My wife K. started using My Fitness Pal to help her drop a few pounds and I was very intrigued as to how the program works. I looked at it.... and of course I found some Lean Six Sigma in it!!
Use of Metrics: My Fitness Pal is a FREE online tracking system that tracks your calories, fat and protein intake for meals and snacks and let's you know if you're above or below what you're supposed to eat for the day.
The system starts by having you type in info about your height and weight and then lets you set a goal as to how much weight you want to loose each week. It then tells you how many calories you should consume per day.
Use of Visual Controls: It has a simple intuitive interface that allows you to search and key in what you've eaten and lets you know in real time how much you can still eat for the day. If you're over you're in the red and if you're under you're in the green.
Guess what...I signed myself up. Will this be a life changing event? Probably not...but I'm going to do it for 5 weeks just to see what happens.
I've set my goal at: 2.0 lbs / wk for 5 weeks = 10 lbs by May 11th.
For full disclosure I weighed in at 225.5 on 4/6/2010
If you want to see how I'm doing you can go to http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/diary/LeanJon
To be 100% honest, I haven't even looked at most of what the site does nor am I endorsing it at this point however I'm willing to try anything for the sake of continuous improvement. In this instance, I will be performing a Kaizen on myself.
I'll also be updating the blog each week about what I discover about getting metrics from the system and tracking my progress. Stay tuned!
