My Fitness Pal and Spark People

What I liked or thought was good

So I gave MyFitnessPal a try and in some ways, it was good and possibly better than Noom.  For their free version, it broke down the nutrient content which may be a bonus for some but not for me, at least not yet.

I did like that they had a web interface that  I could use in addition to the app.  I also liked that I could import a recipe from a URL or type it in and then it would spit out the calories for you.

What I didn't like

MyFitnessPal

So while I liked that I could import the recipes it was not great when I wanted to change things within the recipe to adjust the calorie count.  For example, I wanted to specify that I was using 93% lean ground beef, or I added more veggies to the recipe.  It was clumsy and difficult to work with.

The other thing I did not like was when logging my food I could change the measurement of how I logged the food so I could do things like mL, or serving size but for me what works best is grams and that was not an option.  I have a food scale and add each item at a time, so I add my chicken breast note the weight in grams log it, then tare the scale and then do the same for the veggies, and repeat as often as necessary.  I didn't have that option in My Fitness Pal at all and it just was not working for me.

Spark People

I really thought this had promise because of the web interface but I just couldn't even begin, the setup process really set me off and the immediate assigning of the group to try a challenge was presumptuous in my opinion.  It felt too pushy and not what I was looking for at all.

So what is next?

While I had been my mini-trial versions of MyFitnessPal an Spark People I had continued to log food in the free version on Noom, which is essentially the food logging, daily weigh-in, and exercise logging.  My weight has not gone down really over the last week at all but it also hasn't gone up.  I feel that I have been fairly consistent with my caloric intake and exercise but I know I can always up the exercise.  I am still holding off on resuming my Noom trial but I still think about it and may re-up soon, I make no guarantees.

So in addition to Noom, I do have another app called Scaless which I have had forever, and in that app, I can log my weight and it will graph it for me and I can set goals to reach in a specific period of time.  Also within that, I can log my exercise, blood pressure, any lab work from my doctor (I don't use this) but also my measurements.

I am going to stop dual logging my weight and exercise in Scaless because I am happy enough with the way it shows the history in Noom.  It is different and it is taking me a while to get used to it but I know it will be fine in the long run I need to adjust to the new style.

I will keep Scaless for my blood pressure because I love the way it graphs my readings, or I can just look at them in list form and that includes color-coded hearts which is a nice visual to see if my pressure is good, high, really high, etc.  It is not perfect but I like seeing the color-coding.  I am not sure what was up with the top measurement with the blue-green heart I think I had the cuff on incorrectly.  But it is nice to see a string of green hearts, as you can see from my graph I had a period of really high pressure.  I was consistently getting orange and red hearts so I had to work with my doctor to made adjustments.

Additionally I will keep the measurements even though I don't do them that often because sometimes on this weight loss journey even if I don't feel or see movement on the scale my shape will change and I will see that in measurements.  In the list view picture above you can see the funnel at the bottom right is orange you can click on that to add filters for what you see in that list view.  Right now I only show my pressure, you can add in the other items you log and it will all show in one grouping.  If I had selected weight as well under Sept 3 you would see the three pressure measurements I logged as well as the weight that I logged.  Then you get the next darker gray bar with the next date and all the items I logged on that date.