Fitday Followup!
Daniel | April 22, 2008
I posted about Fitday.com a week ago with some initial impressions, but I’ve been using the site now for about 2 weeks. In that time, I’ve had moments that range from good (Oh, cool!) to bad (Huh? That can’t be right…) and downright ugly (Oh, that’s NOT good!)
I thought I’d have more to say about Fitday once I’d been using it for a while, but as it turns out, no. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with it, quite the opposite - it’s a nice tool, well executed. It’s just very straight forward, and I’m a complainer by nature. When there’s nothing to complain about, I tend to be quiet. It’s something I’m working on.
I’ve been really pleased with the completeness of the built in database of foods and activities. It’s also very easy to alter an existing food or to build a custom food from scratch. For instance, I take a multi-vitamin, a super B complex, calcium and vitamin A every morning. I “built” my own custom food, creatively called “daily vitamin”, to include all the nutritional data for all 4 of those supplements. Really, I should build my morning protein shake into it as well and call the whole things “daily mornings”. The first week it seemed like I spent 15 or 20 minutes a day looking for foods or changing things to make them customised. As the second week started, I was spending maybe 5 minutes a day total getting everything entered in.
One of the things I can’t figure out is where they’re getting their data for calories burned. According to the data, I should be losing about 2.5 pounds a week, and I’m not. Based on the data I’ve seen at NutritionData.com and Calories per hour I think fitday may have their estimates on the high end of things. This is not a big deal, and can be easily adjusted in a number of ways. You might say you’re older than you are, or (as I do) put in 100 to 150 less calories burned than you actually burn in your activities.
The ugly part came when I looked at my nutritional information. I was missing a lot of important nutrients - I was only getting 60% of the recomended daily allowence (RDA) for calcium, 40% of vitimin K, 80% of vitamin A and D, missing minerals and some other things. Armed with the knowledge of how much I needed and of what, I went down to my local pharmacy and picked out a new batch of daily vitamins.
So what do I think of Fitday.com? I’ve used it for 2 weeks, my follow up article for the blog is done, and I’m going to keep using it. I have a few more minor changes I want to make, and I’ve sent in one suggestion (that they add a way to build custom foods based on ingredients). For what I use it for, it’s exactly what I need.
