Now, here are three basic tools that can help you stay on track and lose weight.

They are:

1. Journal
2. Pedometer
3. Calorie counting system

Why Journal?

Weight gain is rarely about one thing. Often it’s caused by lifestyle, beliefs and emotions. When you journal throughout your weight loss process you’ll likely have several “ah-ha” moments. These moments will provide clarity. They’ll help you overcome your weight loss challenges. They’ll help you live the better life you’ve been striving for.

What Do You Journal?

Journal the data, for example how much you’ve lost. How many calories you ate that day and what you ate. Journal if you’ve exercised, how it felt, how much effort you put into it and how many calories you burned during exercise.

Also journal how you felt that day. Any challenges you dealt with and whether you dealt with them successfully or if you had a few setbacks. You can use a good old fashioned notebook. You can journal online or you can use an application on your laptop or mobile device. There’s no right or wrong way to journal.

Why A Pedometer?

A pedometer is an inexpensive tool that will help you maintain an active lifestyle each and every day. Set the simple goal of walking 10000 steps each day. Track in your journal how many steps you took and what you did to achieve your goal.

Counting Calories

Counting calories can feel tedious to many people. However, it’s also the most basic source of weight loss information you have. If you consume 3500 fewer calories each week than you burn, you will lose a pound. It is simple math. Which means if you count your calories and know how much you burn and how much you eat you also know how much weight you’re on track to lose.

Use an online calorie counting tool like Fitday.com or a free application for your mobile device to track your calories each day.

The truth is losing weight does come down to basic math. In fact, a nutrition professor decided to go on a “Twinkie” diet. He literally ate junk food for every meal. However, he also counted his calories – why did he do this?

Because he wanted to prove that counting calories is the essential foundation of weight loss. You must consume fewer calories than you burn if you want to lose weight. It’s a basic calories in, calories out equation.

Guess what?

The nutrition professor lost 27 pounds eating Twinkies, snack cakes and other sugary treats.

However, here’s where the experiment gets really weird. You’d expect that this professor would also suffer from some other side effects, right? His cholesterol and his triglycerides would increase. They didn’t. They actually decreased.

The Takeaway?

No one is suggesting that you consume sugary snacks for meals. Your body would eventually decline because you’re simply not getting the nutrition you need.

However, it is important to know how many calories you burn each day and how many you eat. If you want to lose two pounds a week then you’ll need to make sure you burn 1000 more than you eat each day.

Tracking calories is the key. Find a website or mobile application that helps you track calories. There are many available and they’re free to download and use.

What should you look for in a calorie counter and how will you know when you have found a good one?  This article looks at the basic components of free calorie counters and shows you some of the sophisticated options out there.

Free calorie counters should include basic groceries.  An apple is an apple is an apple, no matter how you slice it.  Included in this category is dairy, eggs, fruit, meat, poultry, seafood, and vegetables.

But, so much of what we eat today is processed food.  So, a good program will also include various branded foods.  For instance, you should be able to find out that one serving of Jif Extra Crunchy Peanut Butter equals 2 tablespoons and has 190 calories in it.  Additionally, you might find that 16 percent of the food comes from protein, 71 percent from fat, and 14 from carbs.  It has 2 grams of fiber.

Sophisticated free calorie counters also include sections for popular recipes.  You might learn that the popular Indian dish Chicken Tikka has 232 calories.

Additionally, many free calorie counters include the foods from popular restaurants and fast food outlets.  You might be surprised at just how many calories some of your favorite restaurant foods have in them.  And, you should take note that most of the time you will consume fewer calories if you go to a hamburger shop than a sit down restaurant.

The calorie counters depend on your ability to judge a serving.  Too many times what we judge to be enough for a meal is really multiple servings.  To help you with this, the free calorie counters divide foods into their standard suggested serving sizes and tell you what the weight in grams for that amount is.

While most programs simply list the calories in foods, some free calorie counters have a companion program that shows you just how many calories you’ve burned by doing specific activities.

Everyone knows that the way you lose weight is to burn more calories than you consume in a given period.  To lose 1 pound, you must burn 3500 extra calories than you eat.  These calories burned calculators help you determine just how much you can eat based on how much activity you have in a specific day.

Further, if you have an extra cookie at lunch, you will know how many extra minutes you have to hit on the treadmill after work with these programs.

If you are trying to lose weight, a simple search for “free calorie counters” on Google will give you a large choice. There are a lot of free calorie counters available! Take your pick!

Many companies claim to have perfected calorie counter charts including Weight Watchers and Nutra-Slim. There are also all kinds of free calorie counter charts available on the internet if you do a basic search.

The reason that calorie counter charts are all the rage is because people are beginning to see that fad diets, miracle diets, and fat burning pills don’t work.  The basics of dieting are that you have to consume less than you burn.  In fact, to lose 1 pound, you have to burn an extra 3500 calories.

Calorie counter charts simply systematize the process of dieting.  Here are some basic tips when starting your calorie counter charts.

1. Don’t supersize your meals.  Okay, McDonald’s has technically removed the “Super Size” designation, but now they want you to “go large.”  One of the biggest advantages to calorie counter charts is that you must record just how many calories that large fry has.  Perhaps that will make you decide to choose the small size – or go without.

2. Rather than having 3 “big” meals, eat several small portions each day.  Having an egg and an orange when you wake up, an apple and a slice of cheese at 10 or 11 a.m., three ounces of tuna with a green salad at 1, a snack of yogurt at 4 and a small dinner of a steamed chicken breast and broccoli will keep you full all day with fewer calories than a more traditional food plan.  You can keep track of all of this on your chart to make sure that you don’t go over.

3. Make sure you stay on top of your calories consumed and also keep track of your calories burned.  When you record everything on your chart, you will begin to lose weight.

4. Figure out how many calories you need to maintain your weight, and drop a small amount below that.  If you normally need 1800 calories, don’t drop to 1200 just to lose weight quickly as you will slow down your metabolism.  A 1500 calorie diet would be about right.

5. You can’t eat what you don’t have on hand.  Therefore, you should never shop when you are hungry.

6. Eat slowly.  You will consume fewer calories when you take the time to enjoy your meal.  In our fast food culture, this might be hard to get used to, but your waist line will appreciate it.

7. Be gentle with yourself.  Sometimes a donut will find its way onto your calorie counter charts.  If you “cheat” with a small item once or twice a week, you may actually last longer on the diet.

When you want to lose weight, you should start by developing your own calorie counter charts.  Keep a journal of the foods you eat each day along with their calorie count.  Make sure you are accurately recording the portions you ate.  You will soon begin to fit into your skinny jeans when you keep calorie counter charts.

This situation provides two ways of talking about the amount of calories in food which look quite different but that express the exact same amount of energy. One may say that dietary fat has nine kilocalories (kcal) per gram, while proteins and carbohydrates have four kcal per gram, or, one may say that fat has nine Calories per gram while carbohydrates and proteins have four Calories per gram.

The amount of food energy in a particular food is measured by completely burning the food in a bomb calorimeter, a method known as direct calorimetry. Dieticians recommend counting calories to avoid obesity. The government of the United Kingdom recommends consumption of no more than 2000 Calories (2000 kcal) by women each day and 2500 Calories (2500 kcal) by men each day.

In physics or chemistry, a calorie (abbreviated cal) is a unit of energy that equals the amount of heat necessary to raise the temperature of one gram of water by 1 degree Celsius, at a pressure of 1 atm. This amount of heat depends somewhat on the initial temperature of the water, which results in various different units sharing the name of “calorie” but having slightly different energy values:

* the 15 °C calorie,
* the 4 °C calorie,da
* the mean 0 °C to 100 °C calorie,
* the International Steam Table calorie,
* the thermochemical calorie,

The slight variations in these units can be seen if you convert them to joules. For example, one 15 °C calorie is the amount of heat necessary to raise the temperature of 1 g of water from 14.5 °C to 15.5 °C. This is approximately equal to 4.1855 J or 3.968×10-3 Btu. The International Steam Table calorie is approximately equal to 4.1868 J and the thermochemical calorie 4.184 J.
Of these various units, what is most commonly meant by calorie in cntemporary English text is the 15 °C calorie.

The nutritional Calorie represents 1000 of these 15 °C calories. Since this could be a source of confusion and error, these units are now deprecated. The International System of Units (SI) unit for heat (and for all other forms of energy) is the joule (J), while the (obsolete) cgs (centimeter gram second system of units) system uses the erg (unit of energy and mechanical work in the centimeter-gram-second system) – From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Before start losing weight and counting calories you must first calculate the number of calories your body needs everyday, because this amount changes from person to person, depending on sex, age, weight, muscle content or height. Averages are situated around 2000 calories for women and 2500 for men. An easy, but not so accurate calculation is that for every 500 less than your normal amount of calories eaten every day you will lose up to one pound (453,6g) per week.

Counting calories must be included as part of your diet, because when you loss weight is best to know how many calories your food has, and so ensuring that the amount of calories burned each day is more than the amount stored.  All nutritionists agree that a healthy low fat diet without counting calories could not exists, so take your time and solve that problem with various calorie calculators.

By knowing all the time the amount of calories consumed you can control how much you can eat and how it will affect your body. When dieting and counting the calories you can eat almost anything as long as you do not exceed the number of calories burned every day.

When you eat fewer calories, your body is forced to consume the fat stored to make up the deficit in your calorie count. Nutritionist’s advice is that you must combine psychical exercises with healthy eating in order to create some calorie deficit.

The only thing you really need to be concerned about when deciding how you are going to attack your calorie reduction diet plan, is to reduce the number of calories you getting sufficiently enough to make weight loss happen while at the same time getting enough calories (and nutrients) to keep your body from going into “starvation mode.”

We have long known that calories must be cut from most people’s diets if they are going to lose weight, but if you are one of those people who already has a very limited calorie intake and you still find yourself unable to lose weight, you may actually need to eat more calories!  This is what happens:  Your body is designed to survive at all costs.

That means that, according to your bodily system, if you go eating 800 calories a day all of a sudden, your body system begins to think some tragedy has befallen you and you are unable to find food.  So, your body goes into ultra drive to protect you and conserves its consumption of calories so you don’t starve to death.  If you have long been eating carefully-counted food as part of a long-term calorie reduction diet and you have stopped losing weight, consult your physician for advice about whether or not to add more calories to your eating plan.

Even though many people find themselves in the above category, most of us still eat more than we can burn off, so we need to follow a calorie reduction diet.  The easiest way to do that is to cut out anything we know is “fattening.”  It really isn’t all that complicated.  If food is naturally occurring, it is likely to be the best for you and most likely to be a good part of a calorie reduction diet.

That means you should be spending ninety percent of your grocery shopping time in the produce and meat sections.  Eat lots of raw or steamed vegetables, consume a moderate amount of lean protein, and avoid man-made food as much as possible.  Before you put it in your buggy, ask yourself, “Did nature provide this or did man?”  If the answer is “man,” leave it in the store.

Examples of man-made items include:  bread, pastries, canned vegetables, pretzels, potato chips, cakes, pasta, egg noodles, and so on.

Examples of nature-provided items include:  broccoli, green beans, carrots, fruits, lean meats, nuts, and so on.

Along with counting calories, look for God or nature-created foods when choosing how to eat on your calorie reduction diet.