GirlsGuideTo | Daily Distraction: The Eatery

I don’t know about you, but I hate to count calories. It’s not like it’s difficult per se, but I always forget to do it or I make a meal without a calorie count on the recipe or I spend hours searching through lists of food or I go to the other extreme and go a little neurotic. Know what I mean? And really, calorie counting doesn’t count the healthiness of your foods. You can eat 100 calories of carrots and hummus or eat 100 calories of cookie. Your tracker doesn’t care. So there has to be a better way.

There’s a new app called The Eatery that is super easy to use and can actually help you take real steps to eating better. All you do is take a quick picture of the food you’re eating. Simply recording your meals helps you lose more weight. As you rate your choices between “fit or “fat,” you become much more aware of your habits and can see how they improve over time. You also can get feedback from your friends and people all over the world to keep you motivated.

For example, the sushi I had for lunch is rating pretty well, but that cookie I enjoyed as an afternoon treat isn’t faring so well. You win some, you lose some right? But now I know to watch myself tonight because I want the day to be overall healthy! I love that you get a big-picture breakdown of your habits (like my all-too-often afternoon cooke), including your strengths, weaknesses, and the best places to start making a change.

Seriously, all you have to do with The Eatery is snap pics of your food. Between your own ratings, and crowd-source feedback, you’ll quickly find out if you’re on the right track. Sometimes, it’s as easy as looking at the last week of meals to see if they’re beige or full of color, following along Michael Pollan’s suggestion of “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Download the iPhone app here.