The Daily Plate is a (free) website that it helps you keep track of the calories that you eat during the day and calories burned exercising or activities performed during the day. I was first told of this by my boss who was using it at the time to help her lose weight. When she first told me about it I didn't think anything of it at the time since I wasn't seriously watching my weight or what I was eating. I wasn't even an advocate of counting calories because I believed it didn't work (among other diets). I decided one day to check it out because my boss keeps talking about it and how much she has lost, so I wanted to see how many calories it recommends me to eat and if I can be able to stick to such a plan.
At the website, you enter your age, height, weight, how many pounds do you want to lose in a week, maintain or even gain, and your activity level. After entering the information, it gave me the number of calories I should be eating in a day if I were to lose two pounds a week. I thought, this can be doable, so I decided to give it a try for a week for a test run. The Daily Plate has over 600,000+ foods in their library, so finding what you ate shouldn’t be that hard to find. If it isn’t in their library, you can manually add it. I recommend checking the label of the food you just ate and comparing it to what they have listed on their website. I have found that some foods will have different calorie information, so if you are concerned about the accuracy of the number of calories like I am, you can enter the food again into their library to make sure you are following it accurately. The foods’ information can also be changed, but it takes time (I don’t know how long) for it to change and since I need that information for that day, I find it that it’s better to re-enter it again so you know you are getting the right calorie number.
Besides entering the food you eat, you can keep track of activities you do also and the calories burned from them adds back the calories you already have taken in eating. It has listed exercises to activities you do around the house. Some of the information is wrong though too, so I recommend checking other websites about the number of calories burned doing the exercise/activity. Some websites quote other websites information verbatim, so I have to wonder if that information is even correct.
In my first week, what I am only concerned about is the calories, not among other things, which do list--fat, sodium, carbohydrates, etc. I wanted this to be easy as possible and don’t want to feel that this is work because I know I will lose interest in this in no time and I will stop. I did find that was pretty easy to follow. I enter the food I eat online at that particular meal and it tells me how many more calories I can eat for the day. So within the first week, it put into perspective on how much food I was actually eating before I started this and finding out that I am not even hungry at the end of the day (when I came close to or maxed out my calories for the day) and it also has reduced my appetite over time too.
For the first week, I did this without doing any exercise and one week later when I checked my weight, I have lost three pounds. So I continued for a second week and added cardio by doing thirty minutes of riding a bike at the gym (24 Hour Fitness). Roughly I burned 275 calories—that’s 275 calories that returns to my total number of calories I can eat for that day.
I do have days were I can pig out (like on family get-togethers, parties and holidays) where I don’t have to worry about entering what I ate on the site (because the food aren’t labeled). It’s just only one day and I don’t feel guilty about it.
Now since I only work one day a week, the gym (24 Hour Fitness) that I go to, is about a block-and-a-half away from the office. So after work, I go there and do a half-an-hour of cardio. The other two days I walk for three miles (one hour) along a route I have set.
So since mid-April, I have lost 33 pounds (as of August 3rd). I am taking this one week at a time and doing this slowly. I am not looking to lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time because what will happen is that I will end up gaining it back and then some. I don’t have a exact goal number at the moment, but I know this is going to take some time and I don't think this is a diet.
