Calorie counting is keeping literal count of total calories you consume in a day. You use a calorie log to record intake of calories and then track their actual count to know total calories consumed. Calorie counting motivates you for consistency and perseverance with your weight loss regimes.  

Burn your excess calories through exercises like swimming, walking, jogging, and biking. Different cardiovascular activities like treadmill, stationary bikes, and step masters help reduce your calories. Take help of online personal trainers to devise perfect training programs for your individual requirements. You can do these exercises at home and maintain calorie counting through simple techniques.

Different diet plans suit different individuals as metabolic rate and calorie requirements differ. These depend on your lifestyle and overall health. Similarly, workouts produce different results as you age. Cardiovascular exercises with strength training on alternate days gives best results of weight loss. Calorie counting drafts a true picture of your progress in losing your weight.  Some programs were literally founded on this concept, including Weight Watchers.

Increasing physical activity with cutting down of calories provides initial results of weight loss. However, this is due to loss of water and not fat. Hence, calorie counting is necessary to maintain balanced calorie level of food intake and physical activity to burn excess calories.

Food combinations like eating proteins or fats with vegetables and carbohydrates with vegetables are effective for weight loss. Different combinations disrupt digestive processes and you do not receive full nutritive value of foods you eat. This upsets your calorie counting and tracking. Hence, stick to food combinations to lose weight. 

While calorie counting can certainly work, the process of individually counting calories, counting points, or pulling out cards for each meal is disruptive and we feel most will find a full service online diet program that is easier and just as effective for long term weight loss. For proper guidance, you should follow an optimal online diet program - several reputable managed programs such as the South Beach Diet, eDiets, and Bob Greene (as seen on Oprah) are excellent choices.