At 48 years, I find it astonishing that only this last week has showed me a whole new way of doing what was previously not working. I discovered About.com Calorie Count ( http://caloriecount.about.com/ ) and for the first time *ever* find that counting and logging daily calories, charting nutritional breakdown of all I eat, and an activity log also, is helping me immensely . I was never one to peruse through a calorie book and jot down, add up the math, making guesses ~ but now that the on-line FREE program makes it all so easy, I just am over-the-moon excited !

I have been able to chart each morning in the log, what I intend to eat, what exercise I intend to do, and see the fictitious calorie deficit and nutritional breakdown, (plan which dinner from my own selected homemade recipes ) ~ and along with my coffee, nip and tuck the food/activity log so it all lines up to a reasonable deficit, and what is nutritionally sound. I find I can make personalized 'recipes' of all that I eat,for easy tagging, and it is the missing link to all the excuses as to why I could never count calories (I cook absolutely everything from whole foods scratch). I then just try to eat and do everything on those pre-logged charts. If I don't, well then, before I close at the end of each day, I just make the changes of what I really ate/did for activity... and voila... a chart that has helped me relearn how to live a NEW LIFESTYLE in eating and excercising. I really believe an older dog can learn new tricks !

I just looked at this site. Seems good to me too! Found out that I ate 497 cals for breakfast! Wow! Guess I needed a boot in the seat of the pants!

I use CC as well, and it's great. I love love love their toolbar, and how I can see just how many calories I have left.

Sticker shock is what I call it and yes it is astounding. Even after doing this for 5 months, I am stunned at times.

Can you just log in the calorie totals for them to show the graph? For me this is a drawback for Fitday. I use my apps to record my food intake but the graphing of weight loss overlayed with the calorie count is lacking both for Loseit and Nutrition Menu. However, I love the portability of my iTouch which makes up for this defect in statistical analysis. I always have my iTouch with me, and I log my foods in almost imeediately upon eating them. I don't have to wait to the evening, or whenever, and I hope I remembered everything.

Karen, it seems you can just imput the calories, but you can also customise nutrition labels from the stuff you eat , just transfer the data and save it (tag it) and you'll have custom servings of most everything you eat WITH inclusion of nutrional totals, which to me is almost as important as calorie totals. I feel I am training myself to eat all over again.

As far as the Sticker Shock... yeah, but that's predictable too, as cheese and oils add up the calories. I still am eating my quarter cup of slightly toasted almonds every morning, 1 oz of dark bittersweet chocolate, and using my olive oil, and though the charts say my fat is too high, I am ignoring it because I instinctively feel plant fats are good. I just have to trim the animal fats as much as possible. So, I guess I'm going to have to get use to not eating very much cheese, and of course , no butter... save that for off=plan pigouts, or whatever (I have to allow myself those days, or I'll never ease into this rigidity) . Good luck to us all !

I think Calorie Count is an awesome website and I really like the look and feel of it. I thought about switching over from sparkpeople, but I found the CC way of adding food - very slow and tedious. Am I missing something? Waiting for all the webpages to open is slow.

If you use Firefox, use their toolbar. Personally. I've not had an issue with it being too slow. But I am used to it. It takes, on average, about 2 minutes to enter in a meal once you get into the swing of it.

I've used The Daily Plate for a while, but I really like the reports you can get out of calorie count. Hm...

Wow! Thanks for sharing! Can you tell me what the Burn Meter is all about??

This has completely changed my goal weight! I didn't know someone of my stature and height should be 144 lbs! I don't think their definition of "large stature" is 100% accurate

Thank you so much for sharing that site. I hadn't came across it before. I like that it allows you to search and add it quickly. I also really like that it gives a grade for the food and the reasons why it's good or bad. I'm impressed. I'm going to make me an account now.

I love the idea of the toolbar and the grading. And it's cool to see in the toolbar that you eating today is a grade A or whatever.

I still just can't get past all the screens I have to go through to simple add a single piece of food. I really hope in the future they find a way to streamline the process.

I do LOVE their recipe calculator - but I love how fast it is to get the calories of a recipe. As long as it gives you the correct calories. The other day it told me 2 cups of black beans was 1400 calories!

I generally use Fit Day PC, but I like how the green and red bars are to tell you how things rate nutritionally.

That's cool.

A.

Why not do both? Cant hurt... as many 'tools' as you use, the better, whatever time you put into it is just all that much more focus and dedication.. which is facing us in the right direction.

Sometimes it's just a particular 'Look" which draws me in....