My fat secret.

Photo from www.fitsugar.com

I'll be honest with you. Losing weight is something new to me. When I was younger, I was very active and athletic, but like so many other people who go off to college, I gained the Freshman 15... and then some. On top of a condition I have that contributed to me gaining weight, I just got lazy and tired.

I don't want jinx myself, but it's been 4 months now since I've started really motivating myself to lose weight, and I have so far lost 20 lbs! There are definitely many factors to my success thus far, and I am sure I will get into many of them eventually as I keep blogging, but the one thing I want to get into right now is http://fatsecret.com.

I have never been one to want to count my calories - in fact, I really looked down upon it because I didn't want to be one of those people. But eventually I gave in, and now calorie counting has been the largest factor to my weight loss! FatSecret has been HUGE to successfully keeping track of my calories. It is so easy to work with, and best of all it's FREE. And while I do not have a smart phone, I'm going to assume almost all of you reading this do, and so download the app for it!

When you go to fatsecret.com, it will ask you a few questions to get you started, but then will take you right into the site. As you can see, there are many things you can track here:

My FatSecret Toolbox

You can log in your weight, write down notes for yourself, meet other people in forums and discussion groups and find & share recipes. There are even challenges you can join, like "20 lbs in 4 weeks" or "Just Dance the pounds away".

I am fairly new to FatSecret, and there is still so much more I want to explore on the site, but so far what I have found most useful to me is the Diet Calendar. There are two different types of Diet Calendars: Food Diary and Exercise Diary. In the Exercise Diary, you can list what exercises you've done and for how long, and it will calculate out for you how many calories you've burned.

In the Food Diary, you list everything you eat throughout the day. Now, here is where the ease comes in. You don't have to carry around the back of a box or food package with you to know the nutrition facts - you just type in what you ate in the search engine and it finds all the info for you! Their food database is so extensive, I believe there's only been once so far where it didn't find something I ate. There is also a UPC scanner on the app, so if you are on your smart phone or iPad or whatever, you just scan the UPC code on the outer package of whatever you're eating, and it will pull up all the information for you!

Other cool things about FatSecret, it lists all information about your intake - not just calores - it lists your fiber intake, protein, carbs... even NET carbs! You can also figure out your RDI (Recommended Daily Intake), and everyday it will tell you how much percentage you have under or over based on your Diet Calendar.

I know there are many Weight Loss websites out there that probably do the same stuff - if not more, but FatSecret is just the one that I use, and I have so far been very happy with it. Either way, if you are trying to lose weight, don't wait to long like I did. The technology/websites/apps out there are so plentiful... it gives you no more excuses to sit around and do nothing!