MyFitnessPal.com

Meet my new pal: a Web site at www.MyFitnessPal.com. If you knew me you would know how unbelievable it is that I would be recommending a fitness site. For those of you who don’t know me – trust me (said the spider to the fly).

Five babies ago I walked down the long straight aisle in the I-have-to-have-this wedding dress. I sold a car to buy my wedding dress. It was a size 9 and fit perfectly. Since that fateful day my path has wound along the long and winding road. With every pregnancy I gained weight, and silly me, I never lost the weight. My sons came quickly – four boys in five years with a sadness I don’t care to go into right here and now, but I also had a daughter for a short time. Five pregnancies really packed it on.

You’d think that scampering after four little boys would have run the excess weight off of me, but it never did. Oh sure, I had my stints of “Sweatin’ to the Oldies.” Me and Richard Simmons did OK for a while, but then I wandered away. I’ve joined gyms throughout the years, but losing weight has always been a personal thing to me. Sweating out in public among a bunch of hormone heavy iron-pumping teenagers never appealed to me. Once, the music one boy blared on the gym’s stereo sent me running out of the gym; I never returned.

I’m 50, not 20. I will never be a size 9 again. I will never proudly state on my driver’s license that I weigh 120 pounds. But I’m darn sick of being overweight. Just plain tired of it. I see Valerie Bertinelli toting around those sacks of potatoes, I’ve watched Oprah wheel out a wagon full of fat to simulate lost pounds, but I don’t want to go anywhere and talk about losing weight. I just want to lose the weight.

And I have found a FREE Web site that makes it crazy-easy to keep track of what I eat. I type in whatever food it is and MyFitnessPal.com offers brand name choices with the calories spelled out along with carbs, fat and protein. This site does so much of the work for me. When I’m on a diet I don’t want to be thinking about food all day – looking up calories, writing them down, adding them up. And with this site I don’t have to.

MyFitnessPal.com also tracks exercise. I say how much exercise I am willing to do each week and my new fitness guru tells me how much I can eat and lose the weight I want to lose. It’s a straightforward way of balancing food intake with exercise. Everybody knows we have to eat less to lose weight, but how much less? Starve ourselves? No. Our bodies will hold onto the fat if we eat too little. This is a balanced plan which I highly recommend for any women out there who need a little extra push to lose weight.

Spring’s right around the corner and we all know summer follows. Warm weather, shorts, and sleeveless tops. See, I’m realistic: I was never a bikini girl. Those ads on TV turn me off. I don’t need to lose those last seven pesky pounds to be able to cavort on a beach with a string separating my cheeks. MyFitnessPal.com is for real women who need some help, discreet help, found in the privacy of a laptop. Click over there – what do you have to lose, except weight!