Calorie Tracker Overload!

​How to use Calorie Counters and Fitness Pals to your advantage.
Food trackers can be very useful journaling tool when beginning and even maintaining weight loss.  There are countless apps out there that help track the most obscure foods to the most common.  They are also equipped with a bar code scanner.   A study was done and published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine regarding food journaling.  The study found that those who used a journal lost twice as much weight as those who didn’t.  By journaling we will be given the opportunity to reflect on what we eat and the habits around it.  You will be about to see if you are a late night snacker or constantly miss meals. While tracking these behaviors we can see what is interfering with our weight loss journey. 
According to Live Science @ https://www.livescience.com/49845-best-calorie-counter-app.html
The top apps are as follows:

1. MyFitnessPal:  quick food entry, pie charts for macro and micro nutrients, journaling space for mood and behaviors, calories adjustments for exercise. I personally use this one and recommend this app to all my clients.  It will link to most exercise devices and will down load all food. 
2. Loseit!  Built in pedometer and exercise logs, easy to use journal, visually appealing as the food entries come with little happy pictures.  Negative: home meals are hard to find.  I investigated this one myself and agree food was hard to follow.  However, when putting in for a 5 lb. weightless it gave me a smile and reinforcement for safe weight loss.  I can see how the bells and whistles would attract people. 
3. Sparkpeople:  Facebook like connections, members can blog behaviors, Marco charts, way more logical in weight loss calorie intake like MyFitnessPal.  Setting my birth date was a pain in the ass and there are so many adds that pop up.  Gives you spark points for voting if information is accurate…not sure what spark points do.  I did not like this one at all. 
4. Chron-o meter:  Food intake log and calories is easy to use.  Did not ask my purpose so allotted be 1800 calories without knowing if I was trying to lose weight or my activity level.  Did give the option of Male, female, female pregnant, female lactating.  This app was filled with adds and spyware pop ups…. overall not happy with this app at all!
5. Noom Coach-  gives lots of trick of the trade.  Food is color-coded, red, yellow and red for obvious reasons.  When using the app, I felt it was easy to use but without the 44$ upgrade it did not give me a lot of use.  I felt the trick of the trades were a little overwhelming and it also had a lot of advertisements.
6. My Net Diary Calorie counter and food diary:  I really liked this one.  It was very visually appealing.  For me to input my data was quick and easy.  It gave me a lot of positive reinforcement like the dashboard has a big green apple.  As I input my food the apple colored in.  Also, there is a person on a bike at the top of hill with my weight right there, as I lose weight the bike moves with the loss.  I can see that a being a huge motivator.  The negative was all the extra’s cost money and there were still a ton of adds.  There were other issues I found, more about that below. 
7. FatSecret: Ok so this is definitely my number 3 pick.  Was super easy to set up, food is easy to find.  Once you put in a food it gives you all the information you need so that you can decide if you even want to eat it.  Give sleep accountability and can sync to a website.  

 
Biggest take away from all this is that there are a ton of apps out there and it is super easy to become overwhelmed quick.  I can see how clients can easily become overwhelmed.  I was surprised that with all the apps the number of calories I was given to eat was never the same.  My Net Diary being the lowest at 1200 and FatSecret allowing me a whole 2000.  Some asked me for activity level while others did not.  That is a huge caution because all though you do not want to eat your workouts you still want to fuel them.  At 1200 calories a day like My Net Diary wants me to eat, I might die.  I felt very stressed out the entire time I was using the app.  
I recommend you download a couple and try them out for a week at a time to really get a gauge of what you like and don’t like.  Not trying to sound bias, but through the week I logged into my top two My Net Diary and My Fitness Pal, and I still prefer My Fitness Pal.  They have my calorie intake at 1500 per day, it will download all information to my fitbit, and my macros are set to a more realistic amount per day.  
Personally, this was one of the more interesting blogs I have done in a while being the literature is so diverse and often subjective to product placement.  I am going to continue doing research regarding this topic being that new apps come up everyday.  Good luck and happy tracking!

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