exactly appear in the database, I had to settle with the info for a Lender's blueberry bagel instead. I guess I *could* search the DD website for the correct info, but seriously, I don't care that much. It's just a bit annoying though, cuz a Lender's bagel and a DD bagel might be drastically different. Freaking a.
The "calories burned" section is also incredibly wrong. As just one minor example, no matter how long you have sex for (and no matter how "active" you are ;p), you supposedly only burn one calorie per hour. On the other hand, I supposedly burned over 800 calories today at work, just walking around. I don't think I would have burned that many calories if I had *ran* all day at work, never mind strolling casually from aisle 6 to aisle 11 and back again.
Nevertheless, it is kinda nice to see a rough estimate at the end of the day of all the calories, fat, carbs, and protein I consumed. But in about six days, I'm sure the novelty will again wear off and Fitday will go back to sleep until 2006. Salud.
I should know; I have tried.
I started using Fitday during my semester at Virginia Intermont, mostly cuz I needed something to do besides sit around and dwell on how much my then-current situation sucked. For a period of about a week, every year since, I have returned to Fitday and was even compelled to start a new account last February. Although, as mentioned, I only stuck with it for about a week, just this morning the idea seeped back into my brain: "Must. . .record food obsessively. Must find out how many calories I burn walking around for 8 hours at Brooks. . .Aaauughhh. . ." ::drool::
Now, in case you're wondering what the hell I'm talking about, here's what Fitday is. Every day, you keep a list of every little thing you ate, either by selecting foods in their database or creating "custom" foods. The program tallies up how much of each nutrient you are getting (most prominently calories, fat, carbs, and protein) and you can also record any physical activities you do throughout the day to find out how many calories you are burning. It sounds like a good idea, but here's the catch:
Fitday is just downright evil.
Besides the weird annual soul-stealing I already described, there's a damn good reason why sticking with Fitday for long periods of time just doesn't happen. Using it is frickin' annoying! Except for very generic foods, such as tomatoes and apples, almost everything needs to be customized, assuming you want your nutritional evaluation to be accurate. THAT means writing down the nutritional info for every single "custom" entry you have to make. And if you have no way of knowing what the nutritional info was, you have to just choose from whatever Fitday offers in its database that's close enough and hope for the best.
For example, I ate a blueberry bagel with lf cream cheese from Dunkin Donuts today. Since "Dunkin Donuts bagels" don't exactly appear in the database, I had to settle with the info for a Lender's blueberry bagel instead. I guess I *could* search the DD website for the correct info, but seriously, I don't care that much. It's just a bit annoying though, cuz a Lender's bagel and a DD bagel might be drastically different. Freaking a.
The "calories burned" section is also incredibly wrong. As just one minor example, no matter how long you have sex for (and no matter how "active" you are ;p), you supposedly only burn one calorie per hour. On the other hand, I supposedly burned over 800 calories today at work, just walking around. I don't think I would have burned that many calories if I had *ran* all day at work, never mind strolling casually from aisle 6 to aisle 11 and back again.
Nevertheless, it is kinda nice to see a rough estimate at the end of the day of all the calories, fat, carbs, and protein I consumed. But in about six days, I'm sure the novelty will again wear off and Fitday will go back to sleep until 2006. Salud.
posted by Erica at 2:24 AM
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