Free personalized diet and fitness plans

It’s become painfully obvious to me in the last week just how hard weight loss really is. As much as I like my Good Carb eating plan, I’m realizing now that I really can’t just eat as much as I want, no matter how healthy the food is. If I am going to lose one or two pounds a week, every week, until I reach my goal, I am going to have to keep track of calories, carbs, fat and protein, so that I’m getting a good balance in my diet. Otherwise, I find it way too easy to justify eating a handful of chips here, a hamburger bun there, and for me, those kind of “empty” carbs bring the weight loss to a screeching halt.

MyFitnessPal is a free online calorie counter that gives me a free diet and fitness plan, and lets me track all my nutrients easily. It really is free, no credit card or anything, I just had to put in a username, password and email, and then fill out a very simple form with my date of birth, current and goal weight, and how quickly I want to lose. According to the site, these are my goals:

If I concentrate on getting my calories from foods that are high in fiber and protein, I don’t see any reason why this shouldn’t be very realistic. The very small print under the graphic says it is 1200 Net calories a day, which is the difference between calories consumed and calories burned. I can eat 1400 calories a day if I burn off 200 of them. 1400 calories works out to three 400 calorie meals plus two 100 calorie snacks, or five mini-meals of 280 calories. I already know that my days of sitting down to a gigantic restaurant meal and eating all of it are over for now, you wouldn’t believe how many calories are just in the salad they bring you before the main course. Small, filling, healthy meals, plus a very reasonable amount of exercise, and I should be able to lose around a pound and a half a week. Which means almost a year of work until I am at my goal weight of 128, which is higher than I should weigh for my height and age, but I have to be realistic. I probably won’t ever weigh 95 pounds again (I’m only five feet tall), but if I could go to BlogHer next year weighing 128, I would be the happiest person on earth.

Pop on over to MyFitnessPal and see what it would take for you to reach your weight loss goals. Let’s all get healthy together!