Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Calorie Counter by Fat Secret

Losing weight is easy, right? It's just a matter of calories in vs. calories out? Well, yes and no: and one of the hardest things to do is know how many calories you are eating vs. how many you are burning to keep yourself in the deficit you need to be to lose pounds. This little app is an amazing tool to help you take the guess work out. I love this app and use it all of the time!



The first thing you can do is keep track of all the food you eat. There is a huge library of foods: natural, restaurant menus, packaged foods - it all seems to be on there. If you are using your phone, you can scan the bar code of a package and the nutritive value of that item will come up. It will break down your macro count for you too and keep track of your calories, fat, carbs and protein. If you are logged onto their web site you can even enter recipes and it will break down all the information for that recipe as well. As long as your measurements are correct, you will know exactly how much you are eating in a day.








Next you'll want to keep track of all the activity you've done for the day. You will enter it in the exercise diary. This will be a ball park, because it will not gauge your intensity, take into account "after-burn" for an activity or calculate your body mass, but it will give you a good idea of where you are at. There is a large list of activities to choose from, so most things are on there.












The last useful tool is the diet calendar. This is where you find your calorie balance. It will show you  how many calories you have eaten, how many you have burned and if you are in a deficit or surplus for that day. To lose weight you obviously want to be in a deficit: 500 calories a day will be about a pound a week.












This awesome little app is free and I highly recommend it for anyone who is trying to lose weight or who needs to keep track of the food they are eating. It's very user friendly, both on the phone and on the computer, and will help you on your way.

Download the app HERE for Android
Download the app HERE for iPhone