Myfitnesspal. I've recently loaded the app on my phone and I love it.
I intend lose weight, and like that elephant recipe in the OP, it's only done one bite at a time. f3, I'm sorry you were frustrated by the food part of the interface. I know what you mean, it is very tedious to enter all that information--BUT--totally, totally worth it, to me.
I've been using it for a couple weeks now and here's what I've learned. I LOVE food, well, I knew that before but anyhow. I love to eat. I USED to eat in response to certain stimuli, satiety be chief among them. I would wait to eat sometimes, then come to the kitchen *hungry*, and eat until I wasn't hungry anymore. This works great, for satisfying hunger; losing weight, not so much. I would also eat in response to stress, time of day (habit), boredom, etc. This is normal, I guess, but it wasn't producing good results--I've gained too much weight. Now I have a new parameter to guide my food intake.
To be sure, I still have the old habits, but they're not as strong, and my new awareness of just how much food that really is, specifically, just how many calories I'm putting into my body is sobering. No wonder I was gaining weight. NOW I know (only because I took the trouble to actually record it, let's face it, my body's "recording" it, right?) what I'm taking in, or about to take in and what that means for my greater goal of losing weight. I know now that that little snack has a cost. I know now the difference between two pieces of cheese pizza and three pieces. I agree with you that the data entry is fiddly--at the beginning. It does "remember" the foods you have entered and you usually only have to look it up once. It also has a very extensive library of foods available to you via scanning the UPC code (one really good reason for using it on your phone instead of on your desktop or laptop computer. you have it right there.)
Now I find myself looking at the number of calories "allotted" to me by the calculation of the program, and working within that number. That new parameter is one that made a difference before, but I was completely oblivious to it. Now I'm not. It slows me down, and that has a temporary negative effect on my race to satiety, boo fucking hoo. But it has a much greater positive effect on my efforts toward my greater goal of losing weight.
I was eating too much relative to the amount of calorie burning I was doing. This tool gives me a much better idea of what I'm eating giving me a chance to respond accordingly, not just to hunger, habit, boredom, stress, etc.
Additionally, it has an element to it that lets you record your physical activity "Cardiovascular", so it's not only about what you eat. Actually, I use a competing product to record my exercise, Noom Cardio Trainer, principally because it records maps of where I exercise. I don't belong to a gym, I ride my bike or walk or hike and it tracks where I go and overlays the track on a map. I like that. I then take the calories burned calculated by that app and plug in the activity and the calories into myfitnesspal.
I've been using it for a couple weeks now, erratically at first, especially with the food entry aspect, but now I'm much more consistent. I'm better at it, much of what I habitually eat is there already, I know the interface, etc etc. Absolutely worth the initially steep learning curve. Now that I've got some momentum on my fitness, I'm looking for some pals.
Youse guyz are my friends, right? (don't all shout at once). If you'd like to be myfitnesspal, please send me a PM, and we'll connect.
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