Need to focus more on eating “right” vs. eating “healthy” - anyone have a favorite app that helps them track a balanced diet vs. a simple calorie counting app?
MyFitnessPal is probably the largest nutrition app out there. Being the largest has the benefit of having the largest database of foods to feed from.
It has the ability to track how much protien, carbs and fat you’re bringing in, but you just need to make sure the foods you’re inputting into the system have a full nutritional breakdown. Some items are only a measure of calories, and with those you won’t know if there’s any protien, fat or carbs.
Its MyFitnessPal hands down. Not even close.
MyFitnessPal is probably the largest nutrition app out there. Being the largest has the benefit of having the largest database of foods to feed from.
It has the ability to track how much protien, carbs and fat you’re bringing in, but you just need to make sure the foods you’re inputting into the system have a full nutritional breakdown. Some items are only a measure of calories, and with those you won’t know if there’s any protien, fat or carbs.
I was under the impression that almost all of these nutrition websites and apps use the same USDA nutrient database?
Lose it works great for me. Scanning feature for barcodes comes in handy.
I lost 20lbs w CalorieTracker and 60lbs w MyFitness Pal…
My fitness pal is the best
They do for the base products - like fruits and veggies. If you order something from a restaurant, you can manually add it with a rough “estimate” of the calories, and then this will get added to the database as well.
I used to use the MFP when I was dieting a few years back, and I would often find 3-4 different versions of the same product - with different health information.
For example, using Booster Juice’s High Impact Acai as an example:
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/booster-juice-high-impact-acai-554653
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/booster-juice-high-impact-acai-with-whey-protein-87135157
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/booster-juice-cdn-high-impact-acai-smoothie-92984027
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/booster-juice-cdn-high-impact-acai-protein-shake-7699152
Every single one of the above listings has a different value for calories, carbs, proteins, fat, sodium, sugar, etc. These are all items added by individuals and have pushed into the database for MFP.
Most people are creatures of habit, and eat the same things over and over again. If you do go to a restaurant, I suggest manually adding the foods yourself (based on the breakdown provided by the restaurant if they have one), that way they’ll be in the “my foods” section, so when you eat the same thing again, it’ll be available for you.
Training Peaks is pretty darn good. I use them for training and eating, so it also allows you to look at calorie balance daily, accounting for calorie expenditure and calories consumed. It has a really good online database and I also make custom foods and common meals so that I can record them very easily.
+1 for MyFitnessPal … It seems to be the most widely adopted app and that means the most items in its DB. Love the barcode scanning and ability to create meals and add recipes.
Awesome; thanks for all the feedback! WEnt with my fitnesspal and I’ve certainly been missing out!