It is no secret that most people have less discretionary spending than they did last year. Many who hired personal trainers to keep them honest in their quest to lose weight and stay fit no longer have the funds to make such a splurge. If you are one of those people, you may wonder how you can stay fit while saving your cash.
There are lots of free options for people that are looking for online tools to help them set goals, track them, and ultimately achieve them.
Online Sites Deliver Diet and Fitness Tools and Support
SparkPeople.com
Joining SparkPeople is like joining Facebook. It hosts a community of people who connect with each other because they either want to live a healthy lifestyle or they want to lose weight. When you sign up, the program suggests teams that you might like to join, like "Spark New Jersey" or "Healthy in Our 30's."
The site is packed with resources. It has a nutrition tracker, fitness tracker, and weigh ins. It has goal trackers, fitness demonstrations, and plans. Users can also access recipes, quick links and thousands of articles related to diet and fitness.
If you are looking for help creating an exercise program, the site will provide you with one. If you want to enter your own, be prepared. It is possible, but it is a laborious process. Entering information for the food log can be a task as well. However, if you are busy and you find data entry daunting, you can use Quick Track. Quick Track allows you to quickly input three items of information: water intake, fruit and vegetable intake, and exercise duration.
FitDay.com
FitDay is a site dedicated to diet and weight loss: it is focused on calories taken in versus those expended. If weight loss is your primary goal, this may be the site for you.
Although it is not as dynamic as SparkPeople, FitDay also enables you to track food, exercise, and weight loss goals. When you sign up, the program asks you to describe your lifestyle. This may be problematic depending upon your occupation. There is not a good category to choose from if you are a stay-at-home mom, for example. The choices, "standing work" or "highly active" are difficult to choose from.
Like SparkPeople, adding foods to FitDay's food log is a process. The site also has fewer options and specifics than SparkPeople does, which may force you to enter what is most like what you ate for breakfast, as opposed to exactly what you ate. For exercise, you can choose from a host of activities, including non-traditional activities, like cleaning your house or watching television.
For more functionality, you can pay $5.49/month to download software that delivers custom tracking and advanced reports.
MedHelp.org
MedHelp is a forum hosted by doctors and medical experts, and it has a distinctly medical bent to it. If you are interested in maintaining a healthy lifestyle but also have questions or concerns about a medical condition, this site will interest you.
In addition to tracking exercise and diet, you can track sleep, water consumption, and even your child's development. You can join a host of communities, from those dedicated to diseases to others dedicated to addictions. The site has thousands of articles on various health topics and "ask a doctor" forums.
In terms of fitness, the exercise tracker has a list of activities to choose from, including yoga and tai chi. Some activities allow you to specify if you were exercising vigorously or not. If you choose golf as your activity, you can specify whether or not you carried your clubs. Despite all the exercise options, though, some traditional activities, like Pilates, were not options.
Harness the Power of the Internet to Achieve Your Goals
Many online sites have taken it upon themselves to serve as your personal trainer. By joining one you can get information, ask questions, learn new exercises and cooking techniques. It may well be worth your while to shop around and determine which one can help you achieve your goals.
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