Nutrition Health Center

Finding The Calorie Counter for You

By Terry Dunkle*

The calorie counter, which dates back to the early 1900s, is still one of the most effective tools for weight loss, because it keeps track of the most important factor in controling your weight: how your calorie intake compares with your calorie expenditures. If your body burns fewer calories than you eat, you gain weight; if it burns more than you eat, you lose weight.

Calorie counter try free or buy Download and run DietPower's free trial Purchase DietPower risk-free

Originally, the only way to count calories was to look up the calorie content of your foods in a book and keep a tally with pencil and paper. Today, most people use their computer. It's a lot faster, and it can do a lot more than just count calories.

To find the calorie counter for your weight-control needs, ask these questions about each calorie counter you're evaluating:

Is the Calorie Counter Fast?

Nothing is more maddening than having to wait five or ten seconds for a calorie counter to find and record a food you're looking for. That's one reason it's generally better to find a calorie counter that installs on your hard drive, rather than using one that works over the Internet. Even if you have cable or DSL, the wait for data to travel between your PC and the Web can seem interminable—especially since, typically, you'll need to log 20 or 30 foods every day.

The ultimate calorie counter will not only install on your computer, but minimize the number of clicks and amount of scrollling you have to perform each time you log a meal. (To make sure it does, restrict your shopping to calorie counters that offer free trials.)

Is the Calorie Counter Reliable?

Some calorie-counting websites use data from old food sets. Worse yet, they may invite users to contribute food data. This practice can produce a database littered with thousands of duplicate foods, as well as errors in the calorie counts. Even if such a website is free to use, do you really want to trust your health to it?

As a simple check, use the tool below to see if the calorie counter you are testing will calculate an accurate calorie budget for your goals.

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

- -

?

ft. in.

lbs.

lbs. ?

- - ?

?

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™.

Is the Calorie Counter Comprehensive?

Besides simply tallying your calories, a good calorie counter compares the number you're eating with the number you should eat. It should also award you extra calories for exercise—and ideally, factor the number of calories to your current weight. (Obviously, a heavier person will burn more calories in exercise than a lighter person does.)

Does the Calorie Counter Offer More?

As long as you're logging all your foods anyway, it pays to find a calorie counter that will also keep you abreast of your intake of other nutrients. Especially important are sodium, calcium, fats (including saturated and trans fats), potassium (important in blood pressure control), folic acid (to prevent birth defects), and antioxidants such as vitamins A, C, E, and selenium.

One program, DietPower®, monitors 33 nutrients and even tells which of your favorite foods is best for your nutrition.

Is the Calorie Counter Guaranteed?

Don't get stuck for $20 to $50 after finding out that the calorie counter you purchased isn't fast, reliable, or comprehensive. The best calorie counters offer money-back guarantees. (DietPower's is the longest we know of: one full year, no questions asked.)

DietPower, Inc., Founder and Chairman