Nutrition Health Center

Where’s the Best Calorie Counting Chart?

By Terry Dunkle*

A calorie counting chart is indispensable to the serious dieter, because unless you know how much you’re eating, you can’t control how rapidly you reach your goal weight. The best charts today are either online tools or software that you install on your computer. This guide covers five aspects to consider when shopping for such a tool.

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Food Data

The average supermarket contains 30,000 foods. Choose a chart that includes at least 20,000. Don’t fall for one that inflates its numbers by counting duplicates under different names. And eschew any online chart that gets its data from users keying in nutrition facts from labels. These charts are often inaccurate and littered with dupes.

Exercise Data

A good calorie counting chart will also include at least 500 kinds of exercise, which you can log to earn extra calories. These should cover household and occupational tasks as well as sports and leisure pursuits. Ideally, you will be able to log not only the activity, but also its speed and intensity. The chart should also take your weight into account when calculating the calories burned. Lighter people burn fewer calories in an activity than heavier people do.

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.)

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Tobacco user?

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Goal Weight

Target Date

Email Address

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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™.

Diarying

Instead of forcing you to tally your calories by hand, a quality calorie counting chart will do that for you. Besides showing you how many calories you have left in your budget today, it should deposit uneaten calories in a “bank” in case you want to eat them tomorrow.

“Smart” Functions

Your calorie counting chart should also be able to do “smart” functions such as remembering your favorite foods, so that you don’t have to search anew every time you want to log them. One program (DietPower, advertised on this page) also adjusts your calorie budget to your personal metabolism, and even shows which of your favorite foods is best for your balance of 33 different nutrients.

Warranties

Stay away from any calorie counting chart that doesn’t offer a free trial (at least 15 days) or a money-back guarantee (at least 90 days). Many programs are shoddily made, even those that look slick on the surface, and you need time to discover their nasty surprises before they’ve locked up your dough.

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