myfitnesspal Questions

[Rebel Pilot Gar]

I've been tracking my diet using a spreadsheet for the past few months, but keep hearing about myfitnesspal. I tried using it a few months ago but gave up after a few days of trying to figure out how to enter the stuff our university dining hall tries to pass off as food. Now I'm home and cooking for myself so I figured I'll give the site another chance.

Does anyone here use it? What do you like/hate about it? Any recommendations for adding meals?

Also how do I determine daily calorie allowance and carb/protein/fat breakdown? I'm not paleo or primal but I'm looking to reduce my carb intake and just generally eat better.

[Loren Wade]

Lots of people here use it.

It's one of the better calorie calculating apps/programs available for iPhone/Android right now.

It will determine calories for you. Just put in your weight, height, and age. Then it will ask how much you want to lose per week. Then it will calculate calories from there.

As far as carb/protein/fat breakdown... you can tell it what your goals are for each area via their website (which changes it for your in-app experience also).

[VorJoshigan]

I use it. I love it. I usually just enter in a description of what I'm eating & there's usually somebody else who's created that and then I fudge it. Then again precision has never been my strong suit. I know that I'll eventually have to start paying closer attention if I want to get below a certain level, but I'm not there yet.

Also how do I determine daily calorie allowance and carb/protein/fat breakdown? I'm not paleo or primal but I'm looking to reduce my carb intake and just generally eat better.

Maybe I don't understand the question, but the site does all of this automatically, then you can fine-tune under Goals --> Change goals. I left my calories alone but pushed carbs down to 20% & bumped protein up to 25%.

By the way, my username is the same there as here if you wanna add me.

[Rebel Pilot Gar]

Thanks for the responses guys!

Yeah I'll probably just wing the food entry the best I can anyways. At least seeing an estimation of what makes up the food I'm eating should help me make better choices right? I'll go fiddle with the goals a bit as well.

[Kewilson]

It's pretty good. The only reason I prefer my own is, well, because I'm a stats nerd.

[Rebel Pilot Gar]

Yeah so far the number system annoys me. I'm ignoring the "you'll weigh this much in ___ weeks" parts because their math is irritatingly oversimplified. Makes my not-so-inner engineer growl.

[VorJoshigan]

Yeah so far the number system annoys me. I'm ignoring the "you'll weigh this much in ___ weeks" parts because their math is irritatingly oversimplified. Makes my not-so-inner engineer growl.

Yeah, I pretty much ignore all of their numbers except my macro proportions. For me the biggest thing is just to track everything I eat. If I don't do that, then it's really easy for me to get off track. My eating autopilot is stuck in Augustus Gloop mode.

[Eurydice]

I tried it twice, but it was a no-go. I do almost all my tracking on my phone and their Android app interface is way too fussy and ad-ridden.

[rtalencar]

I use it, but I don't follow their suggestions.

In terms of figuring out calories and macronutrients, I generally go off of this

Good luck to you.

[BadWolf]

I use, I like it. I ignore the macro bit, which you can change, but I don't bother. I know to eat more protein than it says, etc... The forums are nuts though. I try to avoid them.

[Emcognito]

I've used it off and on. I usually get really frustrated with it after a week or two of trying to log every meal and snack and knock it off for a while. Unless you're eating the same "custom" recipes or only eat store bought stuff, it gets really tedious putting in every meal to get an accurate count. I've found it more useful for weight tracking once a month or so and calculating the dietary info on new recipes so I can do the math more quickly in my head later. I'm also not very confident the calories it reports as burned when you enter an exercise is very accurate so I don't use that feature any more. My 2 cents...

[IfItPlugsIn]

I use, I like it. I ignore the macro bit, which you can change, but I don't bother. I know to eat more protein than it says, etc... The forums are nuts though. I try to avoid them.

The forums are ridiculous!!! I've been a member for almost 4 years, and they used to be filled with intelligent, helpful people. Now they've gone off the deep end. I change my macros, because they set the carbs so high and the protein so low. Otherwise, I found the actual calorie number to be a good level, and the database is reasonable. The barcode scanning on the phone app is pretty fun too

[Anivair]

I use it. The only thing I don't like about it is that it won't let you shift macros for different says (your breakdown is the same for workout days versus non-workout days) but beyond that, it's great.

[Rebel Pilot Gar]

Thanks for all the comments! Honestly, I have not looked at the comments. I've started keeping track of my food the past few days - not sure if I am doing it right because some days I seem to have a large calorie deficit. I've know for a while that I don't get enough protein and have been working on that, but it is nice to see actual numbers to work towards. I changed the numbers a bit to increase protein and decrease carbs to 150 g per day as a max.

It is definitely much easier to input food now that I've been cooking for myself instead of getting dining hall food full of mystery ingredients and having to wing it from what I think might be in the food.