Calorie Counters - What online calorie counting service do you like?

Hi, my name is Stacey and I am planning to switch from an Atkins type diet to calorie counting with healthy foods. I just can't eat another piece of bacon! I calorie counted with Prism several years back and did very well, then I had my last 2 kids and it all was over. I tried Atkins and lost a little on that a few years back, and just tried it again the last 2 weeks, but I can't do it. My youngest child is 9 now, so I really want to get back to the weight I was after Prism. I used to count all the calories on a note pad back then, but I am thinking of trying one of the online services. Does anyone use one? What one do you like? I don't mind paying for it if it is worth it. I would love any suggestions. Thank you.

Are you talkng about things like Fitday or something else?

Has anyone tried fitday or myfooddiary or calorieking, etc.?

I use the LoseIt app for iPhone/iPod touch. Love it!

I use myfooddiary and I love it. My favorite part is the fridge, where you put all your favorite foods to make them easier to enter every day. It's a little pricey, but I tell myself that it's SO much cheaper than weight watchers! :)

I was an avid fitday for years user until they loaded the site with ads. I switched to the daily plate but they were bought by livestrong and now they suck. I tried spark people but it was confusing to me and I could never find the foods I needed. I'm sort of still using tdp on ls but it pisses me off that it's so messed up.

sparkpeople.com for me

my husband uses fat secret with has a shared database, I use the Bodybug one which is not great and I use lose it app too when I am on the go.

Here's my experience with the online calorie counters:

Weightwatchers Momentum - $16.95 per month - Great system, though uses points, not calories. Lots of tools, recipes, etc.

Myfooddiary - $9.00 per month - Haven't tried it personally

Calorieking - $9.00 per month - Haven't tried it personally

Fitday - free - Not bad for basic tracking. Does not have a great deal of tools. Lots of ads.

Fitclick - free - Good tools. But may be confusing to use because it is constantly trying to send you to other sites where you can sign up for stuff. Overall confusing.

Sparkpeople - free - Not bad. Has a recipe builder tool, which I love, but the tool is not as user friendly as the weightwatchers recipe builder.

Fatsecret - free - Has a recipe builder, and it's better than sparkpeople's. Not easy as easy to use and find things as weightwatchers, but for the price it's pretty good. This is the one I use right now. I have been using it for a couple of months and so far so good.

Nutridiary - free - Some tools, not very user friendly, but ok for the price.


All of these have forums or communities, though I haven't used any of them much. I find that I get more support and information here on 3fc. In fact if they added a calorie counter here I would never have to go anywhere else.

Me and Fitday have been together for years. I have so many custom foods entered I think its until death do us part. LOLOL!

I'm with Zoe ... years!

I customize almost all my foods and never have trouble finding my regular things.

And ... you can link it here <<<<<

I use Fitday and my husband uses LoseIt! I don't love Fitday, but it keeps track of my calories and weight in a fairly easy way. My husband loves LoseIt!, the iPhone/iTouch app.

I use the Daily Plate and am happy with it. I have seen complaints here of changes after being bought out by Livestrong but I guess I don't have those complaints because I started after the transfer.

I use sparkpeople, which is ok, not tried any other ones so I don't know what to compare it to. I used to have an excel spreadsheet that I got from some diet blogger, but I seem to have deleted it. On sparkpeople for the first few days I had to manually add the nutritional values of almost everything I eat, which was annoying, but as I eat the same foods very often it's getting less time consuming now.

I really liked thedailyplate.com (livestrong) but it would take forever to load on my home computer. Every time I clicked something I'd be sitting there for like 20-30 seconds waiting and it drove me NUTS. The food database is huge, and so is the activity/exercise database since livestrong acquired caloriesperhour.com.

I've been using sparkpeople.com now, which I like. It gets the job done, anyhow. They have an official curated database, which is fairly small, but you can also search a database of foods entered by other members, which is gigantic.

I used to be a member of calorieking.com back when it was $20 a year, and it was super, but now I don't think it's remotely worth it, considering all the free options available.

I use Fitday. It was the first one I found. I have checked out some of the other ones, but since I already have a lot of custom foods in there, I hate to switch. One thing I have noticed about Fitday is sometimes their calorie counts are not accurate. There were some veggies that they had really high, but when I cross referenced with other sites, the other sites were lower on calories (and consistent on several different ones). SO I check everything twice, which is a PITA, but better than me having to reenter all my custom foods.

Also Fitwatch is a part of Fitday I believe and they have a free recipe analyzer.

I bounce between sparkpeople and the dailyplate :) I like both but if I had to choose it would be the dailyplate. The only thing I don't like is that if you track exercise calories it'll add it to your daily limit.

I really enjoy FitDay. A lot of their nutritional information for foods is WRONG, though, so I have made a lot of custom food entries. That's alright by me, because I tend to eat the same things throughout the week, heh. I am boring.

I use mypyramidtracker.gov.

I personally didn't know that the reason the "new" US food pyramid looks so stupid is it was intended to be used with this program, with the pyramid customizing to your specific age, sex, and activity level. You and each of your kids can have your own profile and you earn smiley faces for getting the recommended servings of food groups. I used it for over a year for that purpose alone.

When I decided to lose weight, I started delving deeper into it and started logging my exercise as well and tracking energy balance.

Anyone who decides to try this based on what I've written here, feel free to PM me if you have questions on how I use it. If I hadn't been forced to use it initially for a Nutrition class I was taking I may not have fussed with it, but has turned out to be a very powerful tool for me.

I use mypyramidtracker.gov.

I personally didn't know that the reason the "new" US food pyramid looks so stupid is it was intended to be used with this program, with the pyramid customizing to your specific age, sex, and activity level. You and each of your kids can have your own profile and you earn smiley faces for getting the recommended servings of food groups. I used it for over a year for that purpose alone.

When I decided to lose weight, I started delving deeper into it and started logging my exercise as well and tracking energy balance.

Anyone who decides to try this based on what I've written here, feel free to PM me if you have questions on how I use it. If I hadn't been forced to use it initially for a Nutrition class I was taking I may not have fussed with it, but has turned out to be a very powerful tool for me.Ooh I love that site. I also learned about it during a nutrition class!

My trainer said he liked CalorieKing (one time fee of $45 and they update the foods all the time). I have been using it for about 9 months and like it although I've never tried anything else. The software exists on your computer and you're advised when to download updates. There are no ads or anything like that. There are tons of foods on it.

I also have a GoWear Fit, and they just added a better calorie-tracking component to it, but I haven't tried it. I'm used to CalorieKing so it's easier for me to stick with it.

I use DietPower,
which is an offline software food journaling program.
You can find it through Google.
There is a 2 week free trial, then a small purchase price.
If you buy it though, be sure to buy the disk and not just the download.
I've logged all my food in it every day since September 20, 2004.
This helped me lose from 190 down to 115,
AND, has helped me keep it off for the past 4 years.

I also use thedailyplate.com (livestrong.com). I like it. I used it before it moved to livestrong and I still love it.

I use fitday and have not had any problems finding most foods I eat. I also have a bank of custom foods that I've entered and can track my food intake fairly accurate.

It your vegetable count is higher than you'd expect it's probably because it's been cooked with fat. When looking for cooked carrots for instance I always type in "carrots, fat not added" which gives me a fat free calorie count.

I use the Menu Planner on MyPyramid.gov. It's completely free.

Probably not as in-depth as the paid-for programs, but it has done wonders for me. It's set up like a bar graph with each food group being a separate bar. You then enter foods that you'll eat for the day or week and the sizes of your portions and they show up on the bar graph. It also keeps track of calories. It provides a lot of food and brand choices and is also flexible with how you prepare the food (if you enter mixed salad greens, you have the option of entering what type of dressing you had with it for example).

It has helped me completely turn around my eating habits. Knowing exactly what I'll be eating for the day goes a long way in keeping me from cheating.

I am a long time user of DietPower which I love - best software in my opinion and excellent customer support. But does not focus on the on-line community.

I am also a long time member of CalorieKing (before it was a paid membership). I love the size of the community, very supportive and lots of long time members with proven results.

I have a Sparkpeople membership but the site is too big an too much turnover for me.

I also belong to fatsecret but never got into that site.

I use calorie king but have never paid anything to use it...I am in australia tho so maybe we arent charged as the url is slightly different. That said like someone else mentioned i dont like how if you input your exercise it increases your daily calorie allowance. The other thing i like about it is it has most of (if not all) the aussie brand foods

kazz =]

Sparkpeople is the best I've found. I have used others like mypyramid, fitday, and I think there is one other one.

Sparkpeople is awesome because even if I can't find a certain food I can import it from someone elses custom foods. HOpefully that makes sense it saves me time from having to enter in the nutrition info from the food label. I would suggest trying out all of them and seeing which one you like better. Good Luck

I use www.myfitnesspal.com. I really like it because it has a lot of my local supermarket brand already listed.

When I counted calories I used sparkpeople.com with good success :)

When I counted calories I used sparkpeople.com with good success :)

I just noticed that your from Kansas also and that our weights are about the same but you are way taller then me lol. Well its good to see another person from Kansas on here

I just noticed that your from Kansas also and that our weights are about the same but you are way taller then me lol. Well its good to see another person from Kansas on here


I wish the height made it easier. :hug: It's sooo cold here in NE Kansas right now.

I just started using sparkpeople to count calories. I've had an account with them for ages but never tracked my food with them. but then one i decided to use to their tracker and it's a really good one. it adds up all the carbs and fats too.

I like thedailyplate (Livestrong). Most of the foods I eat are on there and it's free.

I used the daily plate/livestrong for a while but stumbled upon dailyburn.com (they were gymberee or something like that before) after I became unhappy with the livestrong change.
I love it & didn't hesitate to pay for the pro membership. It's the only one I use now & it also has an iPhone app (2.99 I think) so you can log on the go and has a food scanner (separate from the other app, I think it was 2.99 too) for your iPhone too - you can just scan the foods' UPC & if it's in the database, it'll sync it to your account. The recipe builder is much easier to work with than tdp is (unless that changed recently)
I don't know what the pricing structure is now, they have recently changed it, but I pay for 3 months at a time.
Another bonus is if you have money to burn and are into gadgets like I am and buy the $159 WiFi Withings scale, it syncs your weight progress too! I plan on doing this as soon as I can :)