View Full Version : Look! A newbie! (but wait, there's more)


GM Enthusiast
February 13th, 2004, 08:11 PM
Hello Everyone
(everone responds in unison, Hello Dave)
It's good to find a site where like-minded individuals can meet, discuss, disagree, and everything else that goes on here.

First off, I am 28, 5'11" and a Software Engineer by trade. I hit my peak weight of 260lbs a few years ago, and have maintained that since. I always hated myself for it, but going back as long as I can remember I've always thought of myself as overweight, and just accepted it. Of course looking back at pictures, though I wasn't thin, I was most certainly not overweight - not until I became a desk jockey about 8 years ago.

Now, fast forward to modern times, I've had about enough of 260lbs overweight blah blah blah. I've wanted to do something about it for some time now, but with bad time management, lack of energy, a whole bunch of other lame excuses that were just that - lame, I couldn't do much about it. What finally pushed me over the edge is Hockey. I've been into the sport for a long time now - and occasionally would play a pickup game - not very well though because of how out of shape I was. Towards the end of '03 a friend of mine joined a local league. I went to some of the games and decided I wanted to play - I COULD play, I just had an obstacle to overcome (sounds so cliche, doesn't it?). So I started taking it seriously this past January. Admittedly, I did not know what I was doing at first. I was still trying, though. After much research (and associated loss in productivity at work as a result), I am much better prepared. I try to focus on one thing at a time, so for now I am focusing on a somewhat more healthy weight of 180lbs. From there I will reevaluate and fine-tune my weight and strength goals. As of this morning's weigh in, I am at 245lbs. I did join the league and our first game is this coming Sunday.

But wait, there's more... (I told you so). One last note - after looking into the various options available for tracking my food intake and activities, I found it sadly lacking. I found good software, and I found meciocre web sites. What I wanted was a good web-based system. Fitday.com is nice, and I have been using it, but it is so basic that I am far from impressed. Enter the fact that, as I said, I am a software engineer, and a supporter of open source software, my goal is to design and build a system, which can be used either stand-alone or integrated into some web portal software (such as this bulletin board). The language of choice is PHP. If anyone wants to lend any support, the project page is http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/phpfitness/.

Thanks for your time, hope to talk to some of you soon in other threads/forums.

Dave
http://www.gmenthusiast.com/

Lisa Stone
February 13th, 2004, 08:32 PM
Hi, and Welcome :cool:

corbint
February 13th, 2004, 08:39 PM
dave, great idea! ive seen some decent fitness and nutritional packages out there, but none of them were 100% on the money for what i was looking to track, didnt create graphs, etc etc! are you going to import a nutritional database of sorts? there is an app called "NUT" that you can grok from freshmeat or sourceforge that was built along those lines. keep me updated on the progress of your app, id love to alpha test it!

andi
February 13th, 2004, 09:19 PM
Welcome Dave!! Great idea you got there!

I don't have anything programmer-y I can offer to the project, but there are couple things I'd like to ask for as a current fitday user, if you're looking for any suggestions. I'd really like to know how much of my carbs are sugar (it doesn't have a place for that now) and I'd also like to be able to set macronutrient goals- so I can try to acheive a 40/40/20 ratio, etc.

Hope it works out!!

Ansett
February 13th, 2004, 11:03 PM
I use fitday too, andi. You can set macronutrient goals...it's there under "goals". You select the nutrient you want, and hit 'go'. You just have to put it in as grams so you have to do the calculations based on your total calories goal. It uses a range, then you can go to reports and see if you have fallen into your desired range every day. It's pretty sweet. To get you started, I'll share my numbers with you. I use a range of 1200 min to 1800 calories max. Then the nutrient ranges are 40/40/20 for that range.

Calories 1200 1800
Total Fat 27 40
Total Carbohydrate 120 180
Dietary Fiber 20 30
Protein 120 180

Try that.

marcus
February 14th, 2004, 04:53 AM
Hi Dave,

Welcome to the forums :tu:

I dont really know much about computers to be able to help you with your idea but I'd love to check out the finished product.

Marcus :tucool:

GM Enthusiast
February 15th, 2004, 03:41 PM
Thanks for the input so far. I know there are some very good fitness programs out there, but none are web-based, so that is the #1 goal of this one. I'm sure I can think of some lofty eventual goals, but there is no need for that now. I'll keep everyone here informed if there is something to begin testing.

ibrewale
February 15th, 2004, 04:57 PM
Dave;

Like you, I wasn't too impressed with Fitday.com, but I did like the fact that it was 'web' based, so I could access from anywhere.
I am a BIG supporter of open source, I am not a programmer by any stretch of the imagination, but I enjoy tinkering (i.e. using) various flavors of Linux, and I enjoy open source software (even open source on windows boxes).
I like your idea, and I look forward to testing each version as it comes out...and I will try to give you various feedback on it.

Thanks

Jerry

Jim
February 15th, 2004, 11:59 PM
I would help, but the only thing I'm good at with programming is making the actual layouts of websites, lol.

Berran
February 16th, 2004, 12:23 AM
Hey Dave, Welcome to the forum! I myself was in a similar situation as you. I couldn't find any fitness/diet tracking type program that worked well for me, so I spent the last week programming one and setting up my own website... I programmed mine all with PHP (with a MySQL db). If you wanna check my site out it is at http://www.shattered-sorcery.com. I just finished it, and will spend the next month adding in more features and tuning the code up etc. I wouldn't mind helping you out with your project when I have free time. Shoot me an email if you are interested msharpe@shattered-sorcery.com