I can't believe it's been months since I wrote on this thing. I seem to go through phases, sometimes writing nearly every day for weeks on end, other times not at all.
For various reasons, mostly because I've seen a steady incline on my weight from a January low of 75kg (itself up from 72kg after Nepal) to a Monday high of 81kg, I'm paying more attention to what I eat, and what exercise I do. I'd like to get down to around 70kg (or higher, but as long as boyfat % is less than 15%)
Following some suggestions from a fellow geek who's being doing this for a while, I signed up for MyFitnessPal to keep a food, exercise and calorie diary, and Endomondo for an ad-hoc exercise/calorie calculator. This'll go someway towards keeping me on the straight and narrow calorific intake/expenditure wise.
I realised a number of weeks ago that I still haven't started cycling again this year. I think the wet weather and general cold has put me off; by this time last year I'd clocked many hundreds of miles. Now that Rae has a road bike too (happy birthday!), we'll go out regularly and I'll record those calories burned (calculated using HR and cadence monitors along with GPS data) into the MyFitnessPal diary. Yesterday, I ordered a couple of Garmin Forerunner 410 GPS watches with HR monitors; easier to carry around when going running. Another gadget to help with the recording of data.
Now, if only there was a way to automatically get it from all the devices into a central data store…
I'm trying this pal thing today as you've recommended it. Seems good so far.
I'm still finding it great, 22 days down the line. Just added my first food to it today. The whole idea of 'earning' treats appeals, and it's keeping up the exercise side of things too. It's also great there's a plethora of mobile apps, for all platforms, so it's easy to add while you're out and about.
Tip top, as they say.