Comparison of Food and Exercise Logging Sites

Isn’t it frustrating that it can take weeks for us to see a difference in our bodies when we’ve done something to improve, or worsen, our health? We don’t know how much the exercise we did today increased our aerobic capacity and built our muscle fiber. We also can’t tell if, or how much, plaque the pizza we ate added to our arteries.

It might make it easier to stick with our exercise and health eating if we got instant feedback on the minutes changes in our body when we do good or harmful things. Like a peppy voice saying, “Congratulations, you just lowered your LDL cholesterol by one point!” or “Danger Will Robinson, that pizza slice will add two fat cells to your belly!”

Since we can’t see immediate results from either our positive or negative actions, we need a substitute. Logging is the best substitute there is. It’s been proven that people who log what they eat are more likely to stick with positive behaviors and reduce negative behaviors*. If you know you have to log the 400 calorie slice of pizza, you will be more likely to stay on track. Logging works for exercise, too.

But, you say, logging is a pain in the neck! The good news is that with the Internet logging has become easy and can almost be fun when you see the reports and results.

I’ve compared five Internet sites that provide food and exercise logging, plus have many other features such as articles, blogs, social networking (buddies) and much more. I used these five websites for a week to determine ease-of-use, features, and number of foods in the food database. Here is my unscientific opinion on which sites might work best for you based on if you want:

•  Really simple, without bells and whistles, and you don’t care about precision in calorie counts or exercise, choose LoseIt.com. LoseIt does not have an extensive food database, but you can enter your own foods.
• Precision on tracking food and exercise with the largest food database, several reports and relatively easy-to-use, choose Livestrong.com.
• Mood tracking related to your eating, choose Fitday.com which also has a wide range of reports, but a smaller food database than Livestrong.com. Update: 3/30 - Livestrong.com also has mood tracking

See the full analysis of all five sites at: Fitness Logging

To see another analysis of logging sites, see Lose Weight by Using Online Tools.

 *Studies:

Keeping a Food Diary Helps Lose Weight – WebMD 

Keeping a Diary Doubles Weight Loss – Science Daily on a study by Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research and published by American Journal of Preventive Medicine