Counting Calories Eaten and Burned on a Budget

One of the products that is all the rage now is a device that counts calories burned, heart rate and even sleep efficiency. There are several brands that are dominating the market. Both major brands are actually made by the same company and come with a website membership that allows you to track your caloric intake. These sophisticated devices communicate with the website and when you enter your eating for the day, you can see if you have met your caloric intake goals for the day.

While these devices are absolutely great, they are pretty expensive. I didn't want to spend $200-$250 for one of these devices, but really wanted the benefits.

The Pros:
I discovered a really good alternative for less that $25! First of all, one of the most important components of these devices is the website where you can count calories, track meals, track exercise and calories burned. I tried several free webisites that provide these services, and my favorite by far is www.myfitnesspal.com. My Fitness Pal is super easy to use and has tons and tons of foods already loaded to its library. I have used other sites, including the super spendy ones mentioned above and had to enter the nutritional information of many of the foods and supplements that I regularly use. My Fitness Pal has my shakeology in the library as well as ProArgi9, common brands of food like Aldi and Wal-mart. I haven't had to enter any nutritional information yet. The ads are limited and do not interfere with the usage of the website.

Most exercises that I do are in the exercise library and I don't have to make up new entries. After exercising, I just enter the time I spent on the exercise and the calories burned are calculated automatically. Sometimes the exercise calories counts don't match the watch exactly and I just adjust the time I spent on the exercise to match my watch counts. For CrossFit exercises, I write the WOD in the notes section and piece together the exercise in the log and use the watch numbers to tweak the numbers.

Once the exercise and food log is complete for the day, there is a button that calculates the totals and the program will estimate the weight you are expected to be in 5 weeks time!

The second part of the program is the cardiac monitoring device. I found a "Sportline" brand watch/calorie counter at Walmart for less than $30. The watch has several cool features including being water-resistant. The watch is light weight and and pretty simple to operate. The watch is affordable and so far very reliable. I have worn it in water, during strenuous crossfit workouts and during the night from time to time.


The Cons:
The expensive top of the line models automatically monitor the heartrate and calculate calories. This watch requires more user interaction. Every time your heart rate increases, you have to set the rate by touching the sensor on the watch for a few seconds. Even though this may seem like a con, the watch displays the rate and the percentage of max heart rate. And since you are actively monitoring your heart rate, you become very aware of your activity level and relationship to the burning of calories. So, I guess I consider it a pro...

Instead of automatically entering the calorie burn on the website, you have to log into My Fitness Pal and update it. The good news is that many of my exercises are already in the library complete with calories burned per minute! So, log in to the website and enter the number of minutes you ran or did burpees or whatever and the total calories burned is added to your daily log. You can adjust the numbers to match your watch. Again, much more time consuming, but allows you to closely monitor your efforts and eating.

So, the high end expensive systems require little user intervention and involvement, but the less expensive units are a great way to actively monitor your progress and be very involved in your health progress. Often, overweight individuals are very out of tune with their bodies. Using an active monitoring system is a great way to learn about the body and its responses to food and exercise.