QUICK LOOK 

• Tracks your calorie consumption
• Tells you how many calories you should be consuming
• Can by synched with FatSecret.com so you can access all your data online
• Access to a community, recipes and body challenges
• Available on iPhone, Blackberry and Android

When a newly lean running friend shared his 17kg weight-loss “secret” with me recently, I was shocked to learn that his method came from neither a dietician, pills nor extreme exercise. Rather, the loss of his beer belly was the result of the clever app called Calore Counter by FatSecret, so good that I wish I had discovered it three months before beach season, rather than three weeks.

The app is a food counter that lets you track what you’ve eaten and drunk and is pretty detailed – you have the options of weight and varieties, so that it calculates your intake quite accurately. But why it’s great is that you enter all your details (gender, weight, height and age) and your goals (weight loss or weight gain), and the app works out how many calories you need a day. You can also opt for slow weight loss, which is what my friend did, and quicker weight loss. What’s more, you can also input what exercise you did for the day and see how many calories you burnt off – always nice to know that the 45-spinning class worked off that packet of chips, for example.

So once you’ve set up your profile, you start choosing foods that you’ve eaten, and the app records your calorie consumption, and at the end of the day, you get to see whether you’ve exceeded your daily needs, or stuck to plan. And this is where honesty comes in. I admit it’s easier to say I’ve eaten one sweet rather than the packet in order to save face, but that’s kinda cheating. And for me, I know that there’s nothing like the stark fact that I’ve overeaten by 500 calories to force me to swallow my pride, and not the entire box of Wine Gums.

For the enthusiastic, there are also options like recipes, joining a community, sharing your stories, meal ideas, a journal, and a barcode scanner and manual barcode input to quickly get calorie counts. You can sync the app with FatSecret.com so you can update and access from the web too. I haven’t made use of any of these yet – I’m  simply happy to input, see, feel smug – or guilty – and move on.

But one of the most impressive features is the fact that it lists food from Kauai, Cinnabon and Anat, for example. I’ve tried a few apps in the past where I was stuck with international brands like Tesco and Starbucks calorie counts only, so it’s refreshing that this app has been tailor made for our market (Marmite, boerewors and Peppermint Crisps included). I even checked if my fave Woolies product, the new caramel yoghurt, was listed, which it was. However, it wasn’t so great to learn that I’ve been eating the equivalent of a third of a day’s worth of calories in yoghurt! Gulp.

I wish I could say that I’m bikini ready after a week and a half of using FatSecret, but I’m only 1kg lighter, a little guiltier and a lot more aware of what and how much I’m eating. And all this time I thought that dessert off someone else’s plate was fat-free… 

Turn ons

• The synching between phone and computer
• The local foods listed, such as naartjies, Woolies meals and biltong
• The personalised plan – not one size fits all here 

Turn offs

• Initially, it takes a while to find the foods from the long list, and add them to your food diary

Price: Free