I know there are many apps that are there that help in tracking diet (i.e., what you are consuming). Wanted to understand are people using it and if yes then which ones?
I used My Fitness Pal years ago when primarily tracking a calorie deficit to lose weight several years ago, and it was great! I still use it occasionally, but I’ve since lost and relatively maintained the weight loss.
As such, my interest in food logging shifted from caloric data to nutrient data. I’ve found Cronometer to the best for that usage. MFP has some nutrient tracking, but Cronometer’s micronutrient breakdown is significantly better and detailed, in my opinion.
/r/MacroFactor
Uses an algorithm to estimate your Total daily energy expenditure which is useful depending on your diet goals (cut, bulk, or maintenance) and also uses databases that ensure accuracy for the most part versus user submitted data like MFP.
It is a yearly subscription fee but may be worth it for you.
I used MFP on and off since 2011. I’m now working on micromanaging my diet less, so I’m using the Ate app which is just a food journaling app to keep me mindful. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Macrofactor as well.
I’ve been using my fitbit app to track caloric intake. It automatically tracks calorie expenditure by using your heart rate and step count, so it’s able to fine tune how many calories you need to consume to be in a deficit for a given day. You can customize your plan based on your goals and what difficulty you want but I’ve had great success with it. Typical calorie counting apps do not accurately take into account calorie expenditure, so on a day where I burn 3500-4000 calories, it would still have my caloric intake goal at 2000 or something, putting me in a 2k deficit and making me very uncomfortable. The fitbit is an adaptive, dynamic calorie tracking app and definitely worth looking into if you’re struggling elsewhere.
MyFitnessPal has a huge database of products, however, it doesn’t go into as much detail with nutrients. Cronometer does the same thing but has way more detailed nutrients…but has a smaller database and I always have to manually add things.
At some point when I took a class on nutrition in school we would construct a spreadsheet with a daily caloric break down and break down every food by its macronutrient profile and tally calories. There’s many apps that do the same, but to be honest, you either get tired or become obsessive about it. Your body has adaptive thermogenesis which will speed up or slow down your metabolism based on your food intake, so for generally healthy people there’s no need to freak out all that much about calories.
If you evaluate the foods you eat and stick to as natural and unprocessed as possible, you will find it hard to over do the calories. For example, if you eat 2-3 oranges you’ll most likely feel satisfied, while drinking OJ you can easily gulp 6-10.
Use a tdee calculator and then I’ve been using lose it for 3 yrs now. If you want more than macros you might need to pay but I’ve not had any issues with the free version. V minimalist but super functional