Calorie Count Reviews

Editor's Star Ratings:

Diet Features:
Fitness Features:
Community Support:
Expert Advice:
Extras:
Customer Support:
Ease of Use / Navigation:
Value for Money:
Overall Star Rating:

Joining Fee:

• Calorie-Count is a service provided by About.com completely free of charge!

Features:

• Diet features:
  • A diet based on the idea that all weight loss diets should be personalized - specifically tailor your plan to your tastes.
  • Keep a food log, which you update regularly, so that you get suggestions for new foods and recipes to try.
  • Keep an activity log to motivate yourself, add recipes to the "my recipes" section, view the recipe browser to check out other users' recipes and use the "suggest food" section to have the Calorie-Count program suggest foods that you may enjoy from your past preferences and tastes.
  • A truly personal, free diet service to help support you as you try to lose weight!

• Fitness features:
  • Use the activity browser to get some inspiration as to which exercises you would like to try in your next workout.
  • Use the exercise planner to keep a record of which workouts you would like to undertake, and take a print out of this planner to the gym with you.
  • Use the workout center to view a complete directory of all of the featured exercises, broken down by skill level.
  • Beginners corner to introduce those who aren't used to exercise to working out and how to use basic gym equipment.

• Expert Advice:
  • Get your questions answered by Mary Hartley R.D., About.com's nutrition expert.

• Community Support:
  • Take part in active user forums, chat rooms and groups to meet other Calorie-Count users.
  • Keep a diet journal and personal profile to let other users get in touch with you.
  • Make friends with other users in the same way as on other social networking sites.
  • Read a blog maintained by the Calorie-Count administrators to learn about new features on Calorie-Count.com.
  • Read about other users' success stories to motivate you to continue with your diet.

• Help Files / Technical Support:
  • A set of Frequently Asked Questions answers any questions.

• Extras:
  • Use a number of additional features - a BMI calculator, 'Burn Meter', calorie target tracker, e-toolbar and an online weight loss challenge.
  • Check out Calorie-Count on your phone using the Mobile Service.

Editor's Verdict:

Calorie-Count is an information-based diet site brought to the market by About.com, one of the largest and most visited sites on the internet. About.com, owned by the New York Times Company, is famous for providing good quality original information and advice on a range of 'real life' topics. Calorie-Count is based around About.com's long standing commitment to providing useful advice, and best of all, offers its services completely free of charge. Calorie-Count is fairly original in the diet market, as it offers a service that is totally gimmick free. The service is not based around any grand theory, such as 'powerfoods' or pills, but simply provides a range of web based e-tools to support the dieter as they progress through their own diet and exercise regime.

The Calorie-Count system is based primarily around a collection of e-tools that users update in order to create a totally personalized diet support. Once users have signed up, they regularly update a food log, to include the food that they eat most regularly. As all users update their food logs, they get 'suggestions' of food they might like to try, and recipes and menus that contain those ingredients. The main premise of the Calorie-Count system is that the more variety that dieters have in their meals, and the more personalized a diet program is, the more effective an individual dieter will find the diet program. Dieters can also add recipes to the site, indexed by cuisine style, key ingredients and more, and these recipes can be searched by every user using the recipe browser.

Alongside these food and diet based tools, there is also a collection of fitness based e-tools on Calorie-Count, intended to support dieters who may not have had a regular exercise routine until they started dieting. We were particularly impressed with the 'beginners corner' section of the Calorie-Count site, as it provides a great deal of useful information and demonstrations that will be particularly helpful to those who haven't had a great deal of experience with exercising in a gym before. Alongside these fitness tools, there is also a substantial range of community-based features which help to support dieters and motivate them to continue. Dieters have access to forums, chat rooms, groups, journals, success stories and a blog, among other things, and we certainly feel the supportive environment is conducive to effective weight loss.

Calorie-Count's commitment to the personalized aspect of dieting has to be commended, and the services that are provided for free to all are an excellent addition to a balanced diet plan. While the tools provided on Calorie-Count don't amount to an actual diet plan (and this may be problematic for some users), we feel that if dieters couple the tools provided for free on Calorie-Count with the information and advice(which is part of the trademark About.com service), eat a balanced healthy diet and stick to a fitness regime, they are highly likely to be successful with their weight loss. If you're interested to see what Calorie-Count offers online for free, hit the link below to check it out.

Click the button below to check out Calorie-Count.com for yourself...