The Daily Plate: How the Web Site Can Help You Lose Weight

The Daily Plate is a web site that will help you track your calories for the day, and keep you within your weight loss goal. It's a great way for dieters to keep their eating within a healthy range to lose weight.

First, you should sign up for a free account. You have the option of signing up as a "gold member", but the free account is just fine. Part of signing up includes entering your weight loss goal. The website will give you options for your calorie intakes. For example, if you want to lose 1 lb per week, your calorie intake may be 1,800 per day. For 2 lbs per week, it could be 1,600 per day. It all depends on your current weight, and how much you want to lose.

Once you're signed up, start tracking the foods you eat during the day. Just type in the food you ate in the search bar, and most of the time, you'll find results. The Daily Plate's database of foods is large, and always growing. You can find just about any food on this website. For each result, it will tell you all of the nutrition facts about that food. It's just like looking at the label on the food package. Once you add a food onto your "plate", you can adjust the serving you ate and what time of the day you ate it. The website will tell you how much of your daily calories you have left after adding a food.

After adding a food, that entry will go into a column called "What I Eat Often". Under this column, you'll be able to find the foods you eat regularly, without having to search again for them. I find this option to be very convenient. You'll also be able to create a meal. This means that you won't have to add single foods, but you can add just 1 meal. For example, instead of adding romaine lettuce, tomato, green peppers, cauliflower and fat free dressing separately, you'll be able to add all of those foods into 1 meal called "salad". Then, you'll add that meal to your day with just 1 click. It's so much easier this way.

At the bottom of your "plate", you'll see the percentages that you've eaten during the day. You'll see the percentage of calories, fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbs, sugar, fiber and protein. Any number that is highlighted in orange is above 100 percent for that day. You want to stay under 100% as much as possible. After dieting for a while, you'll eventually be able to keep that percentage under 100 everyday.

Next, you'll be able to add exercise and physical activity that you've done during the day. The website will even tell you how many calories you burned for each exercise. There are many exercises to choose from. You can even find "child care" and "gardening" in there. Your exercises will then be factored into your daily calorie intake total. For example, if you ate 1,650 calories for the day before exercising, then you burned 200 calories in a workout, your final calorie count will be 1,450 for the day.

After you've tracked foods for the day and added physical activity, you'll be able to write in your own personal diary. This is a nice way to look back and see how you felt in the beginning of a diet, and to see how you've changed throughout your dieting.

Other options on this website include creating a profile, joining groups, meeting people and talking about your diet and eating habits. Sometimes it's nice to have a "dieting buddy" to talk to throughout your diet, and to keep you on track. You may even offer support to other people who are struggling. Overall, The Daily Plate is a great website to use for dieting, to see how many calories are in your favorite foods, or just to keep track of your healthy eating.

To sign up for an account, go to www.thedailyplate.com