Fitness App Review – My Fitness Pal

I have had my share of fitness apps on my iphone come and go.  I download them, I use them, get frustrated with them, then delete them.  You could say it’s because I have high standards due to my profession  or that I’m  just picky.  Whatever the reason, my friend encouraged me to try one more, “My Fitness Pal.”  I dismissed it, but later decided to give it a shot and I’m glad I did!

How My Fitness Pal Works – 

Basically, it’s a food logging system.  You start out by inputting your weight, your height, and your activity level.  Then, you tell it how many pounds you’d like to lose per week.  When you do this BE REALISTIC or you will be eating celery for dinner every night due to the fact that you ate all your calories during the day!

After you have set up all of your goals you are ready to begin!

Features of My Fitness Pal App

• Scan your food – Use the Bar code on the wrapper or the container of the food item to log quickly and accurately.  This is the most accurate scanning device I have seen so far!!  It even has trader Joe’s items.  Along with other off brands that I consume (due to my gluten intolerance).

  

• Watch Your Progress – The handy device shows you a graph of where your weight started and how you are progressing with each weigh in.  After each day of logging your food it will show you how many pounds you would be if you continued to eat that amount of calories.

  

• Invite  A Friend –  Get your whole crew on the “My Fitness Pal App.”  Don’t worry they CAN’T see what you are eating.  They can only see that you have logged in, finished logging for the day, are under your calorie goal, and what you did for your workout.  This program can also help trainers keep tabs on their clients as well.  However, a deeper look into the food logging might be necessary.

• Add recipes – Let’s say you eat lasagna every Friday night and you don’t want to input every ingredient and then claim an 8th of the dish.  You can actually add the whole recipe into the program and it will calculate the calories and keep it in the system for you to use at a later date!

• Calorie Graphs and Nutritional Info Break Downs– These handy graphs and reports let you know if you are eating too much fat, not eating enough protein, are over consuming salt or if you are in need of more calcium!  They also give you a visual look at what your average calorie intake is across the board.