I recieved a gorgeous voice note this week from a lovely client who is figuring out My Fitness Pal (MFP) for the first time and I thought some of the information she’d found was valuable and worth sharing. I take a lot of the features for granted as I’ve been using MFP since 2010!! Haha! Nearly 14 years! There wasn’t even an app back then, I used to track my food on my desktop computer at work! Now if that doesn’t say ‘in it for the long haul’ I’m not sure what does!
Quick reminder that tracking food and eating the right things is the single biggest thing which will have the largest impact on fat loss / body composition, so it’s important to make tracking as easy as possible for yourself! (As we know, exercise is also super important for health and wellbeing, but if you’re looking for fat loss results, you HAVE TO focus on what you’re eating.)
So, MFP is a really effective way to monitor and record what you eat over time. Some key, helpful features of the app are:
1. Recipes
You can enter the ingredients for a recipe and save it to use again in future. Go to Add food -> My recipes -> Create recipe. You can then select it and enter the amount you’ve eater; half a portion for example.
2. Barcode scanner
You’ve probably discovered this already but if not, it’s really handy! Scan tins/ packets/ cartons, etc, to get accurate nutritional info which you can enter quickly and easily.
3. Quick add calories
If you know roughly what you’ve eaten, but are in a rush or can’t find it on MFP (e.g. random pick n mix or a handful of something obscure!) then you can make a guess as to how many calories it has and track that. I wouldn’t recommend using this a lot as you are simply guessing, but it can come in handy. Also, always better to over estimate calories than under estimate 👍🏼
4. Sync it with your fitness tracker
This is a fab feature and means all your data can be stored in one place. Link your fitness tracker to MFP to track net calories and steps over time (if you want to – not essential!). Please don’t ’eat back’ any calories you’ve ‘burned’ – exercise just helps create a bigger energy deficit. Your calorie range targets should be enough that you aren’t over restricting anyway. If you feel you are then please talk to me.
5. Get more insight into your nutrition and habits
If you go into your food diary and scroll to the bottom (left), you can click ‘ NUTRITION’ and it gives you a daily / weekly breakdown of your food intake and calories. It tells you which of your meals tend to contain the most calories, what your macro split (carbs / protein / fats) looks like, and what your overall nutrient breakdown is. Some of this information may be irrelevant to you, but if you’re interested, take a look – you might learn something new!
Please remember though this is not an exact science.
Tracking calories is not exact but serves as a great way to make you think about what you’re eating. It’s a consistent measure so even if it’s consistently inaccurate, that’s ok… we will know soon enough (by gauging other measurements) if your calorie target needs to be changed. Using MFP is not something you need to stick to long term (unless you like to track, like me!) – use it as a way to educate yourself. I still find it incredibly useful to keep me on track 👍🏼 Also, like anything, the more you use it, the easier it becomes. Any questions, please let me know.
