gtFtr

Most of the trackers here are for specific exercises but some people like to track daily statistics. If you wear a pedometer and try to reach the 10000 Steps a Day goal then it would be nice to record process so we now have a Daily or Stats tracker

@gtFtr Stats Steps 9000 Cals 800 3.9 miles# walked to Bldg8 today

The parameters are as follows (as usual apart from the first which identifies what it is order isn't that important, but the space separators are)

• Stats (or Day or Daily) - this has to come first so the parser knows it's recording daily stats. 
• Steps 9000 – How many did you walk today. You can also use S or Step for short. 
• Cals 800 - how many did you burn (that's what it's all about after all)
• Dist 3.9 - how far did you go. I'm not sure if that's miles or km or some random arbitrary unit. You can enter it as "3.9 miles" or "3.9 km" if you know (either can have the Dist prefix as well) as long as you're consistent.

gtFtr is slowly growing. Feel free to use the comments on any post here, or contact us to make suggestions.

gtFtr lets you track calories in a fairly simple limited way, but over at TweetWhatYouEat they've set up a much more detailed system.

I suggest you check 'em out and give it a try. We're going to focus on the exercise side of things and let them look after the stuff they're good at. That's what's so good about Twitter... can you have lots of friends helping you out ;)

It's all very well to exercise heaps ever day, but what if you're idea of a healthy lunch in a fast food burger and fries with a coke and an apple pie on the side?

Well you'll probably end up with some muscle tone but the fat won't go away (or worse you'll have something important fail on you)

But it's hard to know what's okay to eat that still tastes okay but isn't too bad for you.

I'm going through that process at the moment, and found a great article over at Yahoo! Health entitled "127 Foods That Fight Fat" that makes interesting reading.

While most of it resonated with me, there was a section on "diet" drinks... while the real thing is sweetened with sugar (or it's evil cousin High Fructose Corn Syrup - avoid that particular creature if you can) most of the diet products are laced with aspartame or similar "artificial" or chemically modified sweeteners which according to some folks can do you more harm than sugar (it's a personal choice but since swearing off non natural foods as much as possible I've noticed general well being improvements).

The important thing is not too get too hung up with an eating regimen any more than you would an exercise program. Sure you'll have days where another 50 pushups are too much, and there will be days when you're out with friends and a steak and fries is what you really want. Just don't go overboard and over the next few days try to compensate - a few more raw veggies, some more water, a few more reps...

It's all about balance and a long term view

It's good to have a goal of losing weight, or doing more reps on the bench press or situps, but if you're still eating more than your body needs to support the level of exercise then you're not going to fix things up.

To help with that goal gtFtr now lets you track calories as well. Simply send a message like this to Twitter

@gtFtr Calories 200 Snack # Naughty chocolate muffin

The value should be the calories consumed and you can optionally follow it with either Snack, BFast, Lunch or Dinner. You can use the comment (following the #) to justify the indulgence if you want to.