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[mysugarstory-hw1]

It is really difficult to avoid sweets as a child and I have always had a sweet tooth. I have a skinny fat body type and after years of training and working out I was able to gain weight, but I am unable to lose the fat regardless of the training because of my unhealthy diet plan. A common rule for bodybuilding is that the body is built 80% in the kitchen. My goal is to reduce fat while gaining overall weight, which is a specific type of weight loss by reducing my sugar consumption. I have been trying to lose my upper body fat, but I am unable to control my sugar cravings. This summer I had finally made a decision to reduce my sugar and monitoring the consumption for the assignment was particularly beneficial. The plan to achieve the goal was regular weightlifting, running and a high protein diet with a minimal sugar quantity.

I have experienced various harmful effects of sugar on my body including weight gain, increased acne and an increase in anxiety/depression. A survey conducted of 8000 people shows that men consuming more than 67 grams of sugar a day were 23% more likely to develop depression than men who consumed less than 40 grams per day (Kubala,2018). In the U.S added sugars accounts for 17% of the total calorie intake for adults while dietary guidelines suggest limiting added sugars to less than 10%. If I have a can of coke with both my meals, that itself is 78 grams of sugar. I used to have sugary drinks multiple times a day which were the main source of sugar in my diet. My morning coffee from Starbucks is a medium size Caramel Macchiato which alone has 33g of sugar. I have completely stopped drinking any of the aerated drinks and have switched to alternates such as vitamin water and a dark roast with no sugar.

The application I used was MyFitnessPal as it allows me to track my calories in an effortless manner. I was able to quickly add all my meals and never had a problem finding a specific food item. The application has the nutrition data for most fast-food diners and it also allows you to save your own custom-built meal. I could find every food item on the app, even if it was a traditional Indian cuisine dish.

I usually cook my own breakfast, so I created a custom-built breakfast meal on the application containing different dishes so that I am able to add my meals every day without selecting all ingredients individually every time. In college, it is difficult to have all ingredients at home, so I had to custom make some of my meals according to the ingredients used in the meal.

Another major benefit of MyFitnessPal was that it allows you to input your workout details in your main page calorie count. This feature helped me track my overall calorie deficit or surplus. The application automatically detects my total steps and reduces the calories burned appropriately from my remaining calorie goal. This makes it really easy for me to track my caloric deficit diet as I don’t have to calculate my calorie intake – calories burnt separately. I wear an apple watch which tracks my workouts and MyFitnessPal reads that itself as I allowed the application to do so while setting up.

A feature which made me decide that this application is right for me was the nutrition data. It provides me with all the nutrition where I can set a goal for my protein and sugar consumption quantity and see the total amount of sugar I have consumed in the day/week. I have not used the application for more than 3 weeks, but I believe that this feature is fundamental in the long-term use of the application. This is what allows the user to track their progress for a period of time while seeing the days you did not meet the goal separately. I would be able to see the specific days I did not follow my diet plan well on the weekends. The bar graphs displaying the data are also very efficient in easy tracking of the users weekly nutritional data.

After tracking my meals on MyFitnessPal for 2 week I realized that I did not follow my diet for 1 or 2 days in the week, which were usually weekends. I decided to dedicate 1 day as cheat day or day off as I was unable to track my consumption of sugar for the days I went out. Tracking my sugar consumption for the week and not inputting the correct values would lead to a misrepresentation of my progress in the long run. I feel my body has reacted well to being on a no sugar diet for 6 days a week.

Another situation where I found difficult was actually inputting my meals every day. From the 4th day of me tracking my meals, I usually forgot to add my meal either because of a busy schedule or maybe I just forgot. I did input 2 or 3 days of meals at once, in such a situation I don’t remember exactly the smaller meals I might have had but only added the bigger meals for those days. This leads to a case of misrepresentation for example, if I had a lemonade but forgot to input it, that could make a big difference in my total sugar consumption for that day or week. The application however is actually very efficient as it sends you multiple to add meals and meet the daily goal.

How the calorie count works on MyFitnessPal is Calorie goal – food + exercise = calories remaining. Instead of viewing the total number of calories remaining I would rather see calories consumed. Knowing about the number of calories remaining was not of much help as I was not able to tell my right calorie goal. The calorie goal was decided while setting up the application according to personal goals, height and weight. I don’t think I built my calorie goal just right by including the correct details. I do not know the exact number of calories I should be consuming to gain weight but be low on sugar and fat. It is a complicated diet plan and I believe that the application could have a smarter and more efficient way of calculating the calorie while explaining the reasoning behind that number. The reasoning motivates the user to meet the goal once they are aware of the reasons to consume or burn those specific numbers of calories for the day.

A feature which might help the application improve could be a junk burn feature. The user can input a cheat meal and the application should send a reminder saying, “Walk an extra 468 steps for the medium fries” or “get in that workout to earn yourself a lemonade”. If the user is having the craving for a specific unhealthy meal, they could input it and know the extra work they have to put in to earn it. Personally, I would have benefitted from this feature as I would be motivated to exercise better to earn my craving for the day. This keeps you consistent with your goal and motivated to keep tracking your calories.

My expectations going into the assignment were very different from my actual experience. I believed that using the application would make me more conscious of my eating habits, looking back at my meal consumption. In the past I have followed a meal plan, but I have been unable to be consistent for a long period of time. I was expecting that the application will help me be consistent with constant reminders and with the nutritional data. However, I don’t think that MyFitnessPal was able to motivate me to be consistent. The intrinsic motivation is fundamental to achieve goals like mine. I had quite the opposite experience as I stopped inputting the unhealthy food I had as I did not want to see that on my weekly data. When someone is aware that they are breaking their diet plan and eating something sugary, the self-acceptance demanded by the application is difficult to meet. In such situations I usually input only the healthy meals leading to misrepresentation.

A lot of unexpected benefits of the following experience were reduced anxiety and a better sleep cycle. If I experience any kind of exam stress, sugar can trigger anxiety for me or possibly aggravate it. Reducing my sugar intake clearly improved my sleep cycle as I was able to fall asleep earlier and had no broken sleep. Consuming sugar at night could make me stay up for hours while in the day, once the sugar rush went, I could suddenly feel sleepy. I was able to monitor such behaviors only because I was tracking my sugar intake which I could later compare to my sleep or stress behavior for the previous day. I realized how I should consume sugar in a smarter way and avoid it at specific times.

Overall, the experience with MyFitnessPal was really beneficial  as I learnt a lot of new facts about my diet details. I did not know how unhealthy some foods were which were high protein, rich in fiber and no sugar. There were days where I did not meet my calorie requirements for the day and I realized how I need to change my diet plan by adding more meals with a higher calorie count. I have almost reached my goal of reducing sugar as I can see results of losing fat. I will definitely continue using MyFitnessPal as I work towards my goal.