I always hate using the word diet, because it makes me sound like one of these freaks who thinks eating a bean sprout a day will get them the kind of physique they want.

I am however now sticking to myfoodidary.com and weighing out my food portions.  I might sound like a bit of a pain in the bum, but it really isn’t.  Most packs of food tell you exactly how much a serving is and exactly what is has in it.  Sure, it takes a little bit of time and effort to put things in my food diary.  However the compositional analysis of your diet is extremely helpful and insightful.  It also encourages you to think about what you are putting in your body. 

Eating enough protein has always been a challenge for me, being largely vegetarian.  I do eat diary products, and eggs, and even some fish.  Using myfoodidary.com I can know the split of fats, carbs, and protein.   It even warns of eating too much salt and a saturated fats which is extremely important from a health perspective.

The best thing about this new way of eating is that nothing is forbidden.  All that myfooddiary.com tells you is what you’ve eaten and how much of it.  It even tells you how many calories in a day you have left in order to stay on target for your weight loss goal. 

MFD, also has another great feature and that is the reports section.  It shows you calories burned through exercise, and shows you the net total.  After all I don’t want to drain myself of energy, I want to increase my energy. 

The challenge with this is that eating healthy foods, you need to consume more of them to get the same amount of calories.  So I am finding eating is getting a bit of a chore.  Especially as I eat 6 times per day now.  I have some strategies for this, including protein bars in my desk drawer, and a few “just add water” type snack foods. 

One final watchword is that I am discovering pre-packaged foods have quite high levels of sodium, so I am using them sparingly, and eating as much fresh or frozen veggies etc as possible.

So far this plan is working quite well, because I am in control of what I am eating.  If you haven’t seen myfooddiary.com then just visit the web site.  I find it extremely helpful.

We got Wii Fit Plus recently as part of this new health regime that I have started for 2010.  It has a number of new features that I was quite impressed by.

First of all you’ve got a few additional new activities that you can do.  Some of these are quite fun as well as giving you quite a vigorous workout. 

My favourite was the one I referred to as the “Chicken Flapping”.  This is where you flap your arms up and down to make your little avatar fly across to various points in as quick a time as possible.  It certainly made me chuckle a fair bit as I was standing in my boxers flapping my arms around.

My least favourite was the obstacle course one, which requires running and “jumping” on the Wii board.  However if you accidentally get over excited and actually jump on the board it tells you off, then unceremoniously puts you all the way back to the start.  This is most annoying indeed.

Another activity that I found to be quite good fun was the skate boarding exercise.  It took me a bit of getting used to, but the jumps, half-pipes and other stunts are excellent fun.

There are some fun features of the “Plus” elements, as it now estimates calories used, as well as giving you the time spent doing the activities.  I also like the fact you can create customised workouts consisting of Muscle Building and/or Yoga exercises.

If you already had Wii Fit like I did, then don’t worry, it imports all your old Wii Fit data into Wii Fit plus.  You don’t even need to worry about swapping discs as all your old favourite exercises like hula hoop, and step plus are right there in Wii Fit plus.

I think Wii Fit Plus is great, and my kids always want to play it, so it ensure that they get a bit of exercise and acitivity.

I would like to wish everyone who reads my blog a happy new year.   At this time of year many people make resolutions, and usually end up giving up on them by mid January.   Personally, I’ve never seen the point of making resolutions if you don’t mean to do them.  If most people were really honest with themselves, they would say they have a new year dream, or wish, they aren’t really resolved at all.

I spent the time between Christmas and New Year beginning to plan what I wanted to get out of 2010.  I don’t mean a wish, or a dream, but a specific action plan.  I’ve planned a few things that I want to change in my life in 2010, but the one I’m going to talk about here is my health and fitness.

I took the time to stop and think about the fact I was fat, and ask myself a few hard questions.  I’ve written a few times about my fitness and health this year, and attempted a number of times to lose the weight.  However if I’m honest my drive and motivation just wasn’t there, mainly because I felt quite low.

During 2009 I stopped working out altogether, I lost the balance between my work and home life, and when I was at home I was just too hung over, or tired to do anything.   I never considered myself a big drinker, but I certainly drank more at home than I did when I was out socialising.   Combined with eating loads of junk food, I didn’t do myself any favours at all and my weight just went out of control.

This kind of behaviour is completely inconsistent with my values, and as humanist I’m not living my life to its fullest.  I only have this one life, and 2009 felt like a write-off for me.

Just before the Christmas holiday I began using myfooddiary.com again, which is a tool which helps me monitor my food intake.  It also helps me split my food into 5-6 meals a day.  The best thing about the site is that it helps you understand what percentages of fat, carbs, and protein you’re consuming.

The second thing I have done as part of my plan is set up a weight training programme, and started using my gym equipment.  I love working out, especially weight training.  I get that rush of endorphins from a workout that just leaves me buzzing.

I’m the past I’ve written a fair bit about my fitness progress in this blog, but I’m not going to tempt fate by writing about this topic endlessly.  I have all the tools and equipment I need to do this so I’ll let you know as I reach significant milestones what my progress is.  In the last 7 days I’ve lost 3lbs, so that’s pretty good start.