My Fitness Pal is a smart phone app that can be used on tablets and computers as well. This app allows you to easily enter your daily exercise and caloric intake. 

It is surprisingly easy to enter food and exercise accurately into the app. Let’s say, for example, for breakfast you had a protein bar. Simply enter the brand name and flavor of your protein bar and viola! It appears there with all of the nutrition and caloric information. This same process goes for restaurants, fast food, specific grocery items (it even has Trader Joes brands, organic brands, etc.) as well as homemade meals and food items.  

Exercise input is just as easy. Simply go to your exercise diary portion and you can select an exercise you did; for example, if you did 45 minutes of yoga, simply search for yoga, enter 45 minutes and it will calculate approximately how many calories you burned. Or, if you have a Fit Bit bracelet or cloud watch that tracks your burned calories, simply enter your exercise (ex. Legs and glutes) and how many calories you burned. 

My Fitness Pal counters the calories you consumed with the calories you burned and tells you exactly how many calories you have left to eat and how much exercise you still need to do. It even has a breakdown of your caloric intake compared to a proper balanced diet. For example, it will have charts and graphs stating the proper amounts of protein, fat, carbohydrates, etc. that a balanced diet should have, the amounts that you actually consumed throughout the day, followed by the amounts of each that you still need to eat or have eaten too much of. This easily shows you if you are eating too much protein, not getting enough fats in your diet, etc. 

My Fitness Pal app is a great substitute for the more expensive alternatives, such as the Fit Bit bracelet mentioned above. This app will give you structure and guidance in maintaining progress and staying on track with your weight loss goals. 

Sources: My Fitness Pal