Have you heard of My Fitness Pal?

I have to share one of my latest interests/obsessions.  It's the (FREE) My Fitness Pal application.  This fabulous little program is a pretty simple and helpful tool for weight loss.  I have to admit to being a bit of a novice about dieting, for the most part I feel like I eat well and am pretty healthy.

However, over the summer this ah-hem mid-30's (okay late 30's) momma found a little extra weight creeping on.  After a few weeks of complaining I decided to take my BFFs advice and give this little tool a try.

And what do you know?  It worked!  I discovered that I was eating more calories than I needed.  And although many were "good" calories (mostly fresh fruits) it was still more than I needed.  Especially sugar. Do you have any idea how much sugar is in an orange or banana for example?  

My Fitness Pal is basically a convenient way to track calories.  Less calories in = weight loss.  It's pretty simple.  What is fabulous about it is the huge database of foods already in their system.  So it's pretty easy to find what I ate that meal.  If you use a smart phone/tablet you can also scan bar codes of food products.

Easy peasy!

Exercise it important too and the app tracks how many calories you burn and then adds those to your daily allotment.  For example this morning I did a Zumba class so an extra 463 calories were added.  

I've been using the app for the last 3 weeks and am on track for meeting my fitness goals.  I've discovered that when I eat less sugar I am also a kinder-nicer-mommy. :)  It's a win win!  Once I meet my goal I can switch to maintenance and they'll tell me how many calories/fat/carbs, etc I need to maintain my weight.

I've used it during Girl's Night Out and family dinners out since so many restaurants are already loaded in the app.

So check it out, it's free!  You can use it on your computer, phone and/or tablet.