Diabetes : Lose Weight with Free On-line Diet Tools

Losing just 5% to 7% of your total body weight can lower your risk of developing type 2 diabetes. If you already have diabetes, keeping your weight down is essential for optimum diabetes management. It can seem like the warnings about obesity and health risks are everywhere. But how do you get started on the road to better health? How do you keep track of fat grams and carbohydrates, as well as calories in and calories out? There are free on-line tools to help you on your way.

• Calorie-Count.com - offers free weight loss tools such as food logs, activity logs, nutritional information on many different foods including restaurant meals and fast food, and an active, supportive community to help you organize your weight loss. There are a few unique features also:
  • The "walkthrough" is an automated demo which literally "walks" you through the website so that you can fully utilize all the features.
  • The recipe analyzer allows you to enter your own recipes and figures out the nutritional facts for you.

• The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) offers an interactive Menu Planner.
• The Menu Planner helps you figure out your total calories, fat grams, and carbs for the day and let's you know whether you've stayed within your limits. The site also can help you calculate your BMI. The site offers lots of information about good nutrition and calorie requirements, too.

• FitDay.com Free Diet and Weight Loss Journal - offers a free online diet tool that includes a large data base of different kinds of food including many name brands. It breaks down calories, carbs, fat grams, and more and figures out serving sizes. It also show your progress with pie charts and line graphs, while keeping track of exercise and goals. You may also journal about your feelings at FitDay as you journey towards your weight loss goals.

• My-Calorie-Counter.com - allows you to enter your food, meal by meal and gives calorie counts, fat grams, carbs, sodium and other information. It also has a variety of tools such as a BMI calculator, body fat calculator, activity and exercise list, and a weight loss ticker.