If You Bite It, Write It!

Thats pretty much the basis of how I've lost weight, I have always always always written everything down that I eat. I started years ago when I joined Weight Watchers, as their program involves writing down everything you eat, and staying within your "points". This is where I learned to track everything. Of course, as I mentioned in my earlier post, nobody is perfect, but writing everything you eat down allows you to accurately see exactly how many calories you are consuming, and therefore able to stay within a certain calorie limit in order to lose weight. The main reason for this post is that I've recently discovered a new iPhone app (but also available online through their website, as well as on Android/Blackberry) called MyFitnessPal. Yes, I have given up  my years and years of weight watchers and tracking points, because this app is AMAZING! There are so many reasons why I prefer this app to traditional writing down your foods on paper, starting with the fact that it is SO accurate. I feel as if I get to eat more food in comparison to Weight Watchers, as it is tracked calorie for calorie, where as with WW, a "point" can range anywhere from 15-100 calories, and the new program is even more confusing. 

With this app, all you do is type in any food that you eat. They have a massive database of foods including all brand names of every food I've ever had. Including organic, no name brands, natural foods, restaurant meals, anything! If they don't have it, you can also manually enter in the calorie information and save it for future reference! One of the best features, which I didn't even realize was there at first, is the barcode scanner. If you have any food item that has a barcode, you simply press the barcode button, hold your phone up to the barcode, and it will scan it via your phone's camera and automatically bring up all the nutrition information. It is so simple to use, you can divide portions, track your water intake, exercise (tracks how many calories you burn based on your inputted exercise information) and therefore, yep, you get to eat even more! It makes it really nice when you go out to eat,  for example when I go out for sushi, I just look up exactly what I am having, and inputs the calories- where usually I'd not have a clue how many calories are in an avocado roll, or even the pickled ginger. Tracking your weight on the app as well makes it easy to see your progress. 

Another part of this app that is great is that it shows your total daily nutrition broken down into fat, carbs, protein, iron, vitamins, and more, and shows you  how much you should have daily, and what % you have consumed in the day. For someone like myself who is trying to make sure I get enough protein and iron, it makes it nice to be able to easily see if I need more, or if I have had enough. You base your total allowed calories for the day depending on at what rate you want to lose weight at, and you can also add friends on this app for added motivation! I really can't say enough about it, there is more to the app than all that I have added, but you'll just have to go download it and see for yourself! (and did I mention, its FREE?!)

If you have any questions let me know, otherwise the website I added above should have more info, and of course if you download it you can play around with it yourself :)

Happy tracking!