Besides snow, gifts and spending time with family, the holiday season is often associated with something else: weight gain.

It’s the cherry on top of a year of food regrets; the icing on the cake of 4,000 calories a day. The holidays act as a sort of “last hurrah” of chocolate and carbs before some of us pledge to reverse all the damage high-fructose corn syrup inflicted in 2014.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with indulging. And there’s nothing wrong with gaining weight. But if you personally feel like you need to shed any weight you gained from holiday eating, fitness apps are a good place to start.

Disclaimer: I am not a nutritionist. I can’t explain to you the difference between calories and calories from fat, and I still don’t know if butter is a carb. But from my own experience, downloading a free fitness app can help you become more aware of what you’re eating and hold you responsible for the fact that you ate half a pack of Oreos in one sitting.

Research backs up that keeping a regular food diary can aid weight loss. A 2008 study published in the “American Journal of Preventative Medicine” showed that those who kept a food diary six days a week lost twice as much weight over the course of six months as those that only logged once a week. A more recent study published in 2013 in the “Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics” echoes that. In a yearlong study of weight loss in overweight or obese women, the No. 1 strategy associated with the women’s weight loss was writing down everything they ate or drank in a food journal.

But you have a smartphone; you might as well download one of the many free fitness apps — the modern food diary — in the App Store. The App Store offers numerous weight loss apps that are all pretty much the same. I started by using the MyFitnessPal app, but have downloaded other weight loss apps to gauge their similarity. They tell you how many calories a day you should consume in order to lose weight, and there is an in-app search bar that can find the nutritional facts of most well-known foods — think pre-packaged or food from a chain restaurant.

The apps also offer other features, like the option to add exercise to a day, a graph that shows your daily percentage of carbs, fat and protein and a log of your weight loss progress. Basically, it does the calorie adding and nutrition analyzing for you.

I tried using a fitness app in October for a few months, but I gave up after two days because it took too long to log the ingredients used in my Chipotle burrito bowl. That, and I didn’t really want to see 1,200 calories from one meal show up in my daily count.

But I downloaded the fitness app again after I realized I had gained 10 pounds over the course of four months. I don’t think I look bad at this weight. After all, 10 pounds is just 10 pounds. But 10 pounds could turn into 20 pounds in another four months if I didn’t change my eating habits now.

When I downloaded the app a second time a few weeks ago, I decided to actually try following the 1,300 calorie limit and not give up halfway through the day. In a week, I lost two pounds.

The progress derailed a few days later due to Christmas dinners and candy, but I learned something. Being aware of how much you’re eating and making a conscious effort to change that actually can make a difference. And fitness apps can help with that.

Save your New Year’s resolution for something besides losing weight, and just keep track of what you’re eating. Fitness apps aren’t a magic solution to weight loss. And if you’re looking for an actual eating and exercise plan, these calorie-counting apps probably won’t be of much help. But they are a convenient way to find out how much you’re eating — if you’re OK with how much that is.

Kate Beckman is a sophomore magazine journalism major. Her column appears weekly in Pulp. You can reach her at kebeckma@syr.edu or on Twitter at @Kate_Beckman.

Published on December 30, 2014 at 9:40 pm