Food & exercise journaling is one of the most important things you can do when trying to lose weight or promote lifestyle change. When accurately journaling, it doesn’t take long to realize how poorly we eat or how stationary we are.
We all start out well with the best intentions but it is difficult to keep up with the tedious process of logging everything, looking up the calories, keeping up with the log and eventually the journaling goes to the way side.
Hey! There is an app for that.
The My Fitness Pal is a FREE smart phone calorie counting tool that makes the process easy. The accountability factor is also addressed in a couple of ways. Accountability to yourself as you see what calories you have consumed. You will be asking yourself if that late night snack is really worth it. Also, this app has a social networking feature so you can invite friends to join you in the effort. The back and forth encouragement between friends goes a long way.
Talk about value… Did I mention that this app is FREE?
Huge Database of Foods
The database of foods is huge. Users can add or search for foods as well as scan the food product, which I love because scanned entries have the correct nutritional information.
Meal Feature
This is great if you commonly eat the same foods. If you eat 2 eggs, wheat toast and orange juice a couple of times a week, instead of entering each of the elements, after setting it up, just go to the My Meals tab and click the named meal. Then it enters everything for you automatically! From there you can adjust if you made it differently, but the meal feature saves a lot of time and effort if you eat the same meal repeatedly.
Tracks Everything
One of the best things about My Fitness Pal is that is doesn’t just track calories. It also tracks sugar and sodium. Those are both two things to watch for proper nutrition. It’s really convenient to have that information easily available.
Other Awesome Benefits of My Fitness Pal
• Fitness tracking
• Community with active message boards
• Ability to use with mobile devices
• Recipe calculators
• Weight loss badges
Try it, you just may love it!