Jean Eng Blog

I’ve been using the resources at SparkPeople and it’s really helped me stay on track. I find that being accountable to someone or something such as an online diet and fitness log makes a big difference in being committed and staying focused on your goal at hand.

I’ve logged in every bit of food I’ve had since the day I joined which was just shy of 3 weeks ago! So far, I’ve been doing my workouts, way more than I ever was doing and I’ve kept up with my 6 meals a day every 2-3 hours! At first, logging food seem like such a chore but once you realize that as most people tend to eat similar things everyday, it makes saving those items in your favorites and logging them much easier!

I find it sometimes easier to just manually input any packaged items I may buy from the grocery store right into my favorites. So if I buy a pack of hotdogs for instance, I would spend a few moments of time to input the values from the nutritional label into and whenever I eat a hotdog, I can easily and quickly log it for whatever meal time it is! I have done that with condiments, bread, packaged sandwich meats, etc.

A great thing about that is that it forces you to really examine the label as you’re buying these items. It’s unbelievable to me sometimes the amount of crap goes into making something which seems like a simple type of food. There are tons of stuff I can’t pronounce let alone know what it is sometimes when I read the ingredient list. As in the example of the hotdog, the brand that I was buying before looked ok, at least that’s what I had thought. A closer look at their new packaging showed that it contained 1g of trans fat! How is it possible that an all beef hotdog contain a gram of trans fat is beyond me. That’s when I started carefully looking at the label and the ingredients. Now I choose a different brand. Not to say hotdogs are all that healthy but it isn’t as bad as some other stuff.

And if you’re watching your calories and fat, it’s amazing how those things can be hidden inside your favorite salad dressing! You’re eating salad for your vegetable servings and for it’s low inherit calories and fat content but then you slather it up with your favorite creamy dressing and next thing you know, your salad is probably just as high in fat and calories as a sandwich or burger.

What I’m saying is that logging your food, being accountable for what is going into my body is a real eye opener in terms of one’s diet. You can’t just exercise and eat crap and expect health…nor is eating healthy and not exercising the key to wellness either. Once you familiarize yourself with how logging is done, the rest is a breeze! Sometimes I’m so quick with my logging that I find that I have time not knowing what to do with it. But it doesn’t last for long as I can always amuse myself with something.

I have also found that I enjoy a little bit of competition to get me motivated. I have joined many SparkTeams that’s related to friendly challenges, like walking 10,000 steps a day, lose 10 lbs a month, etc. I have defined some goals daily and have even posted a few messages in the message boards. I really like the fact they have free workout videos there too and examples of how to do an exercise properly. I can’t believe the site is free! It offers more stuff cumulatively than some paid membership sites! It really is a great community there and did I mention that it’s free to sign up and you NEVER pay any monthly fees? The free is not just an introductory period or limited access to their website, it’s completely free!

I’ve already lost 6 pounds since I started at the end of April and I’m very motivated to keep up the good work! It’s inspiring to put in my daily logs and see the progress. The leaderboards for the different challenges and sparkteams makes it more interesting as you’re sort of not only competing with yourself but with other’s progress.

Last week I was on page 2 of the leaderboard for the 10k steps a day team and this week I was determined to move up to page 1. There are only 3 pages of members and I didn’t join the group and start tracking til May 6 when I got my new awesome Omron digital pedometer. Well two days ago, I made it to page 1 because I walked the heck out of my Tony Little Gazelle! I did around 20k steps for two days straight, maybe three, I’ll have to look at my logs to see but man, my legs are sore! The people who are behind me in the leaderboard are only a few hundred steps on my tail! If I slack off just one day, I could get back on page 2 again.

It’s competition like that that will push me a little bit further! Anyway, I really love this site and more people should know about it. Join it, it’s free. When it ask you who referred you, say NDREALM …that’s me. You can view my SparkPage or just sign up free at SparkPeople.com or click the image below!

Fitness Craze 2008! Join the Revolution…Get Healthy!