Online food trackers are a great way to track your exercise, calories and macronutrients – protein, carbohydrates and fat. If you log all your foods for a couple of days, you might realize that you are eating much more than expected, and learn the difference in portion sizes. It is a simply way to keep on track and see where any pitfalls in the nutrition might be inhibiting you from achieving your goals.
A good program should have a huge database of foods, and make it easy to put in the foods and adjust their quantities. It should allow you to adjust the macros, and calculate for you how many calories (or macros) you have left for the day.
Each program listed allows you to set up your profile, input foods, and other foods and brands that might not be listed in their database. You can track your progress with your measures, and put in your daily food log activity. Most food tracker programs do come with mobile apps that allow you to use your profile log in information and track your progress on your phone.
Calorie King – This is the program that I have been using for the last few years. User friendly and easy, but it will cost you either monthly, yearly or you buy the program. If you buy the program you are able to create more than one profile. They offer a week trial of the program before buying which is a good draw. This online program in which you set up your profile you just have to enter the food, the amount and the calculations are done for you. In order to switch up the macros (as the program will give you a recommendation), you simply put in your own macros. Not a lot of scrolling around the page either. Just the basics, laid out into meals and snacks, and easy to read. Their monthly and annual memberships offer more perks than just entering foods, such as meal plans, their online community , success stories, and articles to help keep you on track for the long haul.
My Fitness Pal – The big draw for me to this tracker has an amazing feature where you can scan a product’s UPC code directly into the database, getting all it nutritional info into your log. This eliminates the time it would take to put in the pro, carbs, fat, calories and any other nutrient that you are tracking. I use it mainly on my phone, but setting up the macros, can be done through your computer. Similar to Calorie King it is organized into meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks). It also saves food that you use often so that you don’t have to look for them every time you enter your foods.
Fit Day – They have a free online tracker that you can use or you can purchase a yearly upgrade membership which entitles you to more premium features. I do not know what the premium features give you in terms of options, but just with the regular fit day I was clicking all over the place to find out how to adjust my macros. I did find it; but it took a bit longer than I would have liked. It does have a good journalling section, and you can even attach emotions to your eating habits for that day. I can see that the program offers a lot of information but the free version is quite a busy page, and I had trouble navigating through it.
Lose it! – Lose it! has a phone app which connects to your online account on lose it.com. It is divided into meals, and snacks, and does track your calories for the days, and how much exercise you have logged. It does track the macros but you cannot go in and tell it how much protein, carbs, or fat you would like to aim for during the day. It does require a bit more logging and some math to make sure you hit your macros for the day. Losing weight and seeing a body compositional change is about calories in and calories out, but aesthetically it is about what foods those calories come from. Good for tracking calories, and macronutrient breakdown however, limitations when trying to stay within a range of protein, carbohydrates, and fat for the day.
