My Fitness Pal

I'm going to download this tonight, my friends been saying it's great too.

Getting back on the wagon properly tomorrow, had some chocs and pizza today so not great but new start tomorrow ?

I'm getting back onto this tomorrow - am gonna really push myself into being honest - not sure how long it will last for though!

I like it. I like the barcode scanner, so easy. Although I had a rough idea of calories, I was surprised at the sugar in some things, it was really interesting. I use RunKeeper for my walking and it automatically puts the calories lost into mfp and it's usually slightly less than if you input minutes walked into it. I'm also on my feet all day for walking all day for work so nothing goes in for that so I give myself some slack for that.

The last time I did it I struggled to eat 1,000 a day (it was summer and I tend to live off of yoghurt, fruit, salad and water ice lollies, which isn't very good in the long run, but was way over on sugar every day.

I like it too, but I think you do have to be the sort of person who likes measuring and tracking things. It appeals to me cos I'm OCD, but I know some people hate it - after all, lots of ads for diet products sell themselves on "no weighing or measuring!"

However, I only jut found out yesterday that you can set your own calorie goal! It was telling me that to lose 1.5lb a week I should be eating 1270, which I felt was too low. I went through a phase of getting headachey and nauseated in the late afternoons and I knew it was cos I hadn't eaten enough during the day. Then to lose 1lb a week it goes up to 1530, which I think is a bit high and leads me to snack in the evening on things I don't really want, just cos I have calories left over. So I set it manually to 1400 which seems about right for me.

I agree that it is a faff to use if you do a lot of cooking from scratch. I am off the bandwagen with MFP at the moment and this is the reason. I do wish it would have more generic recipe templates on, just to give you an idea how much you have eaten.

I tend to just weigh everything and try and put in the exact amount of calories if I can. I'm only allowed 1200 calories a day which is a struggle some days but will be ok once I get back into exercising again.

I'm another big fan of MFP for keeping track. I find I don't take my diet seriously enough if I don't use it. I'm a bit all or nothing and need to be semi obsessed or it doesn't work.

Agree I do find it a bit of a pain for entering fresh things. I just try and over estimate if anything thinking a bit of extra brocolli or cucumber is not going to do any major damage. I'm never sure how accurate the exercise calculations are so I try and keep my food under to be a bit safe.

let me know if you want to add me and I'll PM you my log in. My diary is open to view.

I love the fact that I can keep tally of what I'm eating now that I've finally added most of the recipes H & I use. Before that, it was a bit of a faff because I don't really eat processed/prepackaged food.

Does anyone else suspect that it overestimates the calories burned through exercise though? I often walk into town which is 2 miles away and it takes me 45 minutes at a comfortable pace. MFP tries to tell me that's burned around 200 calories, but that seems too high to me.