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.