23 Mobile Things: Thing 21

Free-for-all

Boy, do I have an app. My daughter started us on it, and after seeing how it worked for both her and my husband, I decided to give it a try. It's called MyFitnessPal, and it's helped us do something none of us have really been able to manage on our own: lose weight.

It's no miracle app. It's a calorie counter, really, when you get right down to it. But it's so easy. That's what makes it great. If I remember the numbers correctly, it has over 3 MILLION foods in its database. You can scan them in by barcode, you can look up restaurant food, you can create your own foods - all kinds of ways to track the data. Like any food diary, its success completely depends on how diligent you are in tracking every bite you eat. But doing it on your smartphone makes it so convenient that it takes little effort, and I'm convinced that's why it works. Mine is generally close at hand, so every time food goes in my mouth, out comes the phone and in goes the entry.  I'm getting a lot bettet at estimating what my intake is, and I think that's key to long term success, along with being far more conscious about what I'm eating. I'm missing cheese...  I still eat some, but nearly as much as I'd like!

 The app asks you for your starting weight, your goal, and how fast you want to to get there. Then it sets a daily calorie limit. When you enter your foods, it keeps a running tally of how many you have left. You add in exercise and it takes those extra calories earned into account.

I do have some quibbles about the exercise portion. I think some of them are really too, too generous in how many calories they say you've burned. So I adjust my minutes to get to a more realistic total. I must not be too far off, as I'm losing at the rate I set. I didn't have a lot to lose - just 10 pounds - but I've been unsuccessful in previous attempts over the years. I'm seeing numbers on the scale now I never thought I'd see again! And my husband weighs less than he has in more years than I'm going to mention here.

I've started a few more people on this app, and they seem to like it, too.