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forkThe holidays are right around the corner, and for many of us, that means big meals, lounging with family and putting on a few extra pounds.  While it can be hard to say no to another piece of Aunt Millie’s famous pumpkin pie, here’s some cool weight loss monitoring tools that can help you count calories, stick to diets, plan meals and fit into that awesome pair of jeans you’ve had for years…

  • The Daily Plate – Livestrong’s all-encompassing weight loss monitoring tool lets you track calories, exercise and weight in an easy to use exportable format.  There is a free version or a more extensive premium package that removes ads, increases support and allows greater customization for $45 per year.
  • Mobile Calorie Counter – Livestrong has a $2.99 mobile app available in the Blackberry and iPhone app stores that lets you track the calories you eat in thousands of foods, and calories you burn by doing a variety of activities.
  • Lose It! iPhone app (free): A user-friendly mobile app designed to help you track long term weight loss goals through adherence to a calorie budget.  It measures the calories you consume in common foods and those you burn through an array of activities, including everything from walking to the more enticing “sexual activity”.

lose it

  • Calorie Count (free): About.com’s Calorie Count has a website, mobile app and Firefox toolbar to make sure that you know how many calories you consume, what your daily caloric consumption target and how much exercise you need to do get yourself to where your desired weight.
  • Sensei: In addition to offering the usual calorie counters, weight loss tracking and exercise monitoring, Sensei also gives you helpful shopping lists so you know what to get at the store.  Sadly, it costs $20 a month, and I’m not sure that’s worth a personalized shopping list with all the other great free and low cost tools out there.

sansei

  • ShapeUp Club: This $0.99 iPhone app gives you nifty yet un-delicious pie charts to keep track of your weight loss, calorie consumption and daily exercise.  While pie usually does not help one lose weight, this might actually help.
  • FatWatch: The blunt name is indicative of this simple, straightfoward $9.99 iPhone app.  Unlike the others, you don’t have to search for caloric content of foods, you just enter how much you weigh.  It tracks your weight through clear graphs and tells you that you need to eat more or less for a given day, week or month to get back on track.

fatwatch

  • Weight Tracker: A simple, $0.99 weight-tracking iPhone app that month that also tracks BMI.
  • iGoogle’s Calorie Counter (free): A stripped down tracker that allows you to see how many calories are in the food you eat and how much you need to maintain a healthy wait, all from the comfort of your iGoogle homepage.
  • GoalKeep: Lets you track, graph and maintain many different types of goals, like losing weight, learning an instrument or quitting smoking.  $3.99

goalkeep

  • Graphite: Sleek web-based interface that lets you track calories and weight loss without a lot of cluttery bells and whistles.  $5 per month or $50 per year.

Good luck on your weight loss plan!  Let us know in the comments which tools you like best.  And have a great Thanksgiving (don’t eat too much!).

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