Managing caloric intake, a.k.a. dieting

It's not easy, it really isn't.

I started off strong--1200 calories a day--but am not keeping it up very well (more like 1300-1500 these last few days). My oldest son now working at Dunkin' Donuts certainly doesn't help! (See last entry on how exercising anything but self-discipline indicates lack of serious motivation...)

Anyway...

I use http://www.fitday.com/ to keep track of what I'm eating and what exercise I'm doing. I find that if I don't record every calorie, I'm more apt to stuff more in my mouth... This site can also create reports based on the info you enter. Their activity database doesn't allow you to add things to it, like the food one does, but other than that, it's good...

If the site doesn't have the nutritional information, I google, and more often than not, I'm directed to a number of sites: http://www.calorie-count.com/, http://www.calorieking.com/foods or http://www.thedailyplate.com/.

I've also found that most restaurants include nutritional information on their website. It also helps to know what you want to eat before you enter a restaurant -- so I always look up the menu and nutritional info before I go. Chick-Fil-A's menu info on their website is especially nice -- they have a very nifty meal calculator that other sites should replicate (my salad there truly wasn't bad).

The only place so far I've found that posts absolutely NO information is California Pizza Kitchen. They should be ashamed of themselves. There are a few sites which apparently either analyzed or guessed really well -- but not on the menu item I chose. :-(