Why I Switched from Lose It to MyFitnessPal

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you may have heard me reference Lose It, a food journaling app and website.

I have been using Lose It for a couple of years as a way to keep tabs on my food intake and exercise and keep myself in check. And, for that time, Lose It was a perfectly fine way to do so. I t worked for me and I had no real reason to change.

However, recently, I have heard several people I know or follow on the web reference MyFitnessPal. So a few weeks ago, I took the plunge and started using it. Wow, it’s fantastic!

Lose It tracks very general (but still better than pen and paper) statistics about your food and exercise: Calories consumed, calories burned, and macronutrients. The food database is good – but not great –  many foods are not in there already so you have to enter them manually. The app does give you a target calorie intake for a day based on your weight loss or maintenance goals.

MyFitnessPal takes it one step further and delivers all of those items, as well as tracks key micronutrients and gives you goals for all the nutrients, not just calories. I have found this to be the coolest thing about MyFitnessPal – I know how I am doing throughout the day on things like Calcium, Iron, and Vitamins C and A, in addition to all the standard macronutrients. As you exercise, it allows you more calories and breaks it across the nutrients. So, if you burn 400 calories running, you’ll get a few more calories you can consume, and you are shown that amount in the form of protein, carbs, fat, and nutrient grams.

Also noteworthy is that the MyFitnessPal food database is stellar. I haven’t found anything that isn’t in there yet (and I eat some strange foods!). I have found its calorie estimator to be more realistic as well. Lose It is very generous when it comes to calories burned for exercise – and MyFitnessPal seems to be more in line with what I am actually burning based on my height and weight.

The online website is connected to the app (whether you use an iPhone or iPad), and that makes it so easy to always log, no matter what you’re doing or where you are. There are a lot of social features embedded, but honestly, I haven’t played with them much.

I have learned some great insights into my eating habits in the past couple of weeks:

• I generally far exceed the sugar goal because I eat a lot of fruit – I’m not too worried about that
• I do better for calcium and iron than I thought
• It is so much easier to monitor your eating and exercise when the app is thorough and connected to a thorough website

If you are looking for an easy way to run a food journal, I highly recommend you take a look at MyFitnessPal. It is free and more than worth your time investment to try it out!