Barbecue, beer and ball game snacks are all part of summer for many Americans. Although they may satisfy your taste buds, they add a lot of calories to your diet and may result in extra pounds at the end of the season.
“When most people think about losing weight, they only think about hitting the gym and exercising hard,” said Pam Brisky, clinical nutrition manager at Augusta University Health. “Although physical activity is important, the best way to slim down is to eat healthy and cut down on your calorie intake.”
Brisky recommends the following apps and gadgets to help you count your calories and avoid gaining those extra pounds during your summer vacation:
- HAPIFork: Use this futuristic fork to track how fast and how much you are eating. The idea is to help you eat less by helping you eat slower. HAPIFork measures how long you take to eat your meal, how many fork servings you eat per minute and how long your intervals are between fork servings. You can then upload that information to your computer via USB or Bluetooth.
- CalorieKing: Keep track of your calorie intake and your physical activity with this online food and exercise diary. Search for specific dishes or exercises on the food and activity database, then drag and drop it. The app will measure how many calories you are eating and burning. You can also create a diet plan based on whether you want to lose, maintain, or gain weight. By keeping track of this information over time, you will see where you need to make changes.
- SparkRecipes: Find healthy, yummy recipes and learn all the nutritional information you need about those dishes on this website. You can also add your own recipes to your account and calculate calories and other nutritional information of your favorite dishes.
- Fooducate: Use your smartphone to scan the food you are buying to see how healthy it is. Fooducate grades products A through D depending on how natural they are and what their nutritional value is. Never get tricked by complicated food labels again. Fooducate is available for download on Android and iOS devices.
- PortionMate: Eat the right portions of carbohydrates and proteins by using this tool to measure your meals. These measuring rubber cylinders come in different colors and sizes. Each color represents a different food group. All you need to do is fill up each cylinder with its corresponding food group and you are ready to go.
