Any Success Stories Using "My Fitness Pal"?

I'll second sparkpeople.com . Other than letting you track food/fittness they have a huge variety of ideas for food/exercise/motivation etc. It is a very positive site. It is also free. (They have ads that are on the pages, but just using the site, and all the tools is free.)
They also have a whole ton of exercise videos that you can watch/do from the computer. Mostly, I like that it is really positive, and filled with people who are all after the same goal. It helps keep you going when you get put out about how slow the progress is sometimes! :)

I have not used that website, but I did have success using a similar one, sparkpeople.com. I used it when I got tired of my baby weight. It is really great to track all of your intake and exercise! And I did go through and track the foods that I cooked.I would toss that number of 40 pounds out the window though. You need to measure your body in various spots (waist, arms, thighs etc.) Once you start wrking out, you should start to gain muscle, and you might stay stable or even gain a few pounds even though your body is shrinking. Having the measurements gives you a number to look at to confirm that you are doing a great job! Just taking the first step is so good! Congrats on your new lifestyle.

Under my Dr's directions, I eat no more than 1200 calories per day, drink plenty of water (8 glasses per day) and I'm moderately active (walk for 1/2 hr 3 times per week).
I've used MyFitnessPal and so far I'm down 55 lbs (over 6 months).
I find too much exercise stimulates my appetite too much and makes me want to snack too much.
I can eat anything I want just as long as I don't go over 1200 cals per day.

I've used it for the last 5 weeks and I'm down 17 lbs. I also bought a food scale so I can really see what 3 oz of meat looks like. I think it will eventually evolve into less dependence on the scale and the site and more on just balanced meals - but I have more weight to lose, so I will continue to use it.

The database of food is huge - and you can make your own recipes. It takes some time, but it isn't tough. It has helped me make better choices - protein over a dinner roll, etc.

Good luck!

Variety is awesome and it sounds like you have all the tools. Pick an exercise you like BEST and start with that for 30 minutes. You also work out different muscles with variety. Maybe tread mill one day, exercise bike another, step machine, the other.

I would start with weights 3 times a week.

Is there a trainer you can work with for a few times to get started?

Love the idea of taking a walk in the evening with your girls. It is such a great way to bond and get them into exercise as well.

I really like the My Fitness Pal app, and so do several other people I know. You can enter recipes on their website, and it calculates all the nutritional values for you, per serving. It saves it, and adds it to your search list when you are adding in the food that you eat. It is very user friendly if you have a smart phone and download the app. Then you can scan the barcodes of food you are going to eat, or the barcodes on foods you are adding to your recipe.

I used it very consistently for about 4 months. I kind-of fell out of the habit after that BUT having used it those 4 months really gave me a good sense of how to have a healthier diet, and how calories (and other things (sodium was a problem for me)) added up in a day. Once I started really seeing how I could make different combinations of foods work, it got much easier. For example, (and this sounds simple, but somehow it took the app to teach me this) that I could go out to dinner if I would take a salad for lunch, and still stay within the limits I had set.

Yup! I have lost 45 "baby pounds" since July using MFP. It's really easy once you get used to it. The only way it works, though, is to be honest when you enter the info. In the beginning, I literally used measuring cups to figure out the portions, but now I can eyeball it. I know that I was really surprised by the calories in some of the foods that I thought were "healthy".

As a result of using the app and website, I tend to eat far more lean proteins, dark veggies and "clear" condiments and much fewer fruits and other "high calorie, low yield" foods.

Good luck! It does work really well if you use it correctly.

It's a great website... but you have to self motivate. If you can eat less and exercise more, then sparkpeople or myfitnesspal will help you track things. Both are user friendly.

I have used my fitness pal and lost 12 pounds in three months doing so. Slacked off and have gained a little back so need to start using it again. It is very motivational. When I cooked at home and didn't know calories for sure I would look up items that others had input and use the larger calorie count ones. I also drank an equate (walmarts slim fast, tastes better) for breakfast, ate oatmeal for lunch, had yogurt or nuts for a snack and then could eat a reasonable supper. I used Zumba or just dance on wii to work out. I won our contest at work using this system and while I'm sure everything wasn't always exact it was enough to keep me motivated.

My sister used it and lost 40 pounds before her wedding. She swears by it. It didn't work for me because I never got in the habit of doing it.

Like another poster said, talk to your doctor. Find out from them exactly what you need to do to lose weight.

It is just a tracking device. It doesn't really DO anything...
Whatever you consume, you record in the app. It keeps track of nutrient content, caloric intake and your goals... But you have to enter the information for it to work. If you forget to put in the crackers you nibbled, it isn't going to have accurate information in the data it uses to track your progress.

Many many many foods (including restaurants) are already in the data base that it accesses, so when entering your food it already has all the information, you just click the portion(s) size. But home cooked things take more work: you have to either add in the amounts of the individual ingredients in the items per the size of the portion of that item, or you have to do that separately and then include a "new" food which YOU input the data (calories, sodium content, fat grams, etc).

It is a tracking tool. No more, no less.
But does it help? Yes, if you are honest and keep up with entering your information throughout the day. That is how it helps--as you enter new information, you can SEE how many calories you HAVE consumed already, and how many you have "left" without eating too many in one day.
It also allows you to record your exercise, which increases the number of calories you can consume and still stick to your goals, and it has a preset amount of calories burned it uses for the various exercises.