myfitnesspal - not affiliated, etc.
It's a smartphone app that has a web page interface, too. It's a food and exercise tracker. Everything is counted by calories, based on a daily allowance that is figured by a quick questionnaire about your gender, height, weight, lifestyle not including exercise (active, sedentary), and weight loss goals (overall) and rate (per week). Hint: if you work in an office, your lifestyle is sedentary. Your butt is in a chair 8 hours per day. Exercise is figured separately, and those calories are added to your budget on days you work out. You set up an account, which takes about a minute, and you can store personal foods or meals, and your workout types. Stuff you enter on your phone is synched to the web via your account, and vice versa, so you always know where you are on your daily count. If you're the type that does well in a group, there is a social aspect to this. You can follow your friends and they, you. I'm more of a lone wolf, and that works with this, too.
I've been on it since Labor Day 2011, and I've lost 30 lbs. If you're looking for that quick 5-10 lbs in a week, keep looking. That ain't what this is.
This works for me for a couple of reasons. I'm CDO (that's OCD, but alphabetized!!
) and like tracking/recording/counting things. The app also doesn't tell you that anything is out of bounds, food wise. If it fits in your budget, you can have it.
You have to get imaginative about what you can have, too. I eat more than my share of fast food, I just almost never get fries or a sweet drink. Jack in the box has this delicious #1 sirloin burger. As prepared, it's 910 calories, almost half of my 1860 budget. Of limits, right? Wrong. I have them cut the peppercorn mayo, and voila, it's now 620 calories, nicely slotting in as a meal, even on a non-exercise day. I always cut off the mayo or sauce from any burger or sandwich. It's not always as dramatic as my example, but it usually saves anywhere from 40 to 90 calories a whack. I drink a ton of decaffeinated iced green tea, unsweetened, that I steep myself and pour over ice. I also buy Gatorade G2 by the case, 40 calories per 16.9 oz bottle. Drinks and exercise can make or break this. If you're drinking almost no calories, that's more to eat. If you're exercising, that's more to eat. For the poster above that was asking about juices/smoothies, those are EXPENSIVE, like you might as well go to 7/11 and get a giant Coke Icee, and then pop a vitamin C tablet. Juice should be drunk from a 4-6 oz juice glass. They're all high in sugar, even the non-sugar added varieties.