When I was really on the diet wagon, I used fatsecret.com to track everything that I ate. You can download the mobile app as well. You can scan the barcode on your phone and it’ll find the item and then you just put in how much you ate. You can also search by restaurant and all of that. It’s not exhaustive but it’s a fantastic site/app and you can add stuff to their database. When I first started using it, my intentions were purely to see how much I was eating and what the caloric/fat cost was. Let me tell you it blew my mind! Even when I thought I was “good”, I was being pretty unhealthy! After a couple of weeks of seeing that, I decided to cut back and make wiser food choices. I lost 50 pounds! Oh, another great thing about the site and app is that you can also log all your workouts and it’ll give you a total of caloric intake and expenditure for the day. They have a ton of diet plans online that you can follow if you want and you can connect with people that are following your diet or just dieting in general. They also have recipes online. I really can’t speak highly enough about this website! My bff and her fiance joined it and we were diet buddies across the country for a year before her wedding. I plan on using it again after my move to Chicago. It really was a great resource for me and made dieting so much easier.

Hey Cece
It sounds like you are going really well!
Here’s a few little tips that worked for me – I hope you don’t mind me sharing these. I lost about 40 pounds and have kept it off for years (give or take a few).
- To get me started, I tracked everything I ate and drank by either keeping a food diary or logging it on Weight Watchers, right down to dressings, drinks and portion sizes. I was eating far more than I thought – but not just in portions. I was packing on the calories through little slices of cheese and constant snacking. It helped me understand the actual value of the foods I was eating.
- I cut down on “drinking the calories”, by elimating or reducing soda and fruit juices. I generally swapped wine and beer for vodka and diet soda, or champagne.
- I tried to get into the habit of gently reducing my portion sizes by about 1/4 – 1/5. Over time, it became second nature and now I eat slightly smaller portions of everything – it’s a really easy way to reduce calories without really noticing
- I tried to avoid “diet” products – they are often packed with sugar, or “high frucose corn syrup” (another word for sugar) – which can be worse for you.
- I still had chocolate and a piece of cake here and there – every week, just not every day.
- I did exercise that I liked, such as walking home from work. At the gym, I did some cardio but also focused on strength. Body Pump classes were fun really toned up my arms and legs.
- Vegetables – I pack them into all sort of yummy recipes.

Now I guess it’s more of a ‘healthy-ish lifestyle’.

I still eat chips every other week, drink wine and have weeks where the exercise doesn’t happen, and I go up a few pounds – but I think that’s real life. The pounds come down again when I get back to my normal routine again.

I hope that might have helped. x