You don't need to plunk down $150 for a Wii Fit to track your progress toward a healthier body—even if that downhill skiing game looks mighty fun. If you're trying to curb unnecessary calories and stick to an exercise plan, there are tons of free applications that want to see you succeed. Whether you're facing a fast-food menu or polishing off a light entree, you can log, track, and make healthy decisions from your desktop, or just as easily from a phone. Take a look at a few suggestions for accomplishing your fitness goals, after the jump. Photo by angela7dreams.

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The Dumb Little Man blog has a suggestion for all of us who can't help but feel the shameful pull of the drive-thru lane when we're hungry or just pressed for meal-planning time. Every night, empty your fast food (or candy, soda, or other junk food) receipts into a jar by your bed. Then ...

Round that up to the nearest $10 and cut it in half. That's how much you'll spend a week from now on ... Take that money and put it in a ziplock bag that you keep in your car. All your fast food will be paid for out of this fund, and when it dries up, that's it until next week. This will force you to ration and make choices.

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The Dumb Little Man blog posts a condensed wealth of tips and tactics for getting yourself up and at 'em, including a tip that might make you reconsider that toast-and-coffee morning routine. Guest-poster Alex Shalman notes that eating a bigger breakfast gives you energy that burns off all day, while a lighter meal at night has its own benefits:

Eating like a pauper, meaning small light meals, in the evening allows us to go to sleep on an empty stomach. If your body is functioning normally, and you don't have stomach ulcers, going to sleep on a mostly empty stomach will allow you to sleep better. This nightly fast allows your body to take its focus away from digestion and put it towards repair and rejuvenation of the body's cells.

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Get into a healthy diet by following a Calorie Counter's excellent beginner's diet guide. Learn the basics of nutrition and get definitions of nutritional facts (calories, fat, carbohydrates, sodium, etc.). Craft a diet after determining how many calories you should be consuming each day, and then select the foods that will supply those calories. Organise your food intake, whether with a written plan or with improvisation. Most importantly, once your diet is planned, be consistent. Once you understand the basics of nutrition, turn your diet into a permanent way of living and you can make it healthy and a lot of fun.

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The Zen Habits blog posts a technique for making gradual progress toward eating healthier and, as a result, dropping a lot of fat, both from your diet and your waistline. Rather than choosing one point in one day to completely change your eating habits, Leo Babuta says moving one-by-one through a series of "instead of" substitutions. For example, try:

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It's no secret that people the world over use caffeine as a work stimulant, but weblog Developing Intelligence suggests that you may not be getting the most form your caffeine high. For example, the author suggests playing to your cognitive strengths when caffeinated.

Caffeine may increase the speed with which you work, may decrease attentional lapses, and may even benefit recall - but is less likely to benefit more complex cognitive functions, and may even hurt others. Plan accordingly (and preferably prior to consuming caffeine!)

The post even explains the optimal caffeine consumption (think small, frequent doses), so if you already count on caffeine to get through the day, check out the rest of this post to see how to do it best. On the other hand, if you're ready to kick your caffeine habit to the curb, your fellow readers can help.

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There have been a few diet plans published for geeks over the years – we told you about a few of them previously, including the famous Hacker's Diet. This latest one, The Geek Diet, is a 51 page ebook by Mark Faithfull, who describes himself as a typical geek who wanted to tackle his weight in a sensible and easy to manage way.
He has clearly approached his subject with the scientific curiousity of a geek – in fact he says he got the idea for the Geek Diet from a Scientific American podcast. He's sprinkled the book with quotes from various studies on eating, food and weight loss. I have to admire the honesty of a diet book which begins by quoting a UCLA study which found that 83% of people who go on diets end up weighing more than when they started.

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Looking to lose weight? That conscious decision starts when you go shopping, according to Yahoo Health. In an article listing 127 foods that comprise the "Picture Perfect Anytime List"—low-calorie foods that you can eat anytime and anywhere, Yahoo Health goes as far as to say that you'll be thin for life if you live by these treats. What, then, is on the Picture Perfect Anytime List? Any fruits and vegetables, soups, garlics and herbs for flavor, hard candy, sorbet, unsweetened juices, seafood, beans, brown rice, and other health foods. Certainly, some of this seems hard to believe, and for good reason. In any event, moderation might still be key, but going low-cal is certainly better than opting in for more fattening alternatives.