A friend convinced me to join MyFitnessPal over a decade ago as he was on a quest to lose weight. I tried to warn him that I was compulsive about such things, and asked if he really wanted to encourage that side of my personality. He knew me well, but I think didn’t comprehend the magnitude of the monster he was creating. I joined MyFitnessPal and he used it for a few months, lost the weight he wanted, and got off. I stayed on for over a decade, logging every bite of food. Sometime in that time frame, I went off for two weeks, just to prove that I wasn’t addicted, that I could go without it. Then I went right back on.
I’m an Ironman triathlete, which probably tells you plenty about me. Most serious Ironman competitors are pretty compulsive about food. They’re also compulsive about exercise (check) and rituals surrounding racing, sleep, and on and on. We know each other pretty well, because we have the same flaws and virtues, all wrapped into one.
A decade of logging every bite means that every restaurant I went to, I would look up the menu online to see what the calorie counts of each item was (before most national chains were required to list calories on the in-store menu). Often, I decided what to order before I went to the restaurant, so that other people wouldn’t see me hesitating or taking out my phone to decide what I wanted to eat. I also spent a lot of time each day…
