[ellenuw]

I think I have reached the end of my rope with all my tiny pieces of paper and I am ready to move into the 21st century. I am looking into finding the right PDA and software to track my progress. Right now I am tracking my workouts, exercises and weights, measurements, body weight and daily blood sugar in Excel. I have one paper calendar to track appointments and another to track workouts (plan vs actual). Every time I see my doctor he wants a printout of my blood sugar readings and my workout types and length of time for the past quarter. I also have a million addresses in my e-mail acount and phone numbers in both my cell phone and paper address book (along with the snail addresses, too). It is driving me crazy. A lot of my frineds use PDAs but don't understand my *compulsiveness* to keep track (I prefer *organization*). What do you use and recommend? The only decison I have made is to keep my PDA and cell separate.

Thanks

[Mel]

Hahaha! I use my "life in a spiral notebook". In other words, a million pieces of paper bound up in a pretty red leather cover. I sporadically track my food in Fitday, but haven't tracked my workouts in years.

Sorry, not very helpful.

Mel

[Sashenka]

I am with Mel here. I sporadically use FitDay and the only good thing which comes out of it is that I do not eat enough protein. So I add some, put it in Fitday and end up with other problems like constipation, sinus infection, weight gain, etc. So I stop logging and use my "in the mind" food plan - and go back to normal weight and more healthy life. I find FitDay definitely very useful to show you if you have enough nutrients, but I also struggle to log every single thing into it. My fitness journal in green spiral small booklet - I simply keep track on km run, and weight lifted - I though found out if I lift every second day I still remember what I did last time. So logging it basically does not have any effect anyways.

But than I am not a list person - first time I used shopping list for grocery shopping I missed my usual groceries more than when I dont' use a list. So here it goes, it is in the head, at least I have my head to blame for my failures.

Sandy.

[mox]

I use the ol' pen & paper to track my food intake and exercise routines and a honking big daily calendar for my appts. I also have a Palm Pilot, but I realized shortly after I bought it that I hated the way it displayed my calendar (I have a LOT of meetings during the week). I also hated how slow it was to enter information using the stylus, although I got pretty good with the script. I now just use the Palm as a really expensive phone number/address book. Just a suggestion but you may want to spend quite a bit of time time fiddling with the different PDA models to see if they meet how you like information organized and presented.

[trixiepup]

I have a palm zire, and it has the capability to use excel worksheets. So, you could just import your current worksheet into the palm pilot and track whatever data you needed. I think there is a way to sync it with the file on your computer, so both versions would be backed up and accessible. You could print that out for your doctor.

The calendar is pretty good...I have mine synced with outlook, but you can use the generic program the palm comes with. You can have various tasks and to dos to keep track of your life, but I'm not sure how you could handle the planned versus performed activities. Maybe make an excel spreadsheet and put in a column for ideal and actual and just copy-cut-paste-edit the info as needed.

The zire has a digital camera that is kinda sucky, but it's still fun. You could probably go to a lower model and save $ if the camera isn't a big issue for you.

[ellenuw]

Thank you all for your suggestions and opinions - I am still thinking ... When I was working I liked my old Daytimer - I may go back to that and see how I feel before shelling out any big bucks.