A calorie counter is an easy way to keep track of your daily food intake. It can help you find the number of calories in the foods you eat, as well as the total calories you've consumed and burned throughout the day.

Some tools like the Calorie Counter allow you to look up the nutritional content of certain foods. For example, if you click on "bananas," it will tell you that one medium-sized banana contains 105 calories, 14.4 grams of sugar and 27 grams of carbs.

Other more detailed online calorie trackers such as MyDietJournal, My Calorie Counter and FitWatch allow you to establish a daily food diary. After creating an account, you input everything you eat or drink throughout the day from a pre-set list and the serving size. The calorie tracker summarizes total calories, as well as total carbs, sugar, protein, salt and fat consumed each day. Some will even allow you to enter your weight-loss goal and tells you how many calories you should be consuming and how close to that limit you are after each meal.

There are also calorie trackers as part of complete weight-loss programs such as Calorie King or Weight Watchers.

More Diet Questions Answered:
How Many Calories Do I Need?
How Much Protein Do I Need?
How Many Carbs Per Day Do I Need?

Forget about confessing a midnight snack splurge to your closest girlfriend, or even to your support group. Now you can tweet your diet successes and failures to the whole world. Twitter's Tweet What You Eat (TWYE) is the latest dieting tool that combines information-age technology with accountability.

While the idea of a food journal is not new, sharing it with thousands of strangers is. Users basically log on to Twitter and tweet every morsel they consume throughout the day. "Recently tweaten" foods are then totaled for calories and reported, along with your weight, to everyone. With more than 8,000 followers to date, creator, Alex Ressi claims it is the easiest food diary you'll ever keep.

There is also an online forum that allows users to post questions, support and feedback. Some tweet about having no idea how much they were really eating until it was on the screen in front of them. One twitter rejoiced about losing eight pounds in the last two weeks; another confessed to eating McDonald's every day for two months.

Keep track of the latest in diet and fitness Twitter trends and opinions with this weekly post. Not only will AOL Health's Twitter alias Healthpop and That's_Fit ask fitness-related questions and share the best responses with you, we'll scour the Twittersphere for the latest buzz on everything from good eats to exercise routines gone bad.

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We can't help but notice everyone's a-Twitter over Tweeting What They're Eating (@TWYE) these days, so we checked into see what people had to say about keeping a food journal on and offline:

Free.

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Certain habits and behaviors predict success in the weight-loss arena. One of them is keeping a food diary. A new study from Kaiser Permanente shows that people who keep a food diary actually lose twice -- that's twice! -- as much weight as people who don't.

A successful food diary is about more than just writing down what you eat. I like to have people record not only what they eat, but how they feel. What's your energy like? How are you sleeping? Getting tired in the middle of the afternoon? All this helps make connections between the foods you eat and how you feel, so you can fine tune your diet for maximum oomph and energy.

One of the reasons for writing down what you eat is so you can estimate your calories. That means you've got to measure stuff -- at least for a while -- and then use the Internet or a calorie book to approximate how many calories you're taking in. This calorie-estimating was an important part of the success of the Kaiser program. (Note: It's not nearly as hard as you might think since most of us eat the same dozen foods over and over again.)

And forget all those online calorie formulas -- they're way too high. A good rule of thumb is this: Take your target weight and multiply by 10. That's a good number of calories to aim for while you're losing weight.

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Our family has a bad summertime ice cream habit. We're known by name and by flavor at our local ice cream shop. This year, I vowed to be better about our frequent visits, and we went all of August without stopping in once. Just last week, we popped in during a bike ride. Let me tell you, when it comes to chocolate, absence really does make the taste buds grow fonder. That cone was delicious.

Did you know that after the first bite of something yummy, every other bite is less enjoyable? It's something I learned reading this article about cravings over at CNN. It's something to keep in mind when cravings get the best of you. Rather than deny yourself your favorite goody, one simple technique to beat the craving is to let yourself have it -- a small portion that is. Other tips include:

• Eat regularly. If you're hungry, your cravings are going to get the best of you.
• Never say never. Say "later" instead. Tell yourself you can have the treat, just not now, may do the trick.
• Watch your portions. A small piece of chocolate will probably satisfy you, so why eat the whole bar?
• Try substitutes. If ice cream is calling your name, try eating a frozen banana with a touch of chocolate sauce instead.
• Write it down. A food diary will help you keep track, and keep you honest.
  
  

How do you battle your worst cravings?

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Keeping track of what you eat is one of the simplest ways you can reduce your caloric intake. But if you're like me, you're probably just too darn busy (or lazy) to make note of everything you put in your mouth.

A simple fix? Get your camera and take a photo of what you're eating. That way, you have visual proof of just how much you're stuffing down your throat, and facing the truth is the first step to changing your habits. Becoming your own 'Food Photographer' can really work, according to this article from The Daily Mail. In studies, participants noted that keeping track of what they ate in pictures made them think more carefully about their food and portion choices.

Luckily, you don't need to lug around your expensive camera to do this either -- with the advent of super-convenient camera phones, your own visual food diary is only a click away.

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Keeping a food diary is a proven way to help people take off the weight, teaching portion control and accountability. Though you can buy a food journal online, you don't need to, and a pre-made food diary won't be customized to your unique needs. Instead, why not try making one yourself?

About.com has some simple instructions for making your own food journal, including pages that you can print out and put into a three-ring binder. BBC also has printable pages that you can use to make your own food diary. And Celiac Travel has some examples of a homemade food diary done on Excel (though hers is for food allergies, not weight loss).

One thing to keep in mind when you start tracking your intake is that less is more. It's a big commitment, writing down everything you eat, so pick just one or two things to start. For instance, maybe you want to count calories or track your fruit and vegetable servings. As you get more experience, your tracking will become more sophisticated, and soon you'll be tracking "pounds lost" as well!

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Losing weight can be a tricky business. Despite all the fancy programs and diet claims, weight loss boils down to one thing: burning more calories than you consume. But if you're not careful, you may be consuming more calories than your realize.

Counting calories seems so hopelessly 1980's, though, doesn't it? And, let's face it, tracking every calorie is a bit of a pain. But a food diary doesn't have to be an obsessive tabulation of every little thing -- it's merely a way for you to ensure you're getting a balanced, nutritious diet in the range of calories you want to consume.

It's a habit that is well worth the effort. A Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research study found that participants who kept a food diary lost almost twice as much weight as those who didn't.

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Keep a food diary for a couple weeks and you'll learn way more than calories consumed. If you're having trouble losing weight, DietBlog offers six ways a food diary can keep your food consumption accurate and honest:

• Account for those little extras: This is definitely my problem. I'll eat three healthy squares, but screw up in between. A food diary will keep you honest.
• Treat time!: Diets fail when there's no fun. Tracking calories can also reveal times when you can enjoy a guilt-free treat.
• When do you eat?: A food diary can reveal your danger zones -- moments in the day when you tend to overeat. For me, that's around 4:00 pm. I need more protein at lunch.
• No 'portion creep': If the pounds are creeping back on, portion creep may be to blame. Time to weigh your foods and record it all in your diary.
• Habits a changin': Flip around your food diary for motivation. If you're struggling, take a look at what you ate during a perfect week. If you've been on a roll, look at a bad day to visually congratulate yourself on how your nutrition has improved.
• Self-Control: Let's face it, keeping a food diary makes you face the music every time you pop something in your mouth. It's more than a calorie-counter, it can be a real self-control booster, too.

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I've tried many methods of food journaling: FitDay, an Excel spreadsheet, making my own charts, etc. I've finally found that what works best for me is a notebook I keep on my kitchen counter. It's not professional, but it works for jotting down meals as I eat them and keeping track of my calories (when I'm counting them). The problem with this method is that I can't take it with me when I go out, and on busy days that means I'm not tracking what I'm eating.

The Little Black Books seems to be the answer to that problem. It's a nicely organized little food journal in an attractive case the looks easy to slip into a pocket, purse, or briefcase. For a small little package, there's a lot here; you can record Weight Watchers points, calories, dairy, protein, grains, water intake, etc. In fact, there's so much here, it may actually be too much for me, since I only monitor calories. But if you're looking for a portable way to track what and how much you're eating each day, Little Black Book may be the thing for you. The book sells for about $20, and you can visit Starling Fitness for a full review.

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I love the first sentence of this article: "Anyone can lose weight." Even if you've tried and failed, even if it seems hard, even if you have a long way to go -- anyone can do it. Of course, as individuals we all have our own set of circumstances, but I still love that message. But last week, Brian posted about a study that found that diets don't work. So what gives?

Here's a list of 10 habits to take off the weight and keep it off -- for life. Stop looking at weight loss as a "diet" and start looking at it as a lifestyle change, adopting only those habits you're willing to take on for good. There's nothing brand new on this list, but it's good solid advice for changing your eating and activity habits for the long haul. Click the link to read more, but the list includes:

• eating breakfast every day
• eating 5 small meals
• limit processed sugars
• exercise most days of the week
• bounce back quickly when you over-indulge
• stay away from gimmicks
• keep a food diary

Lose your weight, keep it off for two years, and experts say you're then likely to have beaten the battle of the bulge for good.

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