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Calorie Tracker 
9/10
US$2.99
As much as I think I know enough about food and calories to enjoy a free-wheeling diet, the truth is the kilograms have been increasing, and summer is approaching.
The solution is to use a calorie-tracking app.
A food diary is a traditional tool used by nutritionists to help people lose weight, and the Calorie Tracker app works on the same principle: when written down the calories are very real, if not they can be wafted away - to your hips.
After registering an account with Livestrong.com through the app, you set your desired weight-loss goal and enter your current weight, height and age and rate your level of daily activity. The app will then give you a recommended daily calorie goal.
My first goal is a terribly low 800 calories. Is this legal?
As no one is watching, I drop 10 years off my age to see if that will give me more calories to burn; the answer is only a handful, shaming those who blame age for weight gain. 
But by changing my activity level from sedentary to lightly active I manage to get an extra 250 calories a day.
Now that is worth getting out of a chair for.
To start tracking you tap the plate icon representing breakfast, lunch, snack or dinner, then select your food item from livestrong.com's library, manually enter the calorie count if you already know it, or select from your recently eaten items.
The app gives you a countdown as you go, telling you how many calories you have left to enjoy on that day.
The fifth and sixth plate icons are to track your exercise and water consumption, and it is the exercise plate that really gets you moving. If you enjoy food as I do, it quickly becomes clear that exercise is your ticket to eating more - and still lose weight. An hour's run gives me an extra 400 or so calories. Without the run I'm down to survival rations.
Calorie tracking is not as miserable as it sounds when you have an app like this.
Being well informed means that it's easier to say no to a doughnut because you know it will sabotage a third of your daily calorie allowance. A better choice is to eat half a baked potato with salad and cheese.
And one week on I can say it works: I have lost two kilograms of post-Easter bloat by eating sensibly and exercising more. I know the kilograms to come won't fall so easily but this has been painless and I feel motivated to carry on.



A weight-loss plan you can count on