Getting fit—online!

Posted by Suzy Vitello Soulé on May 18th, 2011 at 10:40 AM | | Tweet

Long ago, in the dark ages of the 80’s, I emerged from college with a degree in nutrition and began a series of jobs in hospitals, where I balanced the food selections of patients on special diets. It was like math class for 8 hours a day. Protein, potassium, sodium, calories, fat, all calculated and optimized while trying to accommodate a given patient’s breakfast, lunch and dinner choices.

Fast forward 20-something years, and, though carbs remain 4 calories/gram, the technology surrounding their calculation has made quite a leap. This past month, two situations have brought this to light. In the first, I was just introduced to The Living Cookbook by Joyful Noise Child Development Center Director, Alice Smith. A few months ago, JN instituted a wholesale revision of their menus, bumping up fruits, veggies and whole grains, and decreasing fat and sugar. They brought me in to help analyze the menus, and check in with the classrooms to see how the change was being received a cycle in.

I’m happy to report that the kids were actually eating things like lentil soup, sweet potato and black bean chili, and “homemade” chicken nuggets (real chicken with a whole grain breading, baked). Sure, there’d been some initial fuss, but things had calmed down and were cleaning their plates. Best, for me, was instead of calculating all the nutrients by hand, or using a cumbersome reference book, the Living Cookbook software did it all for me when I punched in the ingredients—making the analysis and any recommended changes super easy.

This week (thanks to Groupon) I started a new exercise class called Fierce Fitness. It’s an intense hour, three days a week (at 6:30 a.m.) of kickboxing. There’s a nutrition component too, which incorporates the whole protein shake thing along with balancing carbs, fats and protein to optimize the results. The workout is incredible (and by incredible, I mean ass-kicking), but here’s the thing, they handed out paper “food logs” that are to be filled in each day and turned in once a week, all calculated out, etc.. With the limited time I have these days, I knew immediately that wouldn’t fly, so off to my iPhone I trod, and immediately found this great app.The My Fitness Pal website and app is incredibly robust, has an amazing database of common foods, and is as user friendly as it gets. Being the loudmouth I am, I immediately broadcast the tool to the Get Fierce Facebook Group. Hey, why not spread the love?