You can find free, intelligent, online dieting resources at Calorie Count, as a service of About.com Health.
Talk about easy. It only takes a few minutes to join and once you answer a few easy questions, your individual diet page is all ready to go. Just type in the foods you eat and the amount of exercise you do, and Calorie Count tells you how many calories you have eaten, or burned, and how healthy your diet is for the day.
I use Calorie Count a lot, and here is why I love it:
The diet profile quiz helps you figure out what kind of an eater you are. Are you an emotional eater? An excessive eater? A strategist? Calorie Count has tips to help you change your eating habits to fit your dieting type.
Almost every food you can eat and any activity under the sun is available in the databases. Even brand names and restaurant foods are available. Just browse or search and add to your daily food or activity log. For easy entry, you can tag the foods and meals you eat frequently -- awesome, fun and easy.
You can pick your portion so it easy to choose the portion sizes you actually eat. It is so frustrating to use a book or a diet site that has ounces of peanuts when you just ate a quarter of a cup. Calorie Count makes it easy to choose your portion size -- no math required.
The recipe analyzer might be the coolest tool on the site. Just how healthy is grandma's tuna casserole? Enter the ingredients and the number of servings and Calorie Count gives you the nutrition information per serving in the style of a Nutrition Facts food label and gives your recipe a grade of A through F.
Join the Calorie Count community -- share the pain and share the joy. I know that dieting really isn't much fun. Sometimes it helps to share your experiences with other people going through the same thing. At Calorie Count, you can post messages on a forum or write your thoughts in a private daily journal. Or both.
You have your own home page where you can create a personal journal, photo gallery, links to you friends, tools to track your weight changes, and automatically track the threads you start and posts you make to the forums.
You can get nutrition info on your phone. If you aren't next to your computer at lunch, you can still find out how many calories are in that bagel by looking it up on your cell phone.
You have an eat meter and burn meter right on your account page or displayed on your Tool Bar to let you know instantly whether you are on track for your daily calorie counts.
Calorie Count analyzes your diet for calories and nutrients. Hmm...dinner time and not enough fiber? Better eat more vegetables. Too much sodium? How about fresh fruit for dessert? Hold your cursor over the date for more information.
It's free!
Remember that a healthy diet is more than just calories, it is also vitamins, minerals, fats, carbohydrates, protein and fiber. One of the reasons diets fail is because people focus on just the calories or the carbs or the whatever, but not on the whole picture. Calorie Count gives you everything you need to eat healthy and be fit.

Get Some Exercise

Exercise burns calories and keeps your muscles strong, so choose a combination of cardiovascular training and resistance exercises. You can join a health club, or buy a few fitness DVDs and set up your own workout room at home. I think the best part about exercising is how good your body feels as you get stronger. And when your body feels good, you're going to be more motivated to take care of yourself by eating right.
I like walking the best. Most of the year, all I need is a good pair of walking shoes, but during the winter I go to a health club to walk on a treadmill.

Drink Plenty of Water
You might be drinking a lot of your daily calories. Sugary soft drinks, alcoholic beverages and even healthy beverages like milk and fruit juice can be high in calories. Water has no calories, so it's a good beverage to drink when you're watching your weight. For variety, you can add a slice of lemon or lime to a glass of water or buy sparkling water if you like fizz. You can also choose "vitamin water" beverages that add a little more flavor and a few vitamins, but look at the labels - many contain a lot of sugar and calories. Alternatively, you can choose diet drinks sweetened with zero-calorie sweeteners.
When I was overweight, I drank a lot of sugary sodas. Today I prefer the vitamin waters that are sweetened with a bit of stevia.

Choose Nutrient-Dense, Low-Calorie Foods
You can cut calories by either eating smaller amounts of calorie-dense foods (the ones that got you fat) or by choosing foods that are low in calories, but rich in nutrients and fiber, like fruits and vegetables. When you eat nutrient-dense foods, you can eat a large volume of food, so you don't feel deprived. Maybe today the idea of eating an apple rather than a donut as a mid-morning snack doesn't sound appealing, but you'll get used to it.
I replaced the greasy, sugary foods I liked as a young adult with fresh fruits, vegetables and nuts, and I cut back on fried foods and processed meats. It wasn't easy at first, I missed the junk food for a while, but today I'll take a crisp, sweet Gala apple over a greasy, icky donut any day.

2. Track Your Calories - In and Out
Shereen Jegtvig
This is the crucial step - the one that will help you reach your weight loss goal. Keep track of everything you eat and drink every day - and the amounts - in a food diary. It's very easy to lose track of how much food you're really consuming so a food diary keeps you in control of your diet. A food diary can be as simple as a little note book or use an online food diary like Calorie Count, which calculates calorie intake for you and even tells you if you're choosing healthy foods.
I made my own food diary in the past, but today I'd recommend Calorie Count. Using the food diary helped me keep track of calories, and it also made me aware of the types of foods I chose every day.

When it comes to successful weight loss, I know what to do because I've done it. I was a chubby kid and I was overweight for many of my pre-nutritionist adult years. Losing weight isn't difficult, but it takes dedication and patience because it's a slow process that has to last a lifetime. Let me share my top tips - I'll tell you what to do to lose weight and how I did it.
1. Determine How Many Calories You Need Every Day

You can use a calorie calculator to estimate how many calories you need every day and you can adjust that number if you like. Each pound of fat on your body is equivalent to 3,500 calories, so if you cut your calorie intake by 500 calories each day, you'll lose about one pound per week. Don't cut your calories too low, however; you need to get enough food so you get all the daily nutrients you need. Plus that type of crash-dieting doesn't lead to permanent weight loss. You need to choose a calorie level that you can follow comfortably.
I'm not very big person, so I aim for 1,500 calories every day. I choose healthy foods and I watch my portion sizes carefully.

manganese:Manganese is a trace mineral found in the human body. Manganese needs to be present in very small amounts for many types of chemical reactions that occur in the human body, so it is important for normal metabolism and enzyme production.

Nutrition is all about the study of food and how our bodies use food as fuel for growth and daily activities. The macronutrients, or "big" nutrients include proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. The micronutrients, or "little" nutrients are the vitamins and minerals that we need to be healthy. Here you can find articles, tools, and resources to help you learn about these nutrients, and help you analyze your own diet and food choices.