I have a plan to pay for my YMCA membership

Hey what website is that ? It seems like adding the good to the interesting to the profitable :) I think it is a good idea if you think it can work to pay for your gym membership, but just remember to make some money you will have to spend time there and it might happen that you will end up entering stuff on the site and forgetting to go to the gym .. - I"m just saying LOL

That sounds like a great plan, GG. I hope you enjoy doing it and it helps you stay motivated. I do keep a food journal every now and then. I think it is a good way to stay in tune to your body, figure out what foods give you the most energy, etc. I am just a journal person when it gets down to it and I change my journal intentions ever so often just to keep motivated. Right now I have several I'm keeping... I have a yoga journal, a gratefulness journal, and a laughter journal. (My favorite is the journaling I do to my son)

That's a really cool idea to help with paying for the membership! Never have heard of such a plan, it's a unique concept. I no longer keep a food diary, but at one time in my life I had to (Dr said so lol) I wasn't severely overweight, but when I was carrying my children I blossomed so much I had to watch what I ate and report it. So, he made me keep a food diary to see where the added calories were coming from. (I used it when I lost all that weight I gained too.) He had me write down everything, even if I had a tic-tac or gum lol. A food diary is a great idea, it allows us to see where any extra calories are coming from and kind of makes us find better, and healthier, choices. And once we start doing the diary idea, better habits become an unconscious second-nature. I was always told to do my excercising, a long walk, or heavier work, half an hour, to an hour, before I had my meals so that my metabolism would already be working in high gear (for digestion) before I had food. I do believe that Dr was right in that it seemed to burn more calories faster. When I did mine I kept a sheet of notebook paper and wrote: breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, supper, snack and divided the paper into 3 columns (3 days in view.) Doing that made me notice where I seemed to crave the extra nibbles. Having it wrote down as a targeted plan made me more likely to stick to it and only allowed myself to meal/snack at certain times (and no other.) Good luck with your new fitness program!

I was thinking you might do that, since I remember your having mentioned that site before. WTG! Yes, I keep a food diary using a relational database. I used to keep a number of databases, including our household budget on my PDA, but now I subscribe to a web-based database service which I can access either from the computer or from my smart phone, however the easiest way to record the data is by e-mailing myself from my smart phone. I don't write down every single mouthful, but I like to have a general idea of what we are eating so that I can be sure in looking back that I have served well-balanced meals and it is also a good place to keep a record of how to prepare certain foods and what specific nutrients they contain, and even where we get the best prices when shopping for certain items. I thought I would find a simple explanation of what relational databases are and how they can help ordinary people, because using a good one is rather simple, but all of the descriptions and definitions my search pulled up made them seem mindnumblingly complicated. Maybe that is why most of my acquaintances outside of MIS fields never heard of them.

Can you pm me about this site and have me as a referal?

That sounds like a great motivator, I hope it all works out for you. I do keep a diary of what I eat, its called fast food receipts. Just kidding. There are the exercise bikes at our rec center and they record your time spent riding and how many calories you've burned. They also keep track of your mileage, I'm on a double marathon right now. I try to eat healthy but I've got good genetics so I can basically eat whatever I want. I do exercise to stay heatlhy though, it helps to relieve stress and I'd rather go to bed with muscles aching than my stomach aching.