7 Free Websites to Boost Your Diet and Workout Success

Back in the olden days, the only way people knew how many calories were in Ye Olde Bigge Mac , how many calories they burned hoeing the fields, or whether their BMI was on target or over the top was to guess. Now, though, we have the Internet, which has tons of free resources for the health-minded among us. As a freelance health writer, I use many of these resources when I’m researching articles, and they can also help you in your quest for fitness. Here are my favorites:

1. The USDA Nutrient Data Laboratory : This website is truly amazing. Type in a food, and the site will bring you to a list that lets you further refine you choice. For example, if you enter “beef,” it will bring up all the different cuts of meat, both raw and cooked. Choose one, enter the amount — and you’ll get a spreadsheet listing the number of calories and the amount of everything from saturated fat to vitamin C to selenium. You can use this site to keep very detailed track of what you’re eating and make the best food choices.

2. Wondering how many calories an hour of water polo will torch? InternetFitness.com’s Calorie Burn Calculator lets you enter in your weight and  the amount of time you do a certain activity, from aerobics to shoveling snow, and calculates how many calories you’ll burn.

3. NutritionData lets you analyze recipes and creates a nutrition label for the entire dish. You need to register, but it’s free.

4.  YouTube has more than funny videos of cats — You can also find free vids of cardio workouts that you can use on days you can’t make it to the gym. For example, SparkPeople.com offers this 10-Minute Jump Start Cardio Workout.

(I’ve done this video — it really does kick my low-endurance butt!) Just search on YouTube for keywords like “aerobics workout” or “cardio workout” to find free vids.

5. No need to search the Wendy’s website to dig up nutritional data on its salads: The Calorie King Food Database boasts the nutritional information for over 50,000 American generic and brand name foods, including over 260 fast-food chains.

6. The National Institutes of Health offers this BMI calculator so you can find out whether our Body Mass Index says you’re fit or fat. Just enter your height and weight and the calculator will do the rest.

7. If you’re sick of your workout music mix, check out PodRunner, which offers “free exercise music mixes for runners, joggers, power walkers, cyclists, elliptical trainers, or anyone who can use nonstop, fixed-tempo music when they train.” These free techno and house beats will keep up your energy while you work out.