by Beth Schwartz

Created on: July 15, 2009   Last Updated: July 16, 2009

A friend of mine told me about the Website TheDailyPlate.com. I've seen a lot of weight loss Websites, but this one is my favorite by far. Registration is free.

First, set your calorie goals. Enter your age, height, and weight. Decide on a goal. Do you want to maintain your weight, lose 1 pound a week, lose 1.5 pounds a week, or lose 2 pounds per week? (Other options are also available.) What is your typical activity level? By providing this information, the Website calculates how many calories you can consume per day to meet your weight loss goal.

In the "My Plate" section, you will find your food diary. This page is used to track the foods you consume each day, as well as your daily activities. A search engine is provided to find each food that you eat and add it to your diary. For example, if you ate a bowl of cereal for breakfast, search for that cereal in their search engine and add it to your foods eaten for the day, along with milk.

Your daily diary entry will list each food item you ate that day, as well as the calories, fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbs, sugars, fiber, and protein contained in each item. At the end of the day, you can see your total calories, fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbs, sugars, fibers, and protein for that day, as well as the percentage of your daily values for each. You also add your daily fitness activities under the "Fitness" heading. The Website will provide the calories burned after you enter the type of activity and the length of time that you spent doing that activity.

Along with a food diary, the Website provides a number of tools. You can chart your weight history and keep a diary of your feelings. In the "Meals" section, you can see what other members are eating and get great recipe ideas. You can see a pie chart that breaks down your calories by carbs, fat, and protein. You can track your daily water intake. You can also "create a meal," so that you don't have to enter individual ingredients separately. For example, for spaghetti, instead of having to search for noodles, sauce, and meat each time you eat spaghetti, you can save it as a meal to make it easier to enter next time. If your weight loss goal changes, it can be easily changed by setting new calorie goals. And this is just the beginning of what you can do on TheDailyPlate.com.

And don't worry - you don't have to go to the computer every single time you eat something. You can enter foods for prior days as well.

It is so important to be aware of what you put into your body. TheDailyPlate.com helps you to do this with ease. With increasingly busy schedules, it's difficult to manually keep track of the foods you eat, your calorie intake, and the calories you burn. TheDailyPlate.com makes keeping track of this information a piece of cake (pardon the reference).

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