Sunday, November 16, 2008

Tracking Your Health

I discovered the other day that my blood pressure is currently high. Part of this is due to recent stressful events, but it also is due to my poor diet, lack of exercise, and weight gain. I tend to eat a lot of sodium and drink a lot of caffeine, so I decided to start tracking my sodium and cut back on my caffeine intake. The bad news is that sodium is in just about everything. The good news is that I rediscovered a tool and discovered another tool to help. I thought that other Mod-Bloggers might find them useful.

The first tool is for tracking. FitDay allows you to track the food that you eat, the activities you do, your weight, and your moods. It also allows you to set a weight goal and to journal. FitDay is completely free, though they do try to sell you their $20 desktop software. Selecting food in FitDay can be someone complex given the number of suggestions they give you, but if you know the nutritional information for what you are eating or drinking, you can create a custom food item.

This is where the second tool shines. My wife and I love our bread maker. Sadly, the recipe book does not include nutritional information. About.com has a free service called Calorie Count which is a great source for nutritional information. They have a tool there where you can enter a recipe, have it analyzed, and see the resulting nutritional information.

3 comments:

Nomad said...

You may also want to invest in a wrist blood-pressure monitor. They are not as accurate as the big kind, but they can give you a good general sense of your health. And if you watch, you can get them for as little as $10 on Woot or Yugster.

quizwedge said...

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm going to be borrowing some kind of blood-pressure monitoring machine from my in-laws, but in the mean time I've got my very own nurse taking my blood pressure here at home. :)

quizwedge said...

just to clarify, "my very own nurse" = Mrs. Quizwedge