My Fitness Pal: An App Worth Having?

My Fitness Pal

With over 3 million foods in their database, My Fitness Pal has one of the largest nutrition and calorie databases and is used by over 50 million people. This app seems to be a great choice for someone looking to lose weight or track their macros and how they eat, but is it?

What’s it do?

My Fitness Pal is like an electronic food log that lets you:

Tracks Calories – If you’re like me, you don’t want to have to read the damn label every time you want to eat something. If I start reading labels I end up eating the same foods for 4 weeks and I get tired of that real fast, so using the MFP database is great. All calories and macros are saved so you just have to pick what you want to eat to get the facts for that food.

Track Macros – Along with calories, everything will have the foods’ protein, fats, and carbs content. Plan out your meals in your off time to figure out if you will hit your macros if you’re tracking them. Instead of “eat as much meat as possible” you can add in some cottage cheese and other foods to get more protein and vegetables.

Set Goals and Work Towards Them – You have a goal and you know what you have to do to but you’re missing a tool to make it easier to enjoy some food instead of eating beef, chicken, and broccoli every day. This app will let you set some goals and give you tips on how to achieve them.

Plan and View a Full Day’s Worth of Food – Instead of sitting around and watching TV or porn, take some time to plan out your meals. If you want to eat at a restaurant or your favorite fast food joint on Friday, sit down and make a plan for Friday so you can eat your favorites without blowing your diet. If you have to cut calories on Thursday and Saturday to help make up for the binge-fest that you are going to have on Friday, this app makes that easy to plan it all out.

Use PC or Mobile Devices to Plan – You can use this app on the computer or on your phone or tablet and they will sync up with no troubles. This means you can log into the site at work and get some good planning done and you can tweak your meals at home on the phone or tablet. The app can be run on Android, Blackberry, Windows, and iPhone devices.

Gives Nutrition Info for Restaurants and Fast Food Joints – Like I said earlier, you can plan your meals for most fast food joints and restaurants with this app. Search whatever place you are going to go and what food you are planning on and get the nutrition facts for it. Now you don’t have to try to figure out why you’re holding on to 2 pounds of water weight that you can’t account for.

Create Your Own Recipes – Using the raw ingredients, you can create your own meals and input your own recipes into the database. This makes cooking a lot more fun and gives you the ability to control the macros and calories per serving.

Extra Tools – Extra tools like a BMI, BMR, Heart Rate, and Nutrition monitor will help you get the most out of this app. There is a section to track your exercises which is something that most readers on this site will not be interested in at all. It’s worth a mention and you might find some of the things listed helpful to you.

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Conclusion

So this app will give you the ability to track calories and macros for your daily food intake, let you plan out meals, and track your progress. Along with all of that, you can use it on your computer or mobile devices, you can create your own recipes and get the nutritional info for it, and can help hold you accountable. This isn’t the most in-depth graphing your whole life story of nutrition, but if you’re looking for an easy way to get going in the right direction with your goals and really take control of what goes in your body, this is going to be the app for you.

This app is generally geared towards people who want to get into shape. Strength athletes and other specialty sports can still use the effectively, you just will have to use the app in a different way. Since strength athletes carry more muscle mass than the general public, our macros and calorie intake will be different from someone who is sedentary and has never walked into a gym. Know what you need your calorie intake and macros to be at and create your days around those numbers. This is a great tool for anyone if you use it correctly.

Use the app? Leave a comment below how it has helped or hurt your progress!