Tracking calories and exercise can be tedious and down right annoying. It is, however, a very effective way to lose weight (as well as maintain weight). Old fashion pen and paper will work but it is not nearly as fun as such websites as Sparkpeople and My Fitness Pal. Both of which are free to use and both of which come with free smartphone apps (a must for anyone who eats outside the confines of their home- hermits need not look into this option ;)). I have used both and my preference is My Fitness Pal so I will speak in depth about this site. I recommend that you check out both (or more), however, to find one that meets your individual needs.
Basically, this is how My Fitness Pal works: You set up your profile by answering a few simple questions. You tell them your current weight and your goal weight and the program tells you how many calories you should be consuming. This site has an enormous databank of nutritional stats on millions of foods. You just input what you eat and it calculates your calories. If you are using the smartphone app you can even input your calories by scanning the barcode on the package! The top of your homepage has a running tally of how many calories you have left for the day for quick reference. When you put in your daily exercise the program will calculate your calories burned based on your current weight (heavier people will burn more calories when they exercise). These exercise calories will then be calculated into your daily calories as extra calories earned through exercise. Meaning that if you know that you will be going over your allotted calories (lets say for a much needed date night complete with a bit of wine at dinner- or maybe you skip dinner altogether and just want to down a bottle a wine single handedly) you can do more exercise that day so that you can stay within your calorie limits. It also has the option to find your friends (who are also on My Fitness Pal) in a Facebook-like feature where you can give support and congrats to one another (or commiserate together after a particularly difficult calorie day). Under the "Tools" tab you will find a BMI calculator which will help you determine what a healthy BMI is for your height giving you an idea what a healthy weight is for you. For those looking to connect with other "losers" there is an entire community of message boards under the "Community" tab. Perhaps the best feature of all is that at the end of the day you click on "complete this entry" and the program with tell you "if everyday were like today in 5 weeks you would weigh ____". There is nothing more gratifying (and motivating) after a day of exercise and calorie cutting than seeing how much your hard work will pay off in the long run!
For your convenience I have included a link to My Fitness Pal in my Best.Links.Ever. section.
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