Highlighted Service/App: MyFitnessPal

Are you looking for a way to keep track of things like:
-What you eat?
-The nutritional information for what you eat?
-Log your exercise sessions.
-Track your caloric intake for the day.
-And so much more?

If so, then there are a several of these apps/services available.  If you have read my review on LoseIt by Fitnow than you'll know that I like to use these apps as well.  The one that I will be covering today is: MyFitnessPal. The point of MyFitnessPal is to act as a calorie counter.  MyFitnessPal has an app available for both Android and iPhone.  The app is identical on both platforms, you can setup an account right on your mobile device.  Then as you go through the day, you simply log what you have eaten into the calorie counter.  The app has a pretty good database that includes most foods and chain-restaurant foods.  If you like, you can also use the barcode scanner built into the app to capture a shot of a particular food item's barcode and it will find that food's nutritional information and import it into your diary for that particular meal.  The app will generate a daily calorie allotment that is will count towards as you log consumed food during the day, obviously to loose weight the thought is you want to stay under that calorie allotment each day.  This allotment is based off of several criteria that you entered when setting up your account, like:
-Age
-Height
-Current Weight
-Weight Goal
-How many pounds you'd like to loose per week.
-What is your estimated activity level during the day (work)?

But it doesn't stop with just food, you also track your physical exercise as well.  After all, exercising helps you burn calories, and since the app is counting calories for you, it needs to know what is being burnt off during workouts.  As you weigh in, you also need to update your weight in the app or on their website.  This will also affect your daily calorie allotments that the app helps you meet or stay underneath that limit.

One thing I really like about MyFitnessPal, is once you closeout a day's "diary" or log of food & exercise, the app will pop up a screen that says "If everyday were like today, it would take you X weeks to be at XX goal."  That helps me keep things in perspective.  I mean after all, for most of us, being healthy isn't a whole lot of "fun".  So some of us need a little further inspiration to get things going.

You can also visit their website at: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/
Their website has even more features available too.  You can follow their forums, track the same info you track using the mobile app, you also get a little widget that you can post on your website or social network that display's your current weightloss.

The service and app are free of charge.  So what do you have to loose?  Swing by their website for more information on both the website service and their mobile app: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/

Posted in: android, calorie counter, calorie tracker, iphone, loseit, mobile devices, myfitnesspal, trainer, web service, workout