Ok... I have gone over to the dark side. You may remember a few weeks ago I wrote a blog of Fatsecret v's Spark People. Well I just discovered My Fitness Pal. It only took me about 5 minutes to become a fully fledged MFP lover. The website is simple and easy to use without any nonsense...not as exciting as Spark People but it defo does the job and has all the things you need including quite a few extra tools such as as Recipe Nutrition Facts Calculator, Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) Calculator, BMI Calculator and a Heart Calculator. It also has the same things as Fat Secret such as groups and challenges and forums but it is the App that is AMAZING. The thing that really kept me at fat Secret was the fact that you could scan bar codes from your phone and it would find the food and give you all the nutrition information. MFP has the same thing and it is alot better. The whole app in general is so easy to use and set up so clearly. All the information is easy to read and adjust. You also can have a live feed from your MFP friends on your phone. I would almost say it is better than the actual website!!
When you first start it will tell you what your calorie intake should be a day to lose 1lbs a week (the recommended amount) mine is 1630cals a day however you can adjust it if you want to lose more than that a week. I used to try and hit 1500 but I think most of the time I went over it so I am going to increase it to 1630 and do all that I can to stay within my limit....including the wine.
It will also calculate your exercise into your calorie input/output so it shows your calories in food, exercise and then Net which I think is great. On the app you can get either a weekly or daily breakdown on what your food is going on eg sugars, fats etc and can provide the information in detail or a graph or pie chart. I just think it is amazing.
However the thing I like the best and the absolute best is that at the end of the day you submit your food and it will tell you that if you continue with the same calorie intake as you have today your weight will be ____ in 5 weeks. I mean WOW!! Yesterday it was my cheat day so I had a nice meal in the evening and was still under 2000cals (RDI) but it said in 5 weeks I would be 203lbs. To begin with I was like... ooh I will have lost weight but then I was thinking damn that's only 2lbs away from what I am now in 5 whole weeks!!! Defo a way to keep you on the straight and narrow!
ONE THING TO POINT OUT..... (I only realised this today) although counting calories is defo the way forward and it really helps me ..... it does only count calories and doesn't take in to consideration what you are actually eating. EG. Yesterday my lunch consisting of tuna and salad, no mayo, no fat or anything (see picture below) was 377calories.
But a) I could eat something from MacDonald's for the same amount and b) if I ate salad every day I would lose weight where as if I ate the same amount of calories but from McDonald's and Ready Meals or heavy food such as pasta I would probably not lose weight! Just something to remember!
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