But I’m adding my endorsement.

Today’s tip is about something I have resisted for a long time.

I believe I’ve written now and again about wanting to lose some weight and about how moving out of the City to car country has sent my weight climbing in the opposite direction.

For a long time, I resisted the idea that I would have to actually go on a diet.  I thought, maybe, if I could just motivate myself to get back into exercising that would be enough.

Diets don’t have a good reputation.  People keep falling off them.

They don’t have a lot of culinary appeal.  Maybe some of you like cottage cheese, but…. blech!

My sister, however, directed me to myfitnesspal, and it was a most excellent tip!

I am now, for the first time in my life counting calories.  I’ve been doing it for 9 weeks, and I have lost 10 pounds.

Not bad, huh?

Myfitnesspal makes it easy to track your food intake with thousands of entries in their database and an easy interface.

Now, I will say that nutritional content has been a secondary concern for me in the early stages of shedding these pounds, but just out of necessity, I am eating more fruits and vegetables.

1200 calories is an astonishingly small amount of food, you see, compared to the contemporary diet of most people in this day and age.  But, if you eat fruits and vegetables you can eat almost all day—thus, satisfying the “munchies” and still shedding pounds.

But what I like about myfitnesspal is that I can have chips and ice cream so long as I keep them within my calorie budget.  Plus, in an incentive to exercise, you can eat more if you track the calories you’ve burned.  (I’m walking for pizza is a thought that has crossed my mind more than once on the treadmill.)

I’ve got a ways to go, and I might hit a plateau, of course.  I might fail to keep it off.

But I set myfitnessplan goal to lose a pound a week, and I’ve done better than that just by religiously tracking what I eat.  I haven’t felt deprived—in fact, I’ve had ice cream every day.  I’ve never eaten detested “diet” foods, and it’s been remarkably easy.

So, I’m thanking my sister, my other fitness pal, for the tip, and I’m passing it on to you.