During this past year I have made a lot of lifestyle changes. I am eating better. Eating less. And exercising more. Fortunately, this has resulted in significant weight loss, that a lot of people have noticed. Given that obesity is quickly becoming the epidemic of our age, many people are asking “How’d you do it?”

There is not one particular secret…no special new medicine, for example. I have found several online sites that help, however. I want to feature one in this post.

Using this site, you can track what you’re eating in amazing detail. Sure, you can look at a label and see how many calories a food has, and you can see how much is from protein and fat. But look up the same food at this site and you can see so much more depth.

For example, take a simple boneless, skinless chicken breast half grilled with 1/4 teaspoon canola oil. After selecting the ingredients and clicking to create a “recipe,” you will learn your entree contains 5 grams fat and 27 grams protein. But Nutrition Data (ND) goes much deeper. Glance at ND’s nutritional target map to learn that your chicken recipe has a fullness factor of 3.1 and it gets 2 1/2 stars out of five as a weight-loss choice based on the recipe’s total profile for how many nutrients per calorie it contains. You’ll also get other observations, such as the chicken is low in sodium, and exactly which nutrients it has (vitamin B-6 with 1/2 milligram, protein, niacin and selenium). Scroll down a bit further and you can see its glycemic load (0) and its caloric ratio. You can get an amino acid score (136) and learn what that means. And fat? You’ll get 5.3 grams total, including 1 gram saturated and 266 milligrams of healthier omega-3 fatty acids.

In all, a very useful site for anyone with specific nutritional needs, as well as for someone who simply wants to better understand what they’re eating.