Here’s a big disclosure for everyone: I’m a big dude. So big, in fact, that I have two diet blogs! So, needless to say, I’m VERY familiar with the capabilities of an online calorie counter – I’ve used a number of them over the years.

Today, I created a profile at myfitnesspal.com, the sponsors of this post, because I wanted to judge for myself; frankly, I’m an expert at these things. The first thing I noted was that this is a free calorie counter – no monthly fees like other sites. The profile was easy to set up, in fact, it only took about a minute. You input your height, weight, birthdate, the level of activity you experience in your daily life, and the amount of exercise you do, and it generates nutritional and exercise goals. I was interested to see what was generated, and was surprised to see it matched the caloric intake I know works best for me. Most of these tools generate a caloric intake that’s too high for me.

The other cool thing is that you can customize the goals of your macronutrients to account for different diet programs – change them to match Atkins, South Beach, or just any old low-fat program. Another great feature is the exercise log that differentiates between aerobic and strength exercises. The food log is great for calorie counting. It is organized by meal, and even has a section to track the number of glasses of water you drink during the day. You can add food from their database and input the quantity you ate, and it will track your intake throughout the day. You can also create custom foods, which is a good feature to have in this day where so many of our meals come from boxes rather than scratch.

So, yeah, even though this was a sponsored post, I’m going to be using this as I work on my Florida beach body. Heck, the price is right – 100% free.