Monday 2 April 2012

Dailyburn Tracker: Logging Nutrition and Fitness

Dailyburn Tracker is a wonderful site that I have used for many years (but not affiliated to) to track my nutrition, fitness, and body goals. Over the years it has indirectly taught me a lot about my body - how it works, what makes it work better (or worse) etc. Not only does it have tracking software (manual input but does have some capability for automated input from devices) but also keeps you motivated with challenges, group, individual motivators and forums where you can ask knowledgeable members and staff lifestyle, nutrition, and fitness questions. 

Locker Room

The 'Locker Room' is your own profile page where you can keep track of your goals, body measurements, and your motivators comments. There is also a handy feature that allows you to see how well you are doing with your nutrition goals that week and how many times you have exercised. It is quite a motivation to see you body measurements (weight and inches) going down if weight loss or fat loss is your goal. It also works well for people wanting to gain weight, seeing your muscles mass going up is great!

Nutrition

The nutrition tab has been an invaluable tool in my weight loss journey. Dailyburn has a neat little calorie mechanism that will calculate your range based on your body inputs (weight, fat % etc) and activity level; it hasn't been wrong so far. There is also a very comprehensive food data base where you can select a variety of foods, and even different brands, to put into your food journal. If the food you're looking for is not there, or doesn't have the right information for you, there is the option to create a new entry for it. Individual recipes are an option if you have a favourite dish you like to make every week but has 50 ingredients, you can save a lot of time by just creating the recipe and inputing that each time. 
On the main page of the nutrition tab is a break down of what you have eaten today. This includes a pie chart with your protein, carbs, fat, and others (often alcohol) percentages. Also displayed along side are you goals for each, e.g 100g protein, 40g fat, 100g carbs, and 1200-1800 calories in total. Again this has been an awesome tool, especially when you hit a plateau and you need to re-jiggle you food ratios to fire up the fat loss again.

Fitness

Fitness for health (and competition) is a big motivator on this site. There are literally hundreds of exercises to choose from and even some pre-made ones by the staff that you can follow such as beginners running and fat loss. There are also popular programmes like P90X and TRX: instead of using the workbooks you can input your data directly into the site and see your progress - this is also great for challenges.

Challenges

This is a great motivator to stick to your new lifestyle. There are so many challenges to choose from and if you don't like the selection then you can just make your own. The variety of competitions range from weight loss (timed, percentages, and lbs/kg) reps in specific exercises (who can do the most reps in bicep curls, squats, lunges etc), weight lifting (who can lift the most in this time frame), distance (who can cycle, run, walk etc. the most), and everybody wins challenges (if you can complete the challenge - lose 10lbs, burn 1000 calories etc. - you'll win).

Motivators

Here you can join specific groups relating to your lifestyle, post questions, meet like minded people and keep each other going when times are hard. You can also invited people to be your motivator so that they have access to your profile, give you tips from what they can see and generally keep you the straight and narrow.

Forums

This is a great place to be if you have a question and fitness, nutrition or just about healthy living in general. There are an abundance of people who will be able to give advice from every different angle - that way you can experiment with a multitude of options. The forums are moderated by the staff at Dailyburn and there are 'contributors' (people who have been here a long time, know the ropes, and have responded to many a question) who are the best people to ask.

So that's Dailyburn. If you are ever in need of a tracking tool this has to be the best one I've come across. It covers anything and everything and has a variety of ways to keep you motivated. The only problem I've come across is that if you stop using it it's easy to fall off the wagon.

Check it out and let me know what you think. If you have found a better site or know of some other great tools out there share them in the comments to let me know.

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