Anyone use a food tracker?
I used the free version of My Fitness Pal quite a few years ago but got bored of manually entering all the details. I'm assuming the tech has moved on since then (and there's more automation) so what's good and what's bad now?
Ideally, I want something that links to Strava to take into account my activities, and provide some insight to my carb and protein intake as I suspect Im not eating enough protein for my activity level.
This isn't likely a long term thing for me, so I don't mind paying for a few months subscription but I won't be paying annually
You have to put the information into any app - MyFitnessPal has done barcode scanning for ages & has most foods logged.
It is a pain to start with, but you soon get into a routine & regular food options come up in searches.
You are best off creating your own meals for things that you know you eat often & then you only need to select that meal & all of the ingredients/weights get entered.
I've been using myfitnesspal since the new year; just the free option. I am not sure the premium version if worth it unless you really want to analyse your nutrition metrics.
The free MyFitnessPal will still let you track your daily protein/fat/carbs etc. which was one of the reasons I started using it for.
It pulls in my exercise data from Garmin, but I think Strava works too.
The hardest bit is getting started with it & getting into a routine/habit of putting the details in.
I have lost around 4kg since halfway through Jan using myfitnesspal.
I did MyFitness Pal for a while recently but it was a ballache because there were just too many ingredients on a daily basis I needed to add, and very few meals are the same.
I have reservations about the accuracy too. Lots of products have multiple entries in the database with surprisingly different energy contents which leads to making random judgements. Added up over a day those errors might be significant. Anyway, i did it for about a week, which gives me a rough idea of my typical intake... I was feeding it Garmin data too, so it showed me that I'm losing weight due to calorie imbalance, which I already knew.
Apparently the barcode scanning in MFP is now a premium-only feature (and the cost of frankly stupid). Plus there were a lot of poor reviews on Google Play (lots of bugs and not syncing correctly) so I've ruled out MFP.
Randomly, I found Chronometer may work, so I'm giving the free version of that a go for a few days - I may consider starting the Gold (premium) version once I've logged a few days as it, apparently, allows you to take photos of your meal and AI figures the rest out (yeah, my confidence in that is low!).
I also learned that Garmin Connect+ (the premium version) also allows food tracking. So if Chronometer doesn't work out, I may give that a go.
Still seems a massive pain in the arse to be weighing each item though! Kudos for anyone who actually sticks with it...
I'm on a free account and can barcode scan...
I'm on a free account and can barcode scan...
I was put off MFP when I read that the barcode scanner thing only worked on premium, grumbled about it to my Wife (I was considering signing up to cronometer) and she said 'what are you on about, I use the barcode scanner on MFP all the time'.
I tried it and it worked, no bother. But yeah, I don't know why it says you can only use it on premium.
The weighing thing & selecting every food thing - I suppose it depends how anal you want to be about it - once you've done it for a week or so, you get to know that "this much" cereal in a bowl is 60grams & "that splash" of milk is 150ml, 3 spoons of "this yogurt" is 100g etc.
And you can choose if you want to count everything. Do you need to add that 1 spring onion you used in a salad? Are those 3 calories going to make a difference - so long as you count the 15g of cheese, the slice of sourdough bread & the 150g of chicken breast, you are there or thereabouts.
You can weight everything out, but you really don't need to unless you are absolutely obsessing over it and you quickly learn to a close enough approximation.
I have been very lazy with it in the past, but currently very pleased with the results I am getting for 5 minutes of effort a day.
11 weeks today since I started with a target weight loss of 1lb/week. Weigh-in this morning has me at a weight loss of 4.9kg, which equates to 10.78lbs. Apologies for the mixing of weights, but hey ho.....it works in my head.
So, as near as makes no difference 11lbs lost in 11 weeks with a target calorie deficit of 1lb per week. Seems to be working.
You probably need to just choose an app & stick with it.
I was put off MFP when I read that the barcode scanner thing only worked on premium, grumbled about it to my Wife (I was considering signing up to cronometer) and she said 'what are you on about, I use the barcode scanner on MFP all the time'.
I tried it and it worked, no bother. But yeah, I don't know why it says you can only use it on premium.
The weighing thing & selecting every food thing - I suppose it depends how anal you want to be about it - once you've done it for a week or so, you get to know that "this much" cereal in a bowl is 60grams & "that splash" of milk is 150ml, 3 spoons of "this yogurt" is 100g etc.
And you can choose if you want to count everything. Do you need to add that 1 spring onion you used in a salad? Are those 3 calories going to make a difference - so long as you count the 15g of cheese, the slice of sourdough bread & the 150g of chicken breast, you are there or thereabouts.
You can weight everything out, but you really don't need to unless you are absolutely obsessing over it and you quickly learn to a close enough approximation.
I have been very lazy with it in the past, but currently very pleased with the results I am getting for 5 minutes of effort a day.
11 weeks today since I started with a target weight loss of 1lb/week. Weigh-in this morning has me at a weight loss of 4.9kg, which equates to 10.78lbs. Apologies for the mixing of weights, but hey ho.....it works in my head.
So, as near as makes no difference 11lbs lost in 11 weeks with a target calorie deficit of 1lb per week. Seems to be working.
You probably need to just choose an app & stick with it.
MFP user here, used to great effect a decade ago, back for round two now. The ads in the free version really bugged me this time around, I did succumb to paying the £80 for the premium, I didn't think £80 for the year was too bad, not far off the cost of one tyre for the MTB these days!
Once you get in the rhythm of using it, it becomes quite second nature (free or premium version)
I'm going to sign up with Garmin Connect+ for a couple of months to try their Nutrition feature. I reckon a few weeks of using it will give me sufficient information (particularly about my protein intake) to let me make any dietary adjustments I need. I realise there's a bit of a ball ache involved in data entry regardless of which tool is used.
Re: MFP and bar-coding. The comments I read on Reddit said older accounts which had been a activated before a certain date had the bar-code feature grand-fathered into the free version but only "brand new" Premium accounts after that date would have it. I can't remember what the cross over date was.
Anyway, first day logged on Chronometer and I'm quite a bit down on protein target, and the day wasn't atypical 🤔
Bevel App - you can log in the usual ways but it also allows you to add food/meals/etc by various other means:
Simple description typed or spoken text
Import an image or take a photo
I'm finding these remove a lot of the faff and so I'm more likely to log everything
Oh and all of that is free, but the paid Pro version also allows use of AI search/input
I tried the garmin connect + to lasted about two days. It really is shockingly bad. The barcode isn't good and is region locked. It invariably gives the wrong food even if you change to UK.
The garmin app forums are full of complaints about it. I'm back to mfp and it's a lot better, for slightly less.
Does anyone know anything about protein consumption?
I weigh 87kg and I'm reasonably slim (BMI around 23). From Googling, it seems my daily protein target should be around 70g (0.8g per kg of weight), yet the food tracking app I'm using (Chronometer) is suggesting 157g based on 25% of my target daily calories allowance. As I do quite a bit of activity, the daily calorie allowance goes up, and so does my protein target.
The results are I'm only achieving about 70% of my protein target. Should I be concerned??
(I'm tracking food intake as I feel like I've plateaued out in terms of fitness and don't have the energy to do long endurance rides. Based on watching too many GCN videos on YouTube, I feel I may not be consuming enough protein seeing as pros routinely consume over 100g of protein per hour!! I am NOT a pro rider 😂)
The results are I'm only achieving about 70% of my protein target. Should I be concerned??
There was another thread specifically on protein intake and the consensus was that few of us are acheiving the target. It's tracking protein that makes me want to start logging nutrition.
I'm 73kg (BMI 25), age 67 (gae is a factor) and active every day. It seems my target is also in the 125-140g per day bracket and, yes, I'm trying to think of how I'll achieve that without supplements.
But then listen to this and you’ll be told that you are probably eating a perfectly reasonable amount of protein…
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Xl3PAncFHxqK755gjEyHT?si=TLWQIa-xRQCKsPe3T5YfUg
I do wonder if MFP etc have a protein bias due to supplement sponsorship, but when I actually focus on foods - nuts and yoghurt for snacks rather than crisps and chocolate - I can actually hit my protein target
Does anyone know anything about protein consumption?
I weigh 87kg and I'm reasonably slim (BMI around 23). From Googling, it seems my daily protein target should be around 70g (0.8g per kg of weight), yet the food tracking app I'm using (Chronometer) is suggesting 157g based on 25% of my target daily calories allowance. As I do quite a bit of activity, the daily calorie allowance goes up, and so does my protein target.
The results are I'm only achieving about 70% of my protein target. Should I be concerned??
(I'm tracking food intake as I feel like I've plateaued out in terms of fitness and don't have the energy to do long endurance rides. Based on watching too many GCN videos on YouTube, I feel I may not be consuming enough protein seeing as pros routinely consume over 100g of protein per hour!! I am NOT a pro rider 😂)
I'm 86kg in MFP and they want me to achieve 108g of protein per day which is given as a 20% goal (30% fat, 50% carbs) where I'm eating a target of 2,040 cals per day, you being a couple of kg heavier and aiming for 25%, 157grams isnt too far wrong using man maths!
I seem to be okay at hitting the 20% mark, I do have a protein shake on the days of exercise, but on other days, I dont have an issue getting the protein from normal meals.
I'm in a similar position where now spring is here and my bike riding volume is up and I'm hitting my macros I dont feel like I am recovering well enough and it impacts the length or pace of my rides. I am about to order some creatine to see if this can help me recover quicker and better then allow me to pedal as far or as fast as I desire.
The results are I'm only achieving about 70% of my protein target. Should I be concerned??
There was another thread specifically on protein intake and the consensus was that few of us are acheiving the target. It's tracking protein that makes me want to start logging nutrition.
Thanks. For others interested:
https://singletrackworld.com/forum/off-topic/where-do-you-get-your-protein-from-2/
Bookmarking this as I just started using the free version of MFP, think it will work for me to make me more aware of the impact of my weakness, snacking on junk.
Shame to hear that the Garmin version is rubbish, being linked to strava would be great but that said, even if it was decent I doubt it would be worth paying for, I don't think Connect premium offers much else worth having