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!
View Comments (11)
Cool. Glad you decided to give MFP a try. I honestly know I’d never have lost the weight without it and especially the iPhone app.
If u decide to try the social aspect, let me know and we can be friends. Lol
Haha, my name is “brobstie” on MFP. I don’t know how to invite people but let’s be friends. ?
I see the badge on your blog and have heard about it from so many people now. It really is a great tool!
I sent you a friend request!
Dad is on this site too. He likes it.
One of the sites I love for food tracking, fitness tracking and other goal tracking is SparkPeople.com. It is a free site that simply has so much to offer; I found it looking for the best diet sites. Not only does it allow for tracking, it gives you shopping lists, fitness videos, recipes, articles, blogs, etc. I am not affiliated with SparkPeople, just an advocate. Check it out. I just bought the Ninja Kitchen Professional, found your site while I was researching whether it was a good buy and have now bookmarked you. Thank you for the great information on the Ninja.
Hi KimMarie,
Indeed, I have used SparkPeople before. It has a great tool where you can create nutritional labels for recipes — absolutely essential for food blogging! I haven’t done much else with it, so I will have to dig in more. Thanks for your note and enjoy your Ninja!
Angela
I use this everyday and I love it! I never get bored using it daily and also appreciate the fact that it reads barcodes. It’s simply amazing and has changed my life in a good way!!!
Hi Elizabeth,
I have to agree with you, the barcode scanner is fantastic! Great to hear you are making positive changes – that is what it’s all about!
Angela
Okay, really good to read this. I’ve been using Lose It! on and off for a couple years and didn’t want to change … but I think I’m going to now (plus I REALLY need to get back on track … I haven’t exercised AT ALL since the Little Rock marathon in March).
Kristin, I definitely like MFP better than Lose It, mostly for tracking the nutrient break downs, and I was a Lose It devotee. The MFP database is huge, and I seamlessly switched after I heard a podcaster I listen to raving about it.
And you deserved a couple months off after a marathon! I would have done exactly the same thing. Congrats, and thanks for your note!
Have you tried them using the Microsoft Bamd 2??
I have the band I and dont know which one shouldnI download.
Thanks!!!