Try weight-management tool

The formula for losing weight is pretty simple. You need to take in fewer calories than your body uses. But, how do you know how many calories your body needs? And how do you know how many calories you will burn by walking for 30 minutes? Maybe you just want to eat better for your health. A proper diet can help you ward off certain cancers, heart disease, osteoporosis, and other disease.

Do you know how many servings of fruits, vegetables, grain, dairy and protein a person your size should consume in order to get the appropriate nutrition?

If you are looking for an easy, comprehensive tool that can help with all of the above, check out SuperTracker, a new food and activity tracking tool available from the United States Department of Agriculture at ChooseMyPlate.gov.

To use SuperTracker, log in, complete a profile, and choose up to 5 goals. You may want to lose weight, reduce your sodium intake, or monitor your saturated fat intake.

Once you choose your goals, you also can sign up for the “My Coach” option which will monitor your food intake and activity level and send you periodic tips for improvement.

Now it’s time to begin using the Food Tracker and the Physical Activity Tracker. Enter the food that you have eaten and the tracker will offer a list of possible matches. For example, if you had oatmeal for breakfast and you type in “oatmeal”, you will get a list that includes several different types of oatmeal. Choose the one that fits and then select a quantity and add it to a meal.

The tracker calculates the calories for you and saves it for that day’s meals. It also keeps track of the food groups that you’ve consumed and displays a chart that shows how much of each food group you have eaten and how much remains to be eaten for that day.

With the activity tracker, you can enter the type of activity you did on each day and the length of time you performed it.

The tracker determines whether the activity is light, moderate or vigorous, and lets you know if you are meeting the recommended goal of 150 minutes a week of moderate to vigorous activity.