Why We Love the MyFitnessPal App

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Amanda & I are engaged. I know, you can’t believe it. It’s OK I’ll give you a minute… With our wedding planned for next year we’ve decided we should lose a few pounds before the big day. We know that diets suck and your motivation can get drained easily. Luckily Amanda & I can be each other’s accountability partners. So what kind of diet are we doing?

Being business owners, we tend to work on our computers too much. We don’t get enough exercise and end up eating way too much of the wrong foods at all the wrong times. So we’ve embarked on a strict low calorie diet. We weren’t really sure whether or not this type of diet would work for us (vs. the slow carb diet, raw diet, etc.) but based on personal experience and preferences, this made the most sense to us. And honestly, it’s been great. We just completed our third week and we’re down 10lbs and it honestly hasn’t been that devastating.

Since we’re analytics nerds, counting calories and exercise is actually fun!

However, we probably wouldn’t have gotten through week 1 without a really great tool to help keep track because documenting everything you eat is a must. The week before we embarked on our diet I found this free app for the iPhone called Calorie Counter & Diet Tracker by MyFitnessPal. After about an hour fooling around with it I knew it would be perfect tool to make this diet a success. And honestly, it’s probably the only reason we’ve been able to stick to what we’ve been doing.

You tell the app how much you want to lose, when you want to lose it by, and how much you weigh now. You also tell it how active you usually are, and how much exercise you plan on doing. From here it tells you how many calories you should be consuming every day in order to hit your goal weight. And when you exercise, it takes into account your current weight which is also important in order to tell you how many calories you’re really burning since the heavier you are, the more calories you burn.

This app takes the hassle out of calorie counting too. Set your daily calorie limit, add foods as you eat them and track your weight and measurements as you go along.

The best, most fantastic feature of the app is the food database, which is constantly being updated by users like yourselves. Chances are you won’t need to enter the exact contents of your meals because someone has already eaten and tracked them for you.  Even the menus of fast-food no-no’s like McDonalds are in there.

My favorite part of the app is the ability to scan the barcodes of items into my daily food journal as I eat them. The app automatically pulls in the nutritional information for the food item. It saves so much time and makes tracking a breeze. Here are a few other features you’ll love:

• Track and send messages to friends (it’s community-based, like Weight Watchers without the meetings)
• Track your exercise routines (it will calculate how many calories your burned, and how many more calories you’re allowed to eat when you’re done)
• The app has a companion website, which you can access from any web browser
• Advanced privacy settings, so you can pick and choose what information you want to share