At the end of January, I started using three iPhone apps to track my food intake and fitness activities. Having used them for almost two months now, I have concluded that one isn’t working for me, one is flawed, and the other I love.
BodBot is a good app, but without something prompting me to open it and do a workout, I find that most days it slips my mind. The workouts seem well-tailored to my fitness level based on my inputs, but again, without some prompting, I don’t remember to use it. If they could set it so that it pinged me on the days I needed to workout, at least until I got into a routine and didn’t need it, I would love this app. Until then, it is just another icon on my screen.
When I first heard of and downloaded Moves, I thought highly of it. It tracked my steps fairly accurately, and while at times I didn’t keep it charged enough to use it continuously throughout the entire day, I was impressed with the tracking and detail it provided. Combined with the MyFitnessPal app, I was able to use it effectively. However, it is with great sadness that I report, with each subsequent update, which I expected to improve the tracking complaints others had, it seems to lose accuracy each time. The app doesn’t seem to track continuously even when it’s in my pocket and I am moving, which makes it hard to use it with MyFitnessPal. While I do know roughly how much time I spend walking while at work, it’s hard to judge other times I’m out and about. If they could return the accuracy that was there when I first installed the app, I would be happier with it overall.
And as for MyFitnessPal, I love it. I use it daily to track my food intake and have learned how certain foods are effecting my satiety as well as my moods/energy levels. In combination with Moves, I have a clearer picture of my habits. As this time of year is the toughest for me, mostly due to the influx of Cadbury Creme Eggs, I am learning how to work those sweet treats in and still not overindulged as I have in the past. The ability to customize the meals and really space them out as I want/need, makes this one of the best apps I’ve used for this type of tracking. Their repository of foods, both searching and through the bar code scanner, continues to impress me. I have yet to enter food that wasn’t already in their system which makes tracking even easier. Other apps I’ve tried, the database was limited and I found myself spending a lot of time adding foods from the package labels.
Overall, I am enjoying the two apps I’m still using and since I really started trying, I have lost 14 pounds. For me this is significant; previous attempts have yielded better results, but I also didn’t maintain the loss for any amount of time. Even when I have days where I eat a bit too much, I’m still not gorging myself as I have in the past. As time progresses, I expect the weight loss will continue and with some extra effort on my part, I know it will be easier once I include some real exercise with my improved eating habits.
This is really good information. I use a really dumb pedometer to measure my activity — I know there are better things out there but I haven’t looked yet. My biggest frustration with food tracking is that a lot of products just aren’t in the databases. I also get frustrated because I cook from scratch and end up having to enter a lot of info just to get a calorie rating. Frustrating. Good luck with yours.
I have some things that I make that require me to enter each piece individually, but you can save them as a meal if you frequently use the same recipe. For instance, I make grilled cheese with a variety of cheeses, so I have a couple set for the bread we use with three various cheeses and just change the serving on the cheese I’m not using that time to zero for easy inputting.