If you’re behind the game, here’s a link explaining The Great Write Off of 2009. You can find links and discussion to all posts by checking out the Twitter trending topic, #WriteOff09.

So yesterday, Dan blogged about his attempts to cut down on the carbs in his diet by cutting out two big staples he has been over-indulging in recently: pasta and bread. A very noble effort and Dan is doing well so far.

So I’m a girl, in case some of you may not have noticed, and girls are usually a little more obsessive about their weight than males. Fact. And up until 2005, I really hadn’t cared that much about my weight. I’m a small girl, coming in at 5’1 1/2″ (that extra half inch is very important to my emotional well-being) and I’ve always been petite. I never really paid too much attention to what I ate because, hey, I’m pretty small and I also play soccer a lot. I figured it would balance out.

But in January of 2005, I was at my parents place visiting and decided to weigh myself. I stepped on and looked down and was instantly shocked. My weight had never been that high before! I couldn’t believe it. When did this happen? How did I not notice this? Right then and there, staring at a number I had never been before, I decided to take action.

I came home and started looking online for ways to lose weight. I stumbled across a site called MyFoodDiary.com. The name sounded familiar; someone on a blog post earlier that month had mentioned how it had really helped them lose weight. I immediately signed up.

For $9 a month, I had access to all of MFD’s tools. This included being able to input and track every morsel you put in your mouth, by either entering the nutritional label into their database or searching their over 50,000 food items available. It also had the option for you to input any of your favourite recipes, and by telling their system how many servings it was for, it would output the nutritional information.

But the thing I really liked about this service was how they weren’t simply focused on your daily caloric or fat intake. They were concerned with the whole picture. This meant they tracked your Vitamin A intake, your Vitamin C levels, Iron, and Calcium as well. They wanted you to drink 8 glasses of water a day. Wanted you to get some form of exercise – every day!

They rank your days, when you’ve hit the ‘Day Complete’ button at the end of the day, with a series of smiley and frownie faces. The maximum number of smilies you can get is 11: For not having desert, for getting your necessary fiber intake, for going for a walk, hitting your water goal and more. Frownie faces could range from too many alcoholic calories, to not exercising, for too much desert or too high a saturated fat intake.

It quickly became a game. Could I plan and rearrange my meals so I can get as many smilies as possible? Oh, I really wanted a two-bite brownie, but if I entered it, I’d get a frownie for going over my maximum calorie intake. Oh, but wait! If I skip rope for 20 minutes, I’ve burned enough off to earn that brownie. As you can see, this really appealed to my competitive streak.

Soon, I understood whether 4 grams of fiber in a product was really good or not good enough. I knew right away from looking at label whether I should eat this food or not. Uh-uh, put that back, the saturated fat is way too high. Oh, but this has 50% of my daily intake of iron – yes, please!

In a sense: I taught myself good, proper nutrition.

And what followed was a slow and steady weight loss over the next four month. It was slow, yes, but it was steady and that’s what I needed. As I explored more and more of the site – beginning to read and participate on the forums, I learned more and more about how I could eat better.

After four months, I had not only reached my weight goal, but I dipped below what I had set for myself (in a healthy way). I felt great. My body was happy and I was happy. I decided I had learned enough and canceled my membership. This time though, I wasn’t scare of  going out without this crutch I had been leaning on for months. Instead, I felt armed with the knowledge of what I needed to do to keep the weight off and to continue to eat well.

It’s been four years since my initial experience with MFD. In this time, I’ve re-joined the site twice. Usually only for a month or two. I do it as a way to check-in. To make sure my eating habits haven’t slipped too badly. Usually I need to make some tweaks but generally I know what I need to eat if I want to lose weight and get all the nutrients I need. It’s nice knowing I am capable of doing this on my own.

My weight, at this point, isn’t bad. It isn’t the best it could be either. I was at my lowest weight a couple months ago, when I returned from traveling, than I had been since my stint with MFD in 2005. But it wasn’t healthy; I hadn’t played soccer in 6 months and my muscles had wasted away. I was less toned. My weight reflected the loss muscle mass. So now I am working on bringing that back up by playing soccer 3x a week. Then once I have got the muscle mass back to its original state, I will focus on the numbers again. And make changes where I need to.

Here are some of the main lessons I learned from MFD throughout the years:

• Because I’m so small, my “weight loss” caloric intake is really not much lower than my “maintain” caloric intake. This means I have a lot less room to play with when I’m trying to lose weight compared to when I’m simply eating a regular diet.
• Measure, measure, measure EVERYTHING! You think you’re good at eyeballing portion sizes? Think again. That cup of cereal is definitely not 1/2 cup. Try again, but this time with measuring cups or a food scale. We, as humans, suck at eyeballing weight and volume.
• Even though the site pushes for you to drink 8 cups of water a day (not liquid, pure water), my body is simply unable to handle that much water. Everyone on the forums say, “Oh, after a few weeks you don’t even notice that you’re drinking 8 cups.” I did it for four months and it still wasn’t a comfortable amount of liquid for me. I’d literally have to chug a cup or two of water before bed if I wanted to make my 8 cup goal. My body very much prefers 6 cups of water. That’s fine. This is not an absolute system – tailor any diet or eating regime to your body. Listen to your body and learn.
• Every little extra you add on? Adds up! Avoid butter whenever possible. You don’t really need to salt the water you’re going to boil pasta in, trust me. It’ll be fine without it. In fact, you generally don’t need to add salt to anything. Once you cut back on salt, you really begin to notice how salty every thing is naturally. If you do your best to avoid those little extras, you’ve usually saved yourself 100 calories a day.
• If you bake? Mix up the oil in your baking recipes with non-sweetened apple sauce. I swear, you can’t tell the difference. Also, add in vegetables wherever possible. I used to make brownies with about 2 cups of grated carrots in them. Couldn’t even taste it!
• Having a “day off” from your food regime can actually be beneficial to your weight loss goals. Many forum members found that when they took one day off from tracking and ate what they wanted (within reason – no all-out gluttony here), their weight loss sped up. This is probably because your body gets used to a certain caloric intake and if you mix it up, it sort of wakes up from a snooze and starts working harder. Taking a break every now and then does not have to be detrimental to your goals and can save you a little sanity as well.
• Slow and steady wins the race. It took me four months to lose 18 pounds. But I kept that weight off for a long time and I felt healthier – which was the most important thing to me.

Anyway – I hope some of these tips helped someone. And if you’re contemplating joining a food diary site, there are many others out there besides MyFoodDiary.com, including tons of free ones. I just happen to like MFD’s set-up best but then again, I am biased!