Nutrition Health Center

Best Calorie Count Weight Loss Tools

By Terry Dunkle*

Finding a reliable, easy-to-use calorie count weight loss tool is easy if you pay attention to these five factors:

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Diary Approach

A calorie count weight loss tool that forces you to tally the calories you eat and the calories you work off in exercise is a real time-waster. Look for one that automatically performs this function for you as you log your daily meals, workouts, and body weight. The program should also calculate a daily calorie budget for reaching your goal on your target date, and deposit uneaten calories in a “bank” so you can eat them on later days.

Food Choice

Don’t bother with a calorie count weight loss tool that covers fewer than 20,000 foods. These should be unique foods, not duplicates under different names such as “pancakes” and “flapjacks.” All foods should be provided by the tool’s makers -- not by users volunteering additional foods by keying in facts from labels. In the latter case, you are at the mercy of everyone else’s typographic errors. And finally, the tool should display not only the calories in a food, but also values for many other nutrients.

Based on 20 years of research by DietPower, Inc., this calculator is accurate to 5 percent for most users. (It's not for people who are pregnant or have metabolic disorders. Always see a doctor before starting a diet.)

Birth Date

Sex

Tobacco user?

Height

Weight

Goal Weight

Target Date

Email Address

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ft. in.

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Close Goal Weight
Your Goal Weight is the weight you want to achieve. (If it's a lot different from your current weight, you might want to set a goal that represents only the first step. Even a 10-percent weight loss will significantly improve your health.)
Close Target Date
Plan on losing no more than a pound or two per week.  Otherwise, you may eat too little for good nutrition and your weight loss may be temporary.
Close Lactating?
If you are breastfeeding, check this box and the calculator will add calories for producing milk.
Close Tobacco User?
Nicotine speeds your metabolism, making you burn calories faster. (That's why people who quit smoking gain weight.) Check this box if you average more than one cigarette, one-half pipeful, one-quarter of a cigar, or one dip of snuff or chewing tobacco per day.
Close Email Address
Once a month, DietPower will send you the most important nutrition news of the past 30 days, selected by national award-winning editors covering hundreds of medical journals. You can cancel this free, no-obligation service anytime with a single click. We produce it only to promote our weight-loss software. It won't put you on other mailing lists—We're Not That Kind of Company™.

Exercise Choice

Similarly, a good calorie count weight loss tool will cover at least 500 kinds of physical activity, from traditional exercises and exercise machines to leisure pursuits and occupational tasks. It should also factor your calorie “burn” for your current weight, as well as the speed or intensity of the exercise.

“Smart” Functions

A few calorie count weight loss tools can “learn” from your actions and give you back information that others can’t provide. One example is DietPower (advertised on this page), which adjusts your daily calorie budget to your metabolism in order to guarantee reaching your goal weight on your target date, and even recommends foods you like that are best for your Nutrition Quotient™. Other tools may offer similarly intelligent functions. Read their feature lists carefully.

Support

Unfortunately, most calorie count tools offer either no support or poor support. Look for one that posts an 800 number on its website or promises replies to emails within 24 hours or less. (My company offers phone and email support from 9 a.m. to midnight Eastern, 365 days a year.)

Founder, CEO, and Editor-in-Chief of DietPower, Inc.