I think if I track my daily calories I might get better at knowing exactly what I"m putting in my mouth. There are days I don't think i'm eating enough, as well as days I think I am eating to much calories. I"m not even sure how many calories I should eat in a day. What are some of the sites you use to track these things?

I use fitday.com others swear by thedailyplate.com or calorieking. Tracking my food has made all the difference with my weight loss - it's definitly something you should could try even for a couple days to see what your calorie intake is 'really' like. (it's like doing a budget.... hard to believe where it all goes)

I love Fitday and use if for food and activity tracking. I like that you can put your own custom food in and I have built in all my usual recipes. I also like that it shows you the percentage of carbs/protein/fats for the day.

I use spark people and have used them all year. I like that you can enter your own foods or even use a recipe calculator on the site. But their databse is huge and most everything I eat is alredy on there. It shows the nutrition for your day, too, and I use the weight graph tracker as well.

Just a tid bit I learned from somewhere on here -- if you use fit day and need something that's not in there, you can go to dietfacts.com, find your food and most of them have a button at the bottom that will automatically put it into your fitday. I personally like thedailyplate.

I started using Fitday. It was suggested to me by a few people. My plan doesn't count calories but I have been doing it now for awhile. I like to see my calories. I really like Fitday. It can take some time at first to enter custom food...but once you do it for a week or so...it should get faster. I also use Fitday to track my activities and the weight chart. I put in my weight goal and by what date and it tells me how many lbs I need to lose a week. You can also set personal nutritional goals - like how much protein you want to eat a day- calories - etc. Then it will show you if you are meeting your goals. Very cool!

I use the daily plate and i love it. It really keeps me in line.

I am also a user of the daily plate. It helps me a lot, and it is easy to follow.

I use myfooddiary.com They all work pretty much the same though. I just have my preference as I find it easier to use and because I pay a small fee I feel more obligated to use it.

No matter which one you use... DO start. It makes a world of difference.

I've tried fitday and daily plate and I just don't have time to learn them well enough to be fast. I use a plain old spreadsheet and look up stuff I don't know. Honestly, if I'm eating on plan I usually only look up one thing a day. I eat a lot of the same stuff and I know how many calories are in it. If I'm looking something up it's usually something I ate out.

For eating out, I look up the calories on line. For normal stuff I have a book I use. I think it cost about $8 at Barnes & Noble and the pages are all dog eared because I used it a lot when I started this. It's like an old friend. :-)

Thanks all. I'm excited to start doing this, as I"ve been at 243 for like 3 weeks, and I certainly do NOT want to maintain this weight. I want to lost at least 20 lbs for my sisters wedding on July 5th. And I think if I am tracking what I am putting into my mouth I will be a little more concience of what goes in there.

I use my food log - in a beautiful spiral notebook. After a while - I've gotten to know all the calores, fats, carbs, etc. of the foods I regularly eat. I look foods up at calorie king.

I really like keeping track - it keeps me honest . I write down everything I eat, planned or unplanned.

I've tried a few different ones, but none of them are as good as SP for me.

www.thedailyplate.com - they are adding features all the time. I like it better than fitday because it seems like everything I look for is already there, I don't have to add it. I like it better than spark people because it is simpler, it just tracks food and exercise (and water). They do have forums but they don't bombard you with mail like SP. I use 3FC for forums and journals, so TDP works great for me. Take a look at all of them and see which one you like.

I love dailyplate. I used to use fitday, but with daily plate, I can create meals that I eat a lot, then just one click and it puts all of those in the planner for me. Plus I see my recent foods without having to use a drop down menu.
And the friends thing is kind of fun, too