Friday Find - Calorie Count Toolbar & Site

I have decided to change the Friday Food Review to the Friday Find. From now on I will be reviewing all things diet related including new foods, products, programs, and exercise equipment instead of just foods. I decided to do this because I really don't sample new foods all that often and I didn't think that you would be interested in reading about my boring daily diet of egg whites, salad and veggie burgers lol.

Today's find comes to us from a site that I just discovered this morning. I know this is pretty soon to be reviewing this site, after only surfing it for a couple hours, but I think I may have found a little gem on the net and I would like to share.

http://caloriecount.about.com

Rating: 4 out of 5 ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Pros:
Many diet tools available.
Free of charge.
Forums, groups and message boards offer support at no cost.
A nutritionist is available for questions as well as an advice column, Q&A, a health blog and videos.
A large list of available foods, recipes and the ability to suggest new food items not listed.
Your own blog or journal to track your thoughts as you diet.
A grading system that tells you if your diet (or food choice) deserves an A+ or if you are failing.
And my favorite feature: The calorie count tool bar for your browser.

Cons:
Diet tools are not more customizable to your own personal goal choices.


There really is not much wrong I could say about this site. The only problem I have found with the site so far (and I should note that you cannot blame them for this) is that you cannot customize the calorie range and diet goal to your own personal preference. The site is set to only allow you to stay within what they deem is a healthy calorie range & time limit. Aka you can't set a goal to lose 100 pounds in 3 months eating only 500 calories a day. This is fine, and they are probably right to advise someone to stay within a healthy 1-2 pounds a week. My complaint with it though is that I feel it should be personal preference and because it is automatically set you cannot customize a true goal date. Other than this minor fault I think the site is fantastic.
All of the tools available are over and above my expectations for this free of charge diet site and community. From the calorie tracking to the diet analysis tools you really cannot beat this site.
The best feature of all though is the calorie count tool bar for your browser. You download and install the very small program and it runs continuously at the top of your browser giving you a constant look at where you stand in your diet. It also has one click access, through this tool bar, to your account features like your food journal, diet journal, your mail and the forums and other tools. The best part of the calorie count toolbar? The Eat Meter for sure. There is a small bar, or meter, that shows you how close you are to your max daily calorie range. It is a constant reminder at the top of your screen reminding you to stay within your goals. This was a smart, but simple concept and whoever came up with this is brilliant!

Here you can see a screen shot of the tool bar at the top of my screen (click on the pic for full view):



Overall I gave this site a 4 out of 5 only because of the non customizable goals. I have tried many other free diet sites and this one so far I think I could safely say is my favorite. There really is so much to this site that I could do an entire week's worth of posts just on the features, but go check the site out for yourself and tell me what you think.