Counting Calories

I've read numerous times that some of the most successful people when it comes to losing weight count calories/keep a food journal. I had gone back and forth with weight watchers for a couple years and could never quite stick with it so I thought there was no point. However about a week ago I thought I would give calorie counting a try as a way to stay on top of eating healthy and not let a little snack here or there undo my whole day without me realizing it. I decided to download Calorie Counter- FREE but Everyday Health, Inc.

There are plenty of other apps out there to choose from and I could pay a couple dollars and not have to look at adds but it really doesn't bother me. You are able to add food either by typing in a name and the calories (or all the nutrition info if you'd like), you can look up recipes, scan barcodes to add a food (it doesn't recognize everything), look up food by typing in the name (ex: Cracker Barrel Sharp Cheddar 2%), and so on.... The app is also nice because you type in some basic info and it helps you set the number of calories you should consume each day depending on how much weight you want to lose per week as well as a healthy goal weight based on BMI. It considers your level of activity so if you are pretty active daily or lead a fairly sedentary lifestyle it will take this into consideration. You can also add in exercise or activity to see how many calories you'd burned.

As you add your food in for each day it will keep track of the totals based on how much fat, protein, carb, sugar, etc. you should consume in a day. So although I am mainly counting calories and trying to go low carb I have realized I need to watch my sugar intake and increase my fiber.

So far this has been working really well. It's easy enough to look up food or at least find something similar if they don't have the exact brand of what you are searching for. I have my phone with me pretty much all the time so it's convenient enough to add throughout the day and not have to write things down to look up later. I feel like this suits me much better than weight watchers. Although it works great for some people it doesn't work for me. On weight watchers my two glasses of wine a night would take up a huge portion of my points (almost 1/3 of my daily points) but if I'm just looking at calories it's only 250 calories for two 5oz glasses so it doesn't use up as large of a percentage of my daily allowance.