calorie counting help

Counting calories is LAME, but it's what I've had to start doing in order to reach my goal. I'm always on the lookout for anything to make it easier, and the computer program, Calorie Balance, makes it way easier. 

It's freeware, so it's not perfect, but on the whole it works fine for my needs. You type in the foods you eat, and the amounts and it looks in its massive food database and spits out your calories, fats, carbs and other nutrients consumed for the day. You still have to measure your food yourself, ugh, but it's about as easy as it gets. If you have some restaurant entree or exotic new food it hasn't heard of, you can look up the nutritional info on the web and add it to the database. There is supposed to be a feature where it goes looking for you, but it doesn't work. (There are some internet-based calorie tracking programs that do this very well, but you have to live with the fact that your personal information, plus what you eat every day is being stored on someone else's server. Creepy.) The main food chart screen totals all your calories, carbs, fats, sugars, fiber, and protein in an easy-to-understand graph at the bottom. That works very well. There is also a feature where you can choose other nutrients (iron, calcium, etc.) to be tracked on the same graph, but it's pretty buggy. It does track that kind of thing for you, but you kind of have to total it yourself. 

It also has an exercise tracker, which I love. It tracks the calories you burn in different workouts. All you have to enter is the kind of activity ant the time spent, and since it's already keeping track of your weight, it does that calculation for you. Then it takes the calories burned and subtracts it from your total calories consumed, giving you the net figure. (Keep in mind, if you eat 1500 calories, you don't have to do 1500 calories worth of exercise. Your base metabolism rate will take care of a lot of that for you.)

I am a huge geek, so it's been a boon for me. It helps me compare foods, plan out my exercise and know every little thing I am consuming and burning.

Anyway, for absolutely free it's a great tool to try. Read cnet's review and download the program here. The download does ask you if it can install a web toolbar. It's just an ad (everyone's gotta make money right?) you can decline it.

I hope this helps you on your way to awesome!