Goodbye MFD, I'll miss you.

My weight loss was nothing more than eating better and moving more. Seriously it's that simple. It's the mental part that gets complicated and the reason I left My Food Diary today. Board suicide over a gastric bypass surgery question-- I'll explain my issues with weight loss surgeries in a subsequent post.

I had been a member for almost a year, my former bossed turned me onto it after last years surgical fiasco. My weight was creeping back up and I was flirting with 170!!! I have been counting calories for years now and have a pretty good idea of what's in what but it kept me accountable. For 9$ a month you get a great food/activity diary in an easy to use uncluttered format. The nutritional database is massive and manually entering information is quite easy. You can build recipes and share your "fridge" with others. The activity/exercise log is one of the most accurate out there. It was always right in line with my heart rate monitor (after I subtracted the calories I would have burned at rest anyways while I was exercising.) It also has some neat reports to track your progress and a message board.

There is a link to My Food Diary to the right. Please check it out. Compared to The Daily Plate and Spark People and many other online food journals imho, it is the best. My own personal failings will not keep me from suggesting it to anyone who wants more information on what they are consuming.

So why did I leave? Simple. I kind of felt like a freak over there and I couldn't keep myself from checking the forums. I'm a message board junkie (it's how I met my husband, different board on a totally unrelated topic) but I'm not paying 9$ a month to be continually annoyed. I had been holding onto the membership for some nutrition class projects but hadn't logged my food in a couple of months. I'm still between 155-160 and feel confident that I don't need to be that militant about logging to keep the weight off after three plus years now of maintenance.

Today was the last straw for me. Someone posted a question about gastric bypass surgery-- they had been directed to the site by their physician and wanted to know where they could find support for people looking into surgical options for weight loss. MFD does not promote a culture of quick fixes but you do occasionally get people asking questions about weight loss surgery, fat burners etc. So here this person is casting out a life line on the forums and someone comes in and tells them that only 2% of obese people lose weight with diet and exercise and keep it off. Ugh. I wish this factoid would just disappear. By telling people that there is only a 2% chance of success (I take issue with the number regardless) you are setting them up for failure. I know it's not an accident that the man making that claim has been banded (with great success and I wish him luck) but MFD is a solid program based on eating better and moving more. To trash it on the forum by spouting off that "fact" annoyed me to no end. We went back and forth a few times and then that was it. Board suicide. I posted that I was done, clicked on cancel my account and that was it.

Instantly I felt five pounds lighter.