Fitday.com: Free Weightloss Tracking Site Review

Low carbers track. Or at least the smart ones do. Fitday.com is a very popular free, online tools for tracking weight, nutritional intake, and exercise. A paid version of the Fitday that has additional features is also available; this review only covers the free version.

Easy to set up the free account - just pick user name and password - option to make it public - which I did not choose. (Sensitive about my eating and weight so I keep my private.) My experience with Fitday was a three month use with listing all of my food/activity/weights every day.

I started with the tab that said weight goal - after I put my dates and goals in the program warned me that this was too short a time period for that goal but I left it in anyway.

The tabs within the weight goal section allows you to see a graph of your actual weight compared to your goal weight each day. I was pretty pleased with my three month graph even though I didn't reach my set goal...which I now know was unrealistic (they had warned me)!

There is a BMI tab that shows where you fit in at your current weight. This hurt my feelings in the beginning because I thought I looked really good and while I knew I was "overweight" I was discouraged that I was in the "obese" BMI category. I am now officially "overweight."

The Calorie restriction & balance tabs are helpful if you are counting calories.  I am not, so I didn't use this part. The Progress tab will show you the calories you have used and what your weekly weight loss is compared to your set goal (I averaged 1.7 pounds per week during a 3 month period).

Each of the main tabs are easy to use. Often short on time, I found myself very pleased with using three areas every day and thought these were most beneficial  to my personal goals of balancing my nutrition, keeping my carbs at a minimum and tracking my weight loss which was a pleasing benefit of  my new way of eating.

The tabs I used most were:  Foods - Activities - Weight.

Food Tracking

This is set up for the current date but you can go back to previous days to enter what you've eaten if you need to. I keep a running notebook on my kitchen counter of everything I eat so I usually transfer the information into the  Food Log in the Fitday program at night or early the next morning.

A lot of the foods I ate were in the food list that they had available. I  would just need to adjust it to the amounts I ate. There is also an option to create a custom food for the food log. I was able to list my vitamin supplements and enter the information from the bottle label so each time I put it in my food log, all the information would appear.

I also made a custom food entry for a KFC chicken wing as I couldn't find it in the Fitday list. I looked up the information online and entered it as a custom food. There are several ways to quickly list food you eat each day by going to "recent foods"

The information from this section is used in graphs and charts that show you how much protein, fat, carbohydrate and alcohol you've consumed each day.   A nutrition chart will show you where you are below recommended levels and this is how I realized I was low in potassium (my legs were weak and crampy) and I made adjustments in foods I ate to bring this level in line with recommended percentages.

Exercise/Activity Tracking

I must say this might have been my very favorite part of the program.  It gave me calorie burned credit for almost anything I did during the day! I think I got some credit just for breathing!  There is a list to choose from and then you enter the time you spent doing it. Preparing food, washing dishes by hand, shopping, many types of physical activity including different levels of  "frisky business" although they call it by the proper name.

I found this area very helpful since I could get credit for doing laundry, going up and down my stairs (I have basement, main floor, upstairs) and things besides weight lifting or aerobics (I do light weight training sporadically but I never jump around).

Weight Tracking

This tab allows you to enter your current weight each day. Probably not a good idea for me but it is used in the graphs. If you entered it every few days or even once  a week it would show on the graph properly...which is what I plan to do in the future. Weighing everyday is not for someone like me.   I tend to be "off" all day if my weight goes up a bit or does not go down.

For a free program (or even if one pays for it) I think it is fabulous. It gives me rewards by seeing progress whether it be a weight loss graph or an activity chart that shows me what calories I burned. For me it was a health issue that brought me to this way of eating. I found immediate support at lowcarbeating and heard about Fitday through the forums I read.

I love numbers. I get teased about my love of numbers, charts and graphs.  

Fitday is a great tool that fills a lot of different needs for me. I would love a copy for my desktop to use offline. That is where one fee would be incurred. If I had discretionary income, I would definitely purchase the copy to use off line.

Some of the features that might improve this site are offered in a paid version online.

One thing I couldn't do that I wanted to was to look back three months without hitting the "show previous day" link. However, since it was free I am not expecting everything I want to do to be available.

I give the free version of Fitday five stars as it really is easy and extremely helpful.