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nanoman | 11 years ago

> There are probably very few people who have the patience to log everything they eat, diet or no diet, unless they have some kind of payoff close at hand!

After trying a few apps, I have found MyFitnessPal and tracking what I eat has become my daily routine. The app makes it very easy, has a great database of foods and in my case, I can almost always choose from my food history with 1 tap.

I'm in the 9th week of my diet, which simply means burning 1000 kcal more a day than I consume. My results are similar to the one in the blog post - spare 7000kcal a week and lose 1 kg.

Sure, measuring calories is imprecise at best, but my results speak another language.

The fitbit app sucks, it isn't well thought out and has numerous UI bugs. I had the fitbit one step tracker for a while until I lost it. Now I'm using my iPhone as step tracker, as I'm almost always carrying it in my pocket.

discuss

randlet|11 years ago

The MyFitnessPal app is great and includes a barcode scanner which makes it super easy to find the calories/macros for a big chunk of your food. It also allows you to set your goals for your macros (fat/protein/carbs) which is very handy. I'm able to hit my macro goals within +/- 5% a day which seems quite good.

I weigh and log virtually everyting (not coffee/tea/water though) but as you said, measuring calories is imprecise at best. I'm currently targeting ~3400kcal a day and I would estimate a healthy error margin of +/- 400kcal a day on that figure.

The biggest benefit is that it makes me totally conscious of what's going into my body and developing a feel for the caloric content of various foods (e.g. wow I had no idea 2 cups of spinach was only ~10 calories!).

johnward|11 years ago

I use MFP and weigh my food. Everyone gets caught up on the science and numbers. Ultimately, it doesn't matter if the calories are exact or not. If you aren't losing weight then you trim some more out of your diet. If you are losing weight and that's your goal then you keep doing what you are doing. The tracker just helps give you a guideline and history.