Apping food, update.

So i've had a fair go at myfitnesspal now. A family member is also using it and we are "friends" so we can see each other's exercise and stuff when online. It's nice to have company.

Observations on using Myfitnesspal for about a week:

It's easy to repeat meal entries, and enter meals made from packets, but it's annoying to put in one-off meals you make yourself from lots of different things, like a stew or a slice of homemade cake. I try and pick something approximate from what is already there, so if a stew has veggies I choose "1 cup of mixed vegetables" or whatever is close.

You can track glasses of water, too! But I don't need accountability there.

The target for sugar seems super low. 27 grams seems like a lot, when I think of a pile of sugar on a spoon, but I get most of the way there at breakfast, and I'm eating mainly oats and bran and milk, with just a sprinkle of sweeter cereal like Be Natural on top for interest, not even coco pops or crunchy nuts. So I go into the red at morning tea, when I eat a peach. Which just seems ridiculous. I'm not worried about sugar anyway, and from what I know milk and fruit sugars are ok for you, it's the "added sugar" which is to be limited. It's a pity the app doesn't spot the difference there. It seems kind of useless as it is.

If you are trying to reach a weight goal, you can push a button at the end of the daily food section to "Close" the day and it tells you, if you ate and exercised like that every day, how long it'll probably take to reach your goal. Not sure if this estimate is true or not, yet. Every body is different.

I think you can't delete food once you've entered it. I brought a salad for lunch once and entered it, but then found out there was a sausage sizzle outside… but ate the salad because I had already entered it, and anyway it was healthier so that's a good result. See how my actions changed because of the app? How interesting.

It's changed the way I think about exercise a little bit, too. I'm annoyed on the days when I can't "earn" a few hundred more calories. It's extra motivation to do at least something, a fast walk if not Jillian. All activity counts, like all food counts.

Junk food and treat food has a LOT of calories. A lot. I'm constantly surprised when I add a portion of chocolate that it's the equivalent of half a meal! I'm not afraid of calories, but in terms of the economics of enjoyment I am now more aware of the cost, so I resist the resistable more easily and enjoy the irrisistable more. See what happened one particular week? One of the days I recorded properly I ate most of a bag of honey soy chips. Eye-opening, for me. This happens about once a month, so it's good to know.

I've bought kitchen scales. Useful to be able to weigh ingredients when cooking in grams or pounds, but also so much fun to weigh food for MFP. I found I was over-estimating everything, when guessing by eye. My breakfast entry was 100 calories more than I was actually eating. Being out 10 grams on cheese ads a lot of cals, too. No wonder it was so hard to stay under my allowance! It makes a lot of difference when it comes to eating chocolate or not at the end of the day!

I plan on using it for 2 months, and then see.