To start with, you will have to sign up to use this site. When you are first setting up for your FREE account - you will be asked to enter info such as your current weight, what your goal weight is (how much you want to lose) - you can ALSO you this to GAIN weight if you need to go that way instead. It will then give you the total amount of calories, carbohydrates, fat and protein allowed PER day.
Here is what the options at the top are that you will have to choose from once you get logged in.
I will go through each option to explain all the features and what all you can do.
Under the My Home tab.
HOME
You have all the following info to view
On the left side under Your Diet Tools, there are options to choose from which are quick links to options I will explain below.
GOALS
You will see the following information
(you will have more info than the above screenshot - I have blocked out my personal info)
You can change your goals by going through a guided set up (recommended) or doing a custom one to tailor more to your specific needs.
CHECK-IN (also found from the main home menu under the Your Diet Tools)
This is where you enter in your new weight number as well as entering in your measuements of your neck, wais and hips. THey suggest weighing yourself once a week.
Here you can send emails to other members of MFP (my fitness pal)
MY PROFILE (also found from the main home menu under the Your Diet Tools)
This is your profile. You can edit it by clicking on the green EDIT PROFILE button. Notice it jumped you over to the COMMUNITY tab (of the top tabs)
Message Boards lets you communicate with other members. You can ask questions, find answers and just plain chat with others. (also found from the main home menu under the Your Diet Tools)
Blogs are postings of others in their personal blogs they choose to make public. You can browse through and read others personal feelings and thoughts.
Find Members lets you locate others by filtering what ever settings you choose. Then you can invite them to be your friend so you can see each others progress and updates.
Invite Friends lets you invite others by sending them an email invitation to those who are NOT already using this website - so they can join with you.
MY BLOG
This is where you can write your own blog postings. You can choose to make it private or public. (Unfortunately, you cannot set each individual post - like only show certain ones and not others).
FRIENDS
Here you will see a list of all your friends you are connected with through the website.
SETTINGS
Here you can change a lot of different settings (see the screenshot below to see what they have to offer you)
You probably notice Facebook and Twitter sharing settings. Yes, you can share with those who you are connected with via Facebook and Twitter. You can post your progress' on each one of them you choose. It will not automatically do it unless you choose to or you can post only when you want to.
Under the Food tab.
FOOD DIARY (also found from the main home menu under the Your Diet Tools)
This is where you will enter all of the food you eat each day. It looks like this (info of mine has been taken out for personal privacy reasons)
Under each meal, you have Add Food and Quick Tools.
Add Food will take you to this screen
Quick Tools will show you a little pop down menu showing the following
Quick add calories will bring up a small box to quicly add in calories as shown here
Remember meal will put everything listed under that meal into a group that you can title as a meal. For example - you put in your food diary that you had a baked potato, steak, corn and a roll. Well you have to add them all in separately so the calories can be added in correctly. If you eat this same meal a lot, this feature will group them into a meal and you can title it what ever you want so you can remember it. Then when you go back to add it again at another time, you can just add in the meal and everything will already be added in WITHOUT having to enter each item individually again.
Copy yesterday and Copy recent are the other two choices you have to choose from under Quick Tools.
When you are in the ADD FOOD - in the SEARCH box above, you can enter in the food you are searching for that you ate. You can even enter in the PLACE you ate it at. For example, if you had sausage from Cracker Barrel, you can type Cracker Barrel sausage. It will then give you a list of all available options to choose from. In this example there was only one option that showed up. (and I did it under the snacks in this example also)
Then on the right of it, it shows you more options to choose from like how many of the item you actually had. This example has the serving size as 1 patty. If you chose the wrong meal to put it under, you can change that here under To which meal?.
So if you had 2, pattie you would change the number of servings (the fisrt box to click in) to 2. Then click ADD FOOD TO DIARY.
DATABASE
Here you can actually search foods before you enter them into your food diary so you can see what the info on a certain item is before you eat it, or if you are just curious and want to know what an items nutrition fats are.
MY FOODS
This looks like the Database when you go in to it BUT the difference is that this is where you can add in all the information your self. Like if you cannot find something in the database (which I have not come across that problem just yet), you can customize your own food and enter it. Others will then be able to see and use your entry after you submit it.
PERSONAL MEALS
These are your own personal meals you have created. As explained above under Quick Tolls -> Remember Meal.
RECIPES
This lets you enter in custom recipes that will then determine how much of everything is in this recipe. It will save it for you for future use as well.
SETTINGS
These are your food and exercise settings.
Under the Exercise tab.
EXERCISE DIARY (also found from the main home menu under the Your Diet Tools)
Here you can post any and all exercising you do.
DATABASE
This is the same as under the food - you can look up what exercises they have listed to see what numbers you will burn when you do them.
MY EXERCISES
Here you can create your own personal exercises. They will be saved for later use as well.
SETTINGS
These are your food and exercise settings.
Under the Reports tab
Here you can run reports that will show you a bar graph showing the information you select. You can choose from Nutrition, Food and Progress. Each one has a few different settings to choose from as well.
Under the Tools tab
MOBILE (also found from the main home menu under the Your Diet Tools)
There is a coresponding app you can download to your phone for on-the-go. It is available for iPhone, Android and Blackberry.
TICKER
This is the progress bar shown on your main home page.
You have a few options to choose from when you select this feature
You can customize the way you want your Ticker to look as well
Badges
Here you can get the HTML code to add which ever style badge you choose to show on your own web page.
BMR and BMI
These are calculators to figure them out. You can read under each one about exactly what they are.
What is your BMR?
Your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is an estimate of how many calories you'd burn if you were to do nothing but rest for 24 hours. It represents the minimum amount of energy needed to keep your body functioning, including breathing and keeping your heart beating.
Your BMR does not include the calories you burn from normal daily activities or exercise.
Why Calculate Your BMI?
Your BMI (Body Mass Index) can help you find a healthy target weight range. BMI is a measure of body fat based on height and weight.
BMI has several limitations: it's not accurate for pregnant women, people under 5 feet tall, and people with very muscular builds. It also does not account for age.
So as you see this site has many features use can use. I have gotten onto it every day for last few days now since I started and truly believe that this will help me be more aware of what I am eating. As before, I just ate and did not really think twice about it.
Hope this comes in handy for all of you as well.
ENJOY!
