Tag: How Many Calories

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Weight Loss Exercise

Top 4 iPhone Apps for Tracking Calories and Exercise


It’s a pretty well-known fact by now that counting calories is probably the most systematic and effective way for most people to lose weight. However, for those who are constantly busy and on-the-go, using a computer to track calories online or writing down what they have eaten in a book and manually calculating calories may not be possible.

No worries though; you have the option of downloading useful iPhone apps for tracking calories using your smartphone. Finding something that you’ll be able to update easily at any time increases the chances that you’ll actually use it.

IPhone Apps for Tracking Calories and Exercise

IPhone Apps for Tracking Calories1) Lose It! – This app doesn’t just let you key in what you’ve eaten so you know how many calories you’ve eaten, it also lets you track your exercise as well. You can also scan the barcodes of most foods to instantly pull information regarding that food item from a massive online database, helping to save you time. This app is available for the iPhone and Android.

2) My Fitness Pal – This nutrition and fitness app will help you set a proper weight loss goal, and then let you track the calories you eat so that you will not overeat. You can also track your exercise using this app. There’s an online version of My Fitness Pal available too, so you can also opt to key in your calories there if you want to. A great tool to have when on a diet, and it is available for Apple and Android.

3) Calorie Tracker by Livestrong – The Livestrong brand is one of the top names in weight loss, fitness, and nutrition, so it’s not a surprise that they have an app to complement their online calorie tracker. However, the app itself is not free, costing $2.99 to purchase. Nevertheless, if you love all things Livestrong, then it is certainly worth it to purchase this calorie-tracking app, which is available for Apple, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile.

4) CountEat. Calories – This app costs 99 cents and is slightly different than the other three apps above in that it allows you to estimate the calorie count of your entire meal, rather than count exactly the number of calories for each item you’ve eaten. This can save you some time, especially if you are busy. However, this app does not help you track exercise.

There are other apps as well that can help you in your weight loss journey, either by helping you track your calories or improve your knowledge of nutrition and fitness. Keep these iPhone apps for tracking calories and then just browse around and see which ones suit your needs the best.


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Weight Loss Exercise

How To Figure Out How Many Calories You Consume Each Day


Although most people know that understanding how many calories we consume is essential to losing weight, it can be pretty hard to figure out what that number is (especially if you eat out a lot). Unfortunately, however, ignorance will not work. Many foods contain more calories than you’d expect. If you’re not keeping an eye on how many you eat every day, your weight loss efforts could be in vain.

So what can you do to ensure you get a good estimate of what you are consuming on a daily basis?

Option 1: Sign Up To A Calorie Tracking Service

There are a huge number of online calorie tracking services, as well as smartphone apps, that make it easy for you to register what you eat every day. These websites and apps can easily be found with a simple search online, though note that some do come with a monthly fee.

You may be wondering how exactly these sites work. Basically, they have a built in food database that already has the calorie count of most foods programmed into it. Some were added by the program creators, others may have been added by normal users like you.

All you have to do is sign up for the site, go to the food tracking page, and enter the food you have eaten into the correct search bar. Be specific by entering the exact brand if you can. Once you’ve done that, you can see entries in the food database that match your search, and you can select the closest match and add that your calorie count.

Option 2: Track It Yourself (With Some Help!)

If you don’t have constant access to the internet, or prefer not to use these services, then another thing you can do is purchase a nutrition book that has a list of different foods and their calorie counts, and use this book as a guide to keep a written food diary at home, where you manually count your calories by assigning the values provided in the purchased book for the corresponding foods to the food entries and adding up their total at the end of the day. This way is more tedious, but for less tech-savvy people, this is enough to work.

There are also some digital kitchen scales available that will work out nutritional data for you. You’ll still need to enter a code based on the scale’s manual, but it’s far quicker than working it out yourself. These scales are very accurate and useful for people with specific health conditions, too.

Tracking your calories is a wonderful way to tackle dieting, as it offers you a way to eat whatever you want in a balanced way, while teaching you portion control and nutritional estimation. There’s no need to cut out any particular food out of your diet; just eat what you want but stay within the allocated number of calories for the day.


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Weight Loss Exercise

Why Tracking Is Key To Weight Loss Success


You may have tried various fad diets to try to lose weight, and all of them yielded the same results; you failed miserably. This is probably due to the fact that you went on a diet that you couldn’t maintain for the long-term. To lose weight, you need to undertake a lifestyle change, not a temporary diet. It’s more effective if you can just adjust your current lifestyle by making it healthier in several key areas.

One of the main ways you can start practicing this is by tracking the amount of calories you take in and burn on a daily basis to get a better understanding of why your old lifestyle caused you to put on weight.

Here are some reasons why tracking is one of the main keys to weight loss success:

Tracking can help you stay motivated on your weight loss journey as it is a systematic way for you to keep track of what you are eating. By tracking your calories, you will be less tempted to stray from your healthy eating plan, since if you want, you can always allocate calories for a special treat that you love, or if you overeat at a particular meal, you can compensate during another meal by eating fewer calories. This way, you will see results and stay motivated.

Tracking your calorie intake helps you change your eating habits, as you can learn portion control and learn to swap high-calorie options with lower calorie ones. Since you have a set amount of calories per day, you will be very careful with how much of the high-calorie foods you let enter your mouth.

Tracking the amount of calories you burn with your fitness endeavors will help you budget how much extra you can eat to stay on your goal, and at the same time give you a boost of encouragement every day when you see how many calories you have burned from your efforts. You will be more motivated to push yourself during workouts this way. More intense workouts mean more calories burned!

Tracking your weight loss or body measurements are a great motivation tool; when you can see the progress you’ve made in black and white, you will be very motivated to keep on going and achieve your goals. Sometimes subtle changes can be hard to see in the mirror. But when you see them on paper, you’ll know that you’re getting somewhere.

So as you can see, there are many benefits that you can get if you start tracking your calories and your progress in your weight loss. And don’t forget to make the most of the various websites and apps out there to help you keep track.


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