Can you please help me?
 

Hi everyone,
I am new here and I need your help.
I started using 3FC 3 week ago but I wasn't sure which plan to use. After reading many posts I decided to go for calorie counting. However I have no idea how to start. How I find out how many calories to consume? Is there any tool here I can use?
Please help me, I need to start this...

Look up "daily caloric requirements" and you'll find a bunch of online tools. Plug in your stats and they'll give you an approximate number of calories to eat if you want to maintain. Subtract 500 from that number to get the number of calories you need to eat to lose one pound per week. (Some calculators will also give you this number.)

Here's a good one: http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm

Also, the Myfitnesspal website has an exhaustive list of foods with their calorie contents. You can look up an individual food. Within the website, go to the "food" tab, then search for the food you want.

HTH Freelance

My Fitness Pal website has a food diary. You just put in the foods you want and most of the time it is in the data base. It is a really handy tool. It keeps the information and totals it for you. You can see the daily and weekly progress. Try it!

Thank you both for your info :hug:

If you have a smart phone you can use the phone app for MFP or Lose It to track.

I don't have a smartphone buy I am planning to get one.
Thanx for the info. :thanks:

there are so many of them. but my favorite is loseit.com or you can get it as an app to! :)

I know having a smartphone is a big expense, but I think it's worth it when you're trying to watch your food intake. I don't think I could have lost the weight without mine. I didn't use an app to track any of my food, but having the internet in my pocket was a very valuable tool that helped me stay on track when I was out and about.

I don't have the luxury of always being able to prepare my meals, so being able to look up information on the fly is very helpful.

My brother and my father use loseit :) They often have to eat when they're working so it's been great for them to look up calories on their phones (they both have androids, but I assume loseit is on the iPhone too)

Thanx for your help and info.
Expense is one of the reasons I haven't get one yet. Hopefully by next month I will manage to get one.

I have an app on my phone but forget to use it. I've had a smartphone for a year and just put an app on it. My weight loss so far was lost using a note pad and piece of paper. It doesn't matter what you use to keep track of calories as long as you do it. Even with apps on my phone, I still pre-plan what I will eat if I have to eat out before leaving home. I even have other cool gadgets I've just started using but they aren't speeding up my progress, they are just cool tools that can be convenient. Weight loss via calorie counting can be done for free, so no worries. :)

Oh yeah it totally can, the problem comes when you don't have the opportunity to plan ahead. I'd much rather look things up on my laptop than on my smartphone, but if I'm out and about I need to look up something quickly it is a very valuable tool.

I don't use apps either, just the internet to find calorie counts. Tracking calories in an app makes me neurotic for some reason. I only do it once every few weeks or so to get an idea of my macros.

My father and my brother are prime examples of people who would really need the phone app. They do NOT have a say in what is served to them at work and they can't really make food ahead of time. It's eat what's there or don't eat. With the apps on their phones they can look up calorie counts and stay within their pans.

That said, not having a smartphone shouldn't be an excuse to go off track completely. The smartphone is a tool that assists in weight loss, not the primary reason for it. :)

Today I did a small research on the phone market and the different packages they offer. I have never before used/had a cell phone with internet. Now if I want to make a package for my needs plus a smartphone plus internet on it, that means I will overcome my regular amount of money I spend on the phone bill for about 15-20 pounds extra. Of course it is not a huge amount of money but if you barely made it by the end of the month you can consider it as huge. As I see it now, I will probably stick to my pen and piece of paper. :dz:

check out loseit.com

and if you have a msart phone lookup the app Loseit!

Can anyone tell me how I can see the day of my substription.
I want to add a ticker but I don't remember when I join the site.

@jessica. Thanks, I will give it a look.

I checked your profile. It says you joined on February 20 :)

I saw that too... I was looking for the exact day...
Thanx for checking though sontaikle. :thanks:

I don't have any gadgets - just a cool little Calorie Counting booklet that I really like. (Its actually from Australia and is by Allan Borushek.

However...my SONS both have Ipod Touches ...wonder if I could sneak one of these little "apps" on there without them knowing? LOL! They sound great!

Lee

They are great indeed!!! But the point is to have it with you all the time. So I don't know if it is going to be helpful this way. :D
I think is better if you stick with your booklet ;)

Because of all the suggestions for this in Calorie Counters, I have been using the "Lose It" smart phone app for 2 weeks, and I love it!! It really makes tracking effortless, which helps me stay OP. :carrot:

See Thread "can someone please help me?" posted by dollyfinn.

I'm so glad 4star posted this. It is absolutely true that you don't need a fancy gadget, or any major purchase of any kind to lose weight. I lost 190 pounds and basically the only real money I spent was on new clothes. Since you have a computer and Internet service, you can look up calories of anything on-line FOR FREE, you can use a 50 cent purse sized spiral notebook from the dollar store to log your calories in. If you really want to get fancy, there are tons of cheap little calorie counter booklets near the checkout at you local grocery store. Most restaurants have nutritional info on-line. The key to my, and many other long time maintainers, is the ability and the discipline to PLAN ahead most of the time.

I recently bought an i-phone and downloaded 2 "diet" apps and both take way longer than jotting down a bit of info in a notebook.

You don't need a gym membership, you don't need a body bugg, you don't need special foods, potions, or pills. You don't need anything but a desire to lose weight and some addition skills.

This wisdom comes with age though, and I only WISH I had 1/2 of the money back I blew on "diet stuff" from my younger years. :) Please don't let money, or pressure to buy something deter you from starting today.