A friend of mine was recently asking me about a tracker, and I realized that I have tried many online trackers out there, with varying levels of success.  So, I thought I’d share my findings.

But, first a caveat.  I am a daily weigher.  I religiously weigh my self every day, and now, I measure my %BF on the scale every day too.  So, I need tools that will average out all the movement to allow me to see trends, not water weight.

Weight Trackers & Food Journals

Daily Burn – I love all the trackers on this site.  I have tried fitday, weight watchers, mymedifast, and several other sites, but, Daily Burn seems to pwn them all.  Plus, if you have an iPhone, you can track right from your phone.  They track measurements too, but, it is a bit of a pain to enter everything, so, I moved my measurements tracking over to a spreadsheet, since I only track those bi weekly anyway.  The food journaling is even better than the weight / measurement tracking.  And, if you eat packaged meals, you can scan the UPC code with your camera, and instantly add it without having to “type” in the name.  Epic Win!

Ticker Factory – If you are a forum lurker, you gotta have a ticker.  While I’m not completely happy with the choices at tickerfactory, it does work.  If you find a better one, let me know.  Right now, my ticker is a guy “surfing” down some slopes, because I couldn’t find a snowboarder.

WeightWatchers I only list this one in case you are actually doing weight watchers.  They have a very full food database, with lots of point values computed.  But, if you’re not watching “points”, then there are better sites out there.

SparkPeople – Lots of people love this site.  The food database is large.  There is nothing wrong with it, but, I personally don’t need all the emails and annoying reminders.  They annoyed me away.

Weight Trackers – Daily Weighing

Hacker’s Diet Online – I used this for QUITE a while.  It was created by the author of theHacker’s Diet, which is an awesome sanity check for anyone trying to lose weight.  And, while there is nothing wrong with the tracker, it only tracks weight.  When I wanted something to track %Bodyfat too, I replaced it.

Physics Diet Tracker – This tracker was based on the hacker’s diet tracker.  But, they have extra fields you can track, better graphs, and easier data entry, even from my phone.  And, they have a banner you can use for your signature that makes you look über cool.

Information / Advice

Shrinkgeek – The “Elitist Jerks” of weight loss, but without the attitude.  The authors are all in varying stages of weight loss, and they have a lot to share.  The forums are a bit new, but still insightful.

exrx.net – EVERYTHING you would ever need to know about exercise.  Trying to exercise the muscle on the back of your hand?  They probably have a movement to do it.

Hackers Diet – A great sanity check on why all diets work, and why all diets don’t.

Other Stuff

Garmin Connect – I use this site to share my runs (or, I will, once I start running again)

Motion X / TrailRunner – Great GPS iPhone apps to track runs / bikes / etc.  I like MotionX over TrailRunner, even though TrailRunner is easier to use.

So, I did drop a lot of weight this (last) week.  6.6 lbs.  That is a lot for me especially coming off of a 2.5 lb gain.  In fact, I’m keeping track of weeks on Medifast, and, last week I lost more than the previous four weeks combined.  (Weeks 5-8 I lost 5.8 lbs).  And, that loss included some carb upsets.  We visited family, so I had to eat some carbs at a home cooked dinner.  To prepare for the day, I switched to BioTest Protein shakes, that are 1 carb each, for my other five meals.  So, instead of getting in 50g of carbs + my lean meal, I got in 5 grams of carbs, plus a non-lean meal.  Seemed to work.

My weight has been stable, hovering at 190 for 3 days now.  So, I’m hoping for a movement soon.  (He said movement)

Working out has been boring.  My bench has been getting hard, but everything else (other than body weight work) has been way too easy.  So, today, I added load.  And it rocked!  I can feel soreness starting everywhere.

Workout

• 5 mins cardio
• Stronglifts 5×5
  • Squat 5×5@95#  (Should have been 80, bumped it a bit)
  • Overhead Press 5×5 @65# (Should have been 60 — on track here)
  • Deadlift 1×5 @ 135# (Was at 120)
  • Chin ups 5xF: 17 (5/3/3/3/3)
  • Prone Bridge (Plank Hold):  3×45sec

I was pretty happy with the chin ups, though I expected more chin ups after my 3 pull up day on Friday.  I’m very happy with bumping the weight.  And, when I got to the gym, there was 115# on the bar, on the ground.  So I clean’ed it up to the squat rack.  My first clean I missed.  I didn’t get under the bar fast enough.  The second one was fine.  I’m excited about my clean increasing now.  The 115# was much harder than the 60# I did yesterday!

But, before we get into the “plateau” discussion, here’s today’s workout:

Workout Logs

Warmup:  5 mins on the treadmill.
Stronglifts 5×5: Squat: 65#, Bench: 145#, Power Clean: 55#, Bardips: 12/7/6
Cooldown: 5 mins on cardio machine.
Calories Burned: 384

Squats are still REALLY light.  But, I didn’t even have to think about form today.  Knees were wobble free.  The unload is really helping get my form right.  Bench is getting REALLY slow on the 4th and 5th sets.  I may have to start making sure I get enough rest.  Power clean is starting to get tiring . . which is good.  I can’t wait to see how my form behaves as it gets heavier.  For now, the form looks ok, but, since I can reverse curl the weight, it won’t really be a clean till it gets a bit heavier.  And, finally, the bar dips are still improving.  I did the same total number of reps as on Friday, but I managed to get 12 on the first set, versus 10 last week.  I did notice that the picture on the machine had the guy only going down till his arms were parallel to the floor.  I usually go down until my range of motion stops me.  I’m not sure which way is right.

Plateau Busting

I’m not sure if this is the start of a plateau, but, I want to be sure I don’t end up in the sam hell I was in last fall, so, I want to nip it in the bud, quickly.  First, I think it is best to recognize what I’ve been doing wrong, that could be contributing to the gain / lack of weight loss.  And, I won’t ignore things that could have been contributing that are not necessarily bad:

Problems / Symptoms

• I’ve been cheating on my diet, a little.  My protein portions have been getting progressively larger.  If I am at a steakhouse, and I feel like a strip, then I get it, and typically eat all of the 10 oz, instead of cutting it in half, and getting my 5.  I have also not been weighing protein at home.
• I have been substituting in meals . . adding a little protein here and there, playing with recipes.
• Last week, I had a bad cheat day.
• Last week, I also went snowboarding, where I had two redbull vodka’s (sugar free, but, the alcohol calories didn’t help)
• I started doing stronglifts 5×5.  I tried to up the weights a little, and add harder exercises to compensate for the fact that I’m not really a beginner.  But, it is still a MUCH easier workout than my previous one.
• I could be gaining muscle.  My %bf is slowly lowering, so, this little gain could be muscle related, but I really don’t think so.
• I started actually doing hard cardio yesterday.  We’ll see how that pans out doing running Tuesday & Thursday.

The Plan

• Follow diet plan religiously.  So, get more anal.  Weigh meats, and start logging food for a few days.
• Log exercise, including calories burned.  Compare numbers to my previous workout.  If they are less, supplement with cardio.

That’s actually about it, plan wise.  Start logging, and see if anything jumps off of the page.  Wish me luck!

Today’s workout:

10 mins treadmill – 5.0 MPH – many hills
20 mins stair climber – escalator style.  many floors climbed.

I burned about 350kcals, and my average HR was about 150.  (I can grab my watch for exact numbers, but I was somewhere around there.)  All in all, good session!

Progress Images

This one was taken before the V-Diet 3.0.  It was after I had lost about 10 lbs from my start . . . maybe 20.

This picture was taken after Weight Watchers, at the start of my 4 month plateau:

This picture was taken after two months of Medifast.  Still need to work more on my chesticles.

The sales guy immediately saw why I needed boots.  He called my old Morrow boots antiques.  And, by today’s standards, he was probably right.  I thought my gear was 10 years old, but, after checking, it is more like 6 years old . . heh.  He immediately went to some Shaun White boots.  That particular set was one of the few I knew by name, and I had only heard good things, so, I was sold before I heard the price, $249 with a 30% discount, giving roughly $175.  While this is likely a bit high, I needed the fitting, which was the most important part, and why I didn’t even bother with e-bay.

The bindings were Burton Custom white bindings.  I thought the White on white looked really cool.  (And, I went with white laces on the boots):

Finally, we looked at snowboards.  I was really torn between two Burton boards, that were about $30 apart.  I also looked at a Ride rocker board.  The rocker was interesting, since it was supposed to make things easier — i.e. harder to catch an edge, you just muscle the board around.  I didn’t think I needed that kind of help, but, figured it wouldn’t hurt.  So, I was stuck between two Burtons and the Ride.  Quinn was with me, so I let him choose.  He was already leaning toward the ride, but, when he (and, honestly, me too) found out that the graphic on the Ride changed when it got cold, he was sold.  So, I ended up with the Ride Crush:

The left image is the top, when room temperature.  The middle is the top cold, and the right is the bottom.  The artwork was all done by a 7th grade art class in Seattle, WA.  Tres cool.

I pretty much mirrored my existing setup, with a 15 degree and 0 degree.  My previous board didn’t have quite 15 degrees, so, this one will be a bit different.

I can’t wait to try out the setup on Thursday!

But, I was now in trouble.  I loved boarding with music, but I didn’t have any way to create a playlist.  My iPod syncs with my iMac at home, not with my work laptop.  So, I got annoyed, and used an iPod  extractor to extract the music that I liked from it.  (I had itunes just “filling” the rest of the 80Gb with random music).  So, I pulled off about 2.5 Gb of my “Must Haves”, one of the few playlists that I actually use.  (Normally, I just fill my ipod / iphone with a “must have” playlist of stuff that I’m listening to at the moment).

Once I had the music off, I refreshed my Rockbox to the newest version, and actually read the manual.  I was floored.  While it is not intuitive like the iPod, the rockbox software had MANY features that I loved:

• Car mode – when power goes off, the ipod shuts down.
• Pulling out the headphones pauses.
• Announcing of songs with voice (gonna enable that for when I’m boarding)
• Fade in/out when pausing / changing songs.

And, I also noticed one other thing in the manual.  The “Database” mode, which I had been using, is very limited in features.  Rockbox’s full feature set is mainly available when using the filesystem, not when supplementing it’s database from the iPod strange method of storing files.

So, I deleted all 80Gb of data from my iPod, added on the extracted music into a music folder, and moved to Rockbox.  I think the only functionality I have lost is podcasts & video’s purchased from Apple.  And, I can always reboot to the Apple OS if I need to use that.  I’m going to stop syncing music with iTunes, and make this a rockbox only device.

Happy times ahead.

When I weighed 201lbs, my scale told me that my body fat was 25.6% Assuming that is accurate, that means that I have 51 pounds of fat, and 150 pounds of non-fat.  Assuming that 150 is my non fat true weight, and using the WHO tables, that state that my %BF should be between 8-18%, that means that my weight should be:

At 8% body fat, I should weigh: 163lbs
At 18% body fat, I should weigh: 183lbs

Does this sound right?  My math was as follows:

NonFatWeight = Total Weight – (Total Weight * %BF)
So, current weight: 150 = 201 – (.256 * 201).

And, the ideals give the above numbers.  Is that math close enough for a goal?  Or, should I be doing it some other way?

I’m seriously considering starting the Stronglifts.com program after my trip to SLC.  But, I need to get just a bit of metrics in to make sure I’m not losing muscle on my diet.  The woes of a stats freak . . .

The Workout

• 5 mins of cardio
• Circuit x2
  • Squats 185#/5, 185#/5
  • DB Lunge 40#/5, 45#/5
  • Lying Leg Curl: 145#/5, 145#/5
  • Hyperextension w/bar 50#/5, 50#/5
  • Hip Adduction Machine: 235#/5, 280#/5
  • Hip Abduction Machine: 235#/5, 280#/5
  • Calf Raises: 225#/6, 225#/5
  • Hanging Leg Raise: 10, 10
  • Reverse Calf Raise: 225#/5, 225#/5
  • Crunches: 35 (on machine), 60
  • Twisting Sit Ups: 10, 10

I ran out of time, so I skipped my closing cardio.

I set up the bars on the power rack, and put the bench in it. I laid down with the bar just touching my chest — it was about .5″ over the safety bars. I exhaled, and I could roll the bar over my head, and escape. Perfect.

When I benched, on my second set, I failed early. And, I got stuck. So, I rolled the bar up, like I practiced, and I was set. Perfecto! I can now bench heavy, safely knowing that I won’t get stuck! Who needs a spot? muahahahaha

The Workout

• Cardio: 5 mins
• Circuit (x2)
  • Bench: 185#/6, 185#/2 — Note, I should have only done 5 the first set, and saved my strength for the 2nd.
  • Incline DB Press: 60#/7, 60#/5 — I had trouble getting the 65# weights to my shoulders.  So, I used 60#, which was a bit light.  Next time, I’m going to use my knees to kick the weights up there.
  • Decline Flies: 40#/5, 40#/5 — Need to up the weight.
  • Shoulder Press: 40#/6, 40#/3 — Should have only done 5 first set
  • Bar Dips:  BW/8, BW/5 — This was actually MORE than on my lighter day.  Weird.
  • Rope Pull Downs: 80#/6, 80#/8 — Was cable pull downs, not rope, since I’m not wearing gloves any more.  Should have used more weight.
• Cardio: 5 mins + 2 mins cool down.  Did the entire 5 mins at 6.0MPH

All in all, much better workout than normal.  I don’t know if it was the heavy weight, or finally getting back into the groove after San Juan.

Original Post