I’m looking to start tracking food again. Between wanting to get healthier and it looking like I have gout it’d be good to start tracking this stuff again. Used to use MyFitnessPal 10 years ago but things change so much.
What’s everyone’s go to? I could just make a local spreadsheet but if there’s something that’s easier that’s great.
MacroFactor is nicex
Thanks! I’ll give this a look
I use Cronometer.
Myfitnesspal is a dumpster fire, I used fatsecret for a while but cronometer is much faster to input meals and repeats and recipes and doesn’t have core features locked behind a paywall.
Plus cronometer supports Health Connect which integrates with other FOSS local-only projects like gadgetbridge.
I want to try a fully FOSS app like Waistline to be fully open source and not sell eating habits to advertisers and insurance companies, but they all lack Health Connect support with issues for them open for 2+ years with almost no response.
Edit: also just trying out the new FOSS NutriTrace app (not on play store or fdroid yet, just github) and it is quite good as far as features, it has almost all of the core features except its search is a bit rough still and you can only pull from locally saved foods while making recipes. But it also can be self hosted with a PWA, or synced with a server interface through an android or iOS app. Seems like it might be a bit vibe coded with some weird bugs and fast development, but it is pretty good so far.
I strongly recommend NOT counting calories. It’s much more effective to look at your health as a function of hormones, especially insulin. The Carbohydrate-Insulin Model of Obesity - Beyond “Calories In, Calories Out” - 2018
I encourage you to look at doing a low carb or ketogenic approach to improving your health (and a impact on your gout too).
The good news is the only thing you have to track is grams of carbs per day (shoot for less then 20), but if that is too much work you can get a CGM (continuous glucose monitor) which will show you your blood glucose in real time, and all you have to do is keep the line as flat as possible. You will learn with quick visual feedback what foods spike your glucose.
OP asked for a recommendation on a calorie counting app, not for people’s opinions on calorie counting.
They stated their goals, and if the goals can be achieved without doing calorie counting… its a efficiency they should be aware of.
Okay well I still wanted a food diary to track things. Because different foods trigger different people for gout I wanted something easy to build a record.
The calorie counting is a bonus and I agree it’s not purely math in math out but I’m more interested in seeing what people use to track what they eat.
I also have gout and the best thing I ever did was to get on Allopurinol. I’m sorry I don’t have an app recommendation but Allo is fucking magic. I haven’t had a flare up since I started taking it 5 years ago.
keto was the best thing I ever did… lost 50-60lbs be just eating. cut all carbs and sugar, weight fell off… and stayed off. I was oddly able to eat 2x times a much. ayce does not like me anymore lol
Your source is about the healthfulness of lowering the glycemic load of one’s diet, not the uselessness of calorie counters. In addition to counting calories, such apps can be used to count total carbohydrates, fiber, added sugars, protein, and electrolytes, all of which are extremely useful on a keto diet.
It’s about controlling blood glucose, yes. If your keeping your insulin levels in normal physiologic ranges then counting calories is unnecessary - the body will self regulate through hunger, and excretion.
total carbohydrates, fiber, added sugars, protein, and electrolytes, all of which are extremely useful on a keto diet.
If your doing keto, sure you can keep track of those things if you want to, but it isn’t necessary. It just complicates things, I’ve found better adherence with friends by giving them a CGM, since its passive and ways running.
If you care about the app being open source, I’ve used Energized: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.flasskamp.energize/
Worked well enough for me, but my needs are low 👍
I use this every day. It’s not perfect, but covers all my needs. Barcode scanning is a life saver, though it doesn’t work about 5% of the time. Manual typing in bar code works in those cases, which helps
I have an iPhone but thanks!
It’s not an app, but I use a kids erasable tablet thing I picked up on clearance. I have used MyFitnessPal and Fat Secret in the past but this time around I realized that apps don’t really provide much value (for me at least). I don’t need to keep a history of my caloric intake and I certainly don’t want that data feeding some insurance company or AI model. For my needs at least, the only thing that matters is if I hit my calorie goal or not, the rest is just noise.
Having the calorie values of most food in the app is nice, but searching is just as fast.
I love fatsecret. I tried a lot and used MyFitnessPal for a long time. I prefer fatsecret
I’ll give this a look too! Thank you!
Been using Macros for almost 3+ years. It’s basically just a convenient excel sheet, but that’s the beauty of it. It’s simple and works.
Counting isn’t for everyone. If it makes you feel extra shitty about some choices, or extra anxious about hitting particular numbers, try to learn the nutrient density of foods you regularly eat and don’t use the app to track things.
Lose It has been perfectly fine for me, and I use it about half of each year. I’m grandfathered into a 10 USD annual subscription, which I think is a bit silly, but switching over to anything else with an extensive database is overpriced by comparison. They also regularly give me “exclusive offers” to buy a lifetime plan for some ridiculous price.
MFP had a better database but they made their actual app utterly unusable over time. Sadly Lose It is messing with their UI too and frankly I liked it better a few months ago. The war on information density has to end, please.
My friends like MacroFactor.
This being Lemmy I think the expectation is to abhor all subscription services, and for good reason, but I think I’d still get my money’s worth even from an overpriced one if it contains enough food from my part of the world and if its UI isn’t too tedious.
I use text messages and send to a blocked number, such as 555-0100 (any area code) and that way I never need to worry about the app crashing or them paywalling useful features after becoming reliant on the “free” app.
It’s extremely simple and you can add that person as a contact and give them a name such as “calories” or whatever you find useful. You can then pin that conversation to your text messages so it’s always at the top of your texts.
Screenshot as an example: https://i.imgur.com/HpLM2yu.png
Best of all, it doesn’t require a specialized app, which can be shut down or made unusable at anytime. You are at their mercy, which is their business model once they sell or start paywalling their most useful features.
