My {Favorite} Fitness Pal: Part Two

Recently I broke the news that I’ve begun using a new online calorie counter: MyFitnessPal. In Part One of this series, I rejoiced over the “net calories” feature of the website. Today, I’m going to focus on another aspect I love: the food tracker.

I’ve tried many different means of food journaling in the past: WeightWatchers trackers (by hand and online), my own form, SparkPeople, not journaling. So far, MyFitnessPal is my favorite to boot.

When you go to your food diary, here’s what you’ll see:

One thing I really like is the ability to add meals/change the names of meals. For example, in past trackers, I’ve always entered my pre-workout fuel as a “snack”. But with MyFitnessPal, I’ve given that mini-meal its very own section.

I also like the ability to track specific nutrients. MyFitnessPal is set up to track calories, carbs, fat, and protein. I chose to track fiber, as well. But there are a multitude of those nutrients I could choose to track, including: saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, sodium, potassium (ahem, Mom!), sugar, vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, or iron.

Since I never really have a problem meeting my fiber goals (thanks to the Holiday Bootie Buster Challenge and my seven servings/day of freggies!), I am thinking about tracking sugar and/or iron next. I know I need to cut down on the sweets, and I doubt I get enough iron (I bruise really easily).

Another great feature of MyFitnessPal is that you can save meals and recipes that you use often in order to track food quickly and easily. I’ve saved quite a few of my favorite breakfasts, protein shakes, etc.

I’ve also added a few of my favorite recipes. What I really like about MyFitnessPal, and what is different than past trackers, is that when you add a recipe you can also note the serving size, and track just one serving when you add it to your diary. (With past trackers, I’ve had to track .125 servings because it only kept track of the total calories in the recipe.)

Something else that’s great about MyFitnessPal is that it remembers foods you use frequently for each meal. So, when I go in to track my Breakfast, here’s what comes up:

It’s a looong list of foods that I have used in my breakfast in the past. Pretty cool, because then I don’t have to go through and search them one-by-one every single day. AND my “favorites” list doesn’t get super-long.