can anyone suggest a good book that tells you how many calories things have. I heard of the book from Calorie King, but Im not sure if it is good or not.

I have the "Nutribase Complete Book of Food Counts". It has pretty much everything (all the stuff on the USDA database), including chain restaurants, if you like that sort of thing. It's very, very handy.

Personally I love that book -calorie king- and you can use their website also.

I am gonna pick up their workbook and book for my mom to use and my MIL is currently using it to just get good ideas of what she ate, not being super exact (no scales and estimating most stuff some measuring) and she has lost 17 pounds so far.