MyFitnessPal: Calorie Counter Reviews

I’ve been using MyFitnessPal for years. There are so many ads now which I understand. But some of them pop up on your feed right when you open MyFitnessPal and there are some really gross images. A lot of times I am eating when I enter my calories and the images for the weird ads are so gross it makes me stop eating and lose my appetite. There was one that came up for weeks that showed someone getting ear wax removed. Now I logged in and it shows a close up of someone removing some type of gross substance from the back of their throat. Why would you have these kinds of ads show up on the home page of a food log app?

Also, if you sync with Fitbit it enters your workouts automatically but it also tracks your steps and gives you a calorie adjustment for that as well, which Is like double tracking. If you go for a run for example, it will sync the workout from fitbit and give you the calories for that, and then also add in your steps from the run and give you more calories which I don’t think is accurate.

Other than that, no other food app compares as far as the extensive food database and the ease of being able to enter recipes, meals, etc. I also love the social functionality where friends can comment on your status. Of course they have to scroll through all the ads in the feed to find your updates, and overlook the gross images of earwax and other things.

A great service providing a platform for success on a human health quest. The My Fitness Pal application allows anyone to compile a detailed log of nutritional and fitness info into an easy to use, easy to interpret, easy to afford (free), and simple to navigate system. The breakdown of information into multiple charts and graphs is a phenomenal resource. The flexibility of being able to modify multiple facets of your goals such as macro nutrients, weight loss/gain per week, etc. is extremely intuitive and suitable for a wide range of fitness/nutritional goals. Nearly anyone can master this application within a reasonable timeframe of consistent effort and in turn become the master of their fitness/health destiny. My Fitness Pal has provided a great service and allowed for anyone with the desire to do so to achieve the best version of themselves possible. Also, after a long endeavor spanning months or years and reviewing your data in retrospect allows for a particular cognizance for what worked well and what did not. This, in turn, provides a chance to hone an adequate regimen into the ultimate program fine tuned to your personal goals. My Fitness pal provides an amenity that fosters a healthier and happier human race to those who utilize it. This application has earned a large following of motivated individuals for these reasons and stood the test of time. Go forth and conquer your goals with profound efficiency.
-Klahr

Years ago, I used MyFitnessPal to drop some pounds and really liked its features. I’m at a point where I need to reassess my diet and thought this would be a good option to return to, but the moment I opened MyFitnessPal after re-downloading, I just felt like it wasn’t for me. Calorie counting apps are a dime a dozen now, and a lot of them have worked hard on providing an interface that’s both efficient (because who wants to work around a clunky app when it already takes lots of time out of your busy day to record meals?) and visually pleasing (weight and dieting can be an unpleasant subject, right?).

this app was clunky from the moment it requested my vitals (difficult to scroll and go to the next input field), to the tutorial, to the constant pop ups demanding I consider upgrading to premium. I’ve barely used MyFitnessPal yet, why not leave me alone and try again when I’ve actually had time to experience it? There is no focus on calorie information on the home page, instead dedicating screen space to blog posts etc. that I don’t have the time or desire to read anyway. It’s difficult to find the wearable device/app integration options. The camera scanner is much slower than other apps I’ve used with the same technology. Overall there is no sleek design or cute graphics that would make the MyFitnessPal unique or pleasant to use regularly. I was just disappointed in how far MyFitnessPal has fallen behind, and you probably will feel the same.

I have Limb Girdle Muscular Dystrophy, and I am a recent heart transplant patient. I lost about 30 pounds before my transplant because I knew it would be a hard transition and it is important to give yourself and those helping you the best edge you possibly can. It’s also important to really educate yourself on nutrition and your body, I studied nutrition on my own did all the exercises I could, learned my body type and how I metabolize food. I also consult with my doctors and get blood work done so I know how to best tweak my diet to maximize my diet and health. Get some it’s always wise to consult with your doctors and even get a basic basic metabolic panel done to check your blood work.

I recently gained a few pounds back from being on high doses of prednisone and others that made me super hangry like that already food loving person I am. As knowledgeable I am about nutrition I’m not a machine and MyFitnessPal keeps me accountable and allows me to make the most of my health habits. The key is to have a healthy balance and not obsess over losing weight and constantly over analyzing everything. It also helps me remember to hydrate. Don’t go crazy extreme, pace yourself and allow yourself to have many of the things you crave don’t over indulge make healthier versions of what you crave and eat smaller portions of the things you really want.

I consider myself very tech savvy and the user interface for MyFitnessPal is very confusing for me. My husband who also uses it is totally lost and I have to enter his data for him. What is confusing is searching for foods. Depending on which page you are on, the “scan barcode “ may be in a different place. When creating a meal or recipe, no confirmation a food was added and return back to add in the next food. Multi add should have the ability to scan too. It is also not intuitive to find your recent foods. When you put in a recipe, in order to actually cook the item, you have to edit the recipe to see the amount of ingredients to create it. The other disappointment is sharing meals, recipes, and foods with friends you have added. The ability to favorite individual items should be there that is used weekly or monthly, instead of having to scan the item again as the recent foods is not listed alphabetically. The developers suggested I create a Meal for each of my grocery items to find. I’ve done that, but again, my husband doesn’t have access to that, so if he eats something I bought, but I didn’t, he has to scan it too. This is not usable for couples or families that eat similar items but not the same. I’ve already paid for my premium. I’m not going to continue with my husband’s. $79 is way too expensive for the minimal features provided. Also, it doesn’t sync correctly with my Apple health and watch data. I’m constantly having to edit it.

Update: 13-Nov-2020 I’m downgrading from 4 stars to 3 because yet again I had to turn off the calorie adjustment for my step tracker. I’ve done this at least 4 times in the last 6 months! I suppose I could disconnect the device from MyFitnessPal , but if you’re going to have the option to turn a setting on or off, it shouldn’t default back to the opposite every so often. Leave it how I set it, please. Original review: I would like to see a few small improvements. 1. Dark mode support so that when I log my waking pulse and temp in the food notes, the screen isn’t so bright to my dark-adapted eyes. 2. A larger left margin in the food notes so it’s easier to select text to copy and paste. 3. Sometimes editing food amount in the diary after copying from a prior day causes that item to be listed twice in the meal. 4. When I create a recipe and then log it, I can only select how many servings I have, rather than indicating if I’m having 1/2 cup or 80 grams, for example. So technically I have to determine if I’m having exactly 1/6 of a 6 serving recipe when I dish my food. I find this rather frustrating. 5. Very minor, but I almost always have to select the time twice for a meal. Pretty much every time I select the time and hit the check mark to select it, it doesn’t change in the diary. Usually once I select it the second time, it actually works. Sometimes I have to do it a third time.

I’ve actually struggled to gain weight my whole life. It’s been a source of depression and I was bullied, including as an adult, due to my weight. Then came MyFitnessPal. I plugged in the details it asked for and have been diligently logging everything I eat. It turns out that some days I just hadn’t been eating enough because I’d get so busy that I’d skip a meal or just have a snack instead. I also started exercising regularly. Between those two things, I am now at a normal weight and am in the best shape of my life… in my 40s! I finally feel comfortable enough to wear shorts in public, which something I haven’t done in a very long time.

Whether you want to lose weight, gain weight, or just keep track of your calories, protein, carbs, fat, etc., get MyFitnessPal! It’s easy to use and becomes a normal part of your day. I’m approaching 500 days in a row that I’ve logged my food. Plus, I have a great graph that shows my weight change over time. I learned, though, that with any diet or exercise related change, you gotta stick with it. I thought I had a handle on things and stopped using MyFitnessPal for a while (this was a couple years ago) and I ended up losing most of the weight I tried so hard to gain.

I had MyFitnessPal for a long time, stopped using it for several years and came back to it and now you have to pay for a premium membership to use what was free before and it’s really glitchy! I thought somehow I was screwing up but I see now from other reviews that many others have my same issue. Foods in the diary keep randomly duplicating and sometimes adding to previous days’ diaries. I added in something for today’s morning and it added it to yesterday instead of today and another item was duplicated. The barcode scanner is very limited, doesn’t work on most nutritional items and for me the worst thing is that it doesn’t track nutrients except for like 4 basic ones. I’m much more interested in tracking nutrition than calories or exercise which I did manually for years easily in a notebook.

When you go over 100g of vitamin C it lists it in red like you did something terribly wrong. It reprimands you if your goal weight is less than what they think you should be even though I was that weight for years, was perfectly healthy and my doctor never once said I was underweight. It reprimands you if you go under 1000 calories for the day which is ridiculous, how can you lose weight eating more than 1000 calories?

I have the free trial of the premium now and already cancelled it to make sure I don’t forget (you still get the free month). The weight should be lost by then anyway.

I’ve tried experimenting with other apps that almost all have better UI, but always lack something big, like a smaller pool of food available in their database to scan barcodes for which I find to be the main reason I use MyFitnessPal. But one thing other apps tend to have that this one doesn’t would be for a recommended nutrition breakdown per meal, in addition to the already existing total goal for the day. This gives me an idea on how important each meal is and allows me to recognize what parts of the day I slack on my nutrition and push me to try and meet that goal. It sounds basic and obvious but having the numbers presented in front of me that I haven’t met my goal yet gives me the motivation to look around for more options to eat than I’d routinely do. It also gives me an idea of how close/far I am to reaching those goals throughout the day. Without this feature, I can slack on breakfast or lunch and end up thinking I got a somewhat good meal, I’ll just have to eat a little more on my next meal, then by the time I get about halfway through the day and see how many calories and other nutritional categories I still have to get, I think to myself there’s no way I can get that many in the next meal or two, and I end up settling well short of my goal.

CICO (calories in calories out) works. Even if you’re not planning on changing your eating habits, it helps to just track what you’re eating with MFP. There’s a whole world of nutrition and forums, videos, websites, cook books and apps dedicated to this type of thing. You can get into it all by starting with a calorie counting app like this one.

I don’t use any of MFP’s features except for the calorie tracking ones. I do use the “recipe” feature a lot as it lets me portion out big batches appropriately. For example, earlier today I knew to portion a beef stew I made into 11 servings so they’d be at 538 calories each. How would you get that kind of insight without carefully tracking he ingredients of a recipe? You wouldn’t.

My one complaint is that I’ve had the recipe app crash MULTIPLE times while I’m in the middle of cooking. Obviously this is a pain because I can’t just remember the itemized list of ingredients in painstakingly measured grams. My workaround is to save every few additions so I don’t lose too much if it crashes. And it shouldn’t be crashing, I’m using MFP on an iPhone 12 Pro. If it’s going to be an ideal user experience anywhere, it should be on this. Can’t imagine how much worse it is on inferior hardware. Get your $;&@/ together MFP devs, figure out how to not let your app crash and lose data.

MyFitnessPal is ok except that it keeps triggering my antivirus software. This is disappointing because I’ve been using it for over a year and like the added ability to scan the upc to track my calories. I am going to have to look for a different app. This is what the security pop-up warning says is the problem with MyFitnessPal:
Malicious Sources/Malnets
Sites that host or distribute malware or whose purpose for existence is as part of a malicious network (malnet) or the malware ecosystem. Malware is defined as software that takes control of a computer, modifies computer settings, or collects or reports personal information without the permission of the end user. It also includes software that misrepresents itself by tricking users to download or install it or to enter personal information. This includes sites or software that perform drive-by downloads; browser hijackers; dialers; any program that modifies your browser homepage, bookmarks, or security settings; and keyloggers. It also includes any software that bundles malware (as defined above) as part of its offering. Information collected or reported is "personal" if it contains uniquely identifying data, such as email addresses, name, social security number, IP address, etc. A site is not classified as malware if the user is reasonably notified that the software will perform these actions (e.g., it alerts that it will send personal information, be installed, or that it will log keystrokes).

In my own, personal opinion, the features that would earn fifth star would be to expand compatibility toward Polar brand products and applications, and to allow users to enter in specific ingredient, calorie, macro/micronutrient restrictions to be alerted to in meals & recipes. It would be great to know if something I ate (or am logging because I'm about to eat) will conflict with a low FODMAP diet, or has more of a specific nutrient than I want at the time. I recall a previous version that would offer food tips ("this food is high in sodium", "this food is a great source of vitamin c", etc.)

I haven't yet tried the paid version, and these could be included there, but I felt it worth mentioning. Overall, MyFitnessPal comes packed with so many intuitive, convenient features, I have succeeded in making journaling with it part of my daily dietary considerations. The terms and conditions of the challenges offered are abjectly terrifying, though, and ought to be more prominently featured before agreeing to them. Currently, the language you provide allows sponsoring companies the freedom to scour my phone for any notes I've taken to work on business projects of my own during my participation, and hamstrings me to do anything to defend my own privacy and trade secrets afterward if they take any action on them. Not cool.

My New Years resolution was to get to a certain weight that would call for me to lose about 15 pounds. I already ate rather healthy during my meals, but I had a problem with snacking. I wasn’t at the point of sitting down and eating an entire family bag of chips in one setting. I would however eat a handful here and there, eat 4 Girl Scout cookies twice a day, and some of the candy my grandma loves to send me every and I mean every holiday. I couldn’t see how much that snacking affected me. My fitness pal has helped me keep track of my calories as I take them in and it has worked wonders! I have been successfully losing weight and it’s all because I can actually see a number to know how many calories I have left in my day when I go to grab the snack. Now don’t get me wrong I still snack some, but I’ll do one snack a day now or half of the amount of chips and half of the cookies instead of a large amount. Another thing that MyFitnessPal has helped me with is realizing how I feel after I eat. For example if I am not eating healthier foods I usually feel exhausted the next day. I didn’t realize it before but now that I have a food diary to look back on I can see what I ate compared to how I feel.

I am a paying premium member (not for long). Whenever I entered my weight, I kept getting this message asking if I’d like to change my goal weight to match the recommended range. I click on the “No Thanks” button and that should be that, but it isn’t. The next day when I enter my weight, I get the same annoying message (and you have to answer it otherwise you cannot proceed). Again I click, “No Thanks,” but MyFitnessPal doesn’t care.

So I contacted support and they made me go through all these hoops and hurdles and (including a full reinstall of MyFitnessPal ) and a week of email exchanges later, and they tell me, “There is no way to turn it off as your goal weight is right on the line of healthy. While we do feel it's very important to keep the message in MyFitnessPal to deter users who may be attempting to reach dangerously low goal weights, we do acknowledge that it's not relevant for a member like you who is still in the healthy range."

In other words, they’re going to do nothing because you'd prefer to "deter users who may be attempting to reach dangerously low goal weights." So not only is this a poor reflection on how you treat a premium member like me, but also on how you treat your other members whom you choose to treat like children and tell them what's good for them and not let them decide for themselves by REPEATEDLY giving the same message and not stopping until they change their goal.

MyFitnessPal has been useful for tracking my meals over the last year but there are some issues. MyFitnessPal will read and write the *same* data from Apple Health, screwing up your weight in both apps. I always update my weight in Apple health but when you look at the data in MyFitnessPal it shows the source of the data and after every entry in Apple, there is an identical entry written by MFP. Sometimes this is a day after another entry and this especially screws up my data. Doesn’t seem there is an easy way to fix and has increasingly become a frustrating problem.
The good features are the ability to see your data at a glance under the progress tab that is easy to get to and shows progress in weight, steps, and other body measurements.
I have tried a few other apps that have a much nicer UI (like Senza) but while it looks great, the design is a bit more complicated to use. KetoDiet has much more relevant, diet-inclusive recipes than MFP but it probably would not be as useful to someone on a different diet.
Overall this is the best app for most people that may be on any number of diets, as you are able to track macros and calories (even from many restaurants) quickly and add workouts. Those are the basics of most body management plans and MyFitnessPal does it best.

I used to love MyFitnessPal and many of its features but I find it lacking after having my baby.
Not only does the weight gain from my pregnancy look negative on the chart (well duh I made a child), but there are many of the features that make it seem like I’m lazy or not putting in the effort to stay healthy. The calorie intake is much less than what I should be eating because I’m breastfeeding but it turns negative when I include the snacks because it goes over the calorie goal. Not to mention that exercise is limited postpartum.
I’m not asking for my fitness pal to keep track of my breastfeeding or anything like that (there are many other apps for that) but it would be nice if there was a note you could add or status change that one could add that encourages mamas who are recovering from labor. Not put us down for not being able to keep up with our diets and exercise habits pre-child.
A little encouragement, especially around the 5th and 6th week postpartum would be beneficial since that is around the time when most moms can actually begin to work out and do light exercises.
MyFitnessPal is really helpful because it helps me make sure I’m eating enough, especially since it’s hard to stay sane with a newborn and lack of sleep. I just wish it was more mama friendly because many fitness apps seem to completely forget that labor and recovery ain’t easy. 😥

I just tried MyFitnessPal after reading about it in a review for a different calorie tracking app, one I will continue to use instead of this. I created my account and went to enter my first meal, which includes 12g of sugar free Metamucil. I weigh all my food to make this easier. After scanning the barcode and pulling up the item, I see that I am unable to enter portion by gram. This is odd as the food label lists grams in a serving, so I check other Metamucil items in the database to see if that option is present. It is not. So I enter the tsp equivalent. Apparently “2 tsp(s)” is 30 calories, while “2 tsp” is 40... ok well 30 is the correct amount, however MyFitnessPal then shows incorrect carbs and fiber. To enter a generic banana by weight, I had to set serving size to 1 g and then enter 137.4 servings. As a developer that has also done a fair amount of quality assurance testing, if a simple method for entering portion by weight is available in MyFitnessPal, then I can confidently say the user interface in anything but intuitive. If the feature doesn’t exist, then it is hard to take MyFitnessPal seriously. A food scale allows an app like this to be much more accurate. I will stick to MyFitnessPal I’m already using, where I enter almost every item by weight, and the results match the label. Metamucil is not an obscure item. I should be able to scan a barcode and enter “11.6 grams”.

I’ve used my fitness pal for years, and I never had an issue until recently. Thankfully, I’ve also never had the misfortune of talking with any of their customer service representatives before these past few days. I’ve been unable to log into MyFitnessPal for quite a while now, which is extremely disheartening considering that I’ve been paying the exorbitant fees for premium access for quite a while now (off and on, of course). I tried requesting a password reset over 20 times, and I still have yet to receive any sort of email. Yes, my fitness pal, I’m sure that I’m putting the email in correctly, and yes I’ve checked my spam.🙄 So naturally, I submit a ticket.

Here we welcome Frannie.🙂 After outlining the entire situation in my ticket, I get a generic mass-response type email outlining everything in the article which I’ve already read several times over. So I respond back telling her I still haven’t got a solution yet. To which she responds, “We have just sent you a password reset email. If you did not receive it, please let us know.” I wait a day, and still nothing. So I let her know twice, and, you guessed it, still nothing. Quite simply, I have no idea what to do now. I’m likely going to just have to request a refund for premium services seeing as how I can’t access MyFitnessPal on my phone or my computer. This is super frustrating and huge waste of time.

Overall, I’ve used MyFitnessPal for many years on and off. I keep coming back because it has many things for free that a lot of other apps do not have and I appreciate that! The only reason for 4 stars instead of 5 is because I’ve noticed a few times that when using the barcode to scan in calories and nutrition MFP is off and does not match the dietary information on the packaging. The most recent 2 being, great value home style waffles packaging says 130 per serving (2waffles) MFP when scanning the barcode puts it at 200 and the ingredient count is off and the second one, being Lance Peanut bar original 9g protein packaging says 330 and MFP has it at 340 and again the ingredient count is off. The upside to this is I’ve learned to watch what it says and edit the nutrition which a good feature, but the downfall is if I didn’t have the packaging and just searched I wouldn’t know and at that point I’m forced to trust it. I think a lot of the food options need to be updated. Another thing is it doesn’t track the step count very well if at all. The calories through it are always 0. It does however, sync excellently with my Apple Watch activity. Outside of this, I really like MyFitnessPal!

MyFitnessPal is a good utility, but if they gave the UI and functionality a bit more polish here and there it could be great. Some things are just clumsy and/or glitchy which makes using it throughout the day kind of a pain. I’ll continue to use it, but as other similar apps arise I’ll definitely keep checking them out as there’s nothing really tying me to this one.

Some examples: it repeatedly asks me to allow Apple Heath access even though it’s already got it (and is already using the data it gets from there). It reads my weight and then writes it back to Apple Health resulting in duplicate data points. I couldn’t get it to integrate reliably with UnderArmor’s (pretty terrible) other apps. It doesn’t make use of 3D Touch, which could make moving/peeking/editing items in my diary much faster. It’s got visual glitches along the top and bottom of the iPhone X screen. I turned on the negative calorie adjustment, but that was REALLY glitchy, sporadically giving me a negative calorie adjustment > 1000 before updating to < 100 a couple minutes later. Googling this shows the issue has been around for a very long time, but they haven’t addressed it.

I’m paying for pro because they cripple the basic set of features so much, but at this point I definitely feel no loyalty to MyFitnessPal , and I wonder what they are doing with all that subscription money.

MyFitnessPal is very easy to use to log the food you eat - what I mainly use it for, to stay balanced. It’s far more efficient than in 2010, when I first started using it. I spend maybe 5 minutes a day total logging my food intake. I like that it includes nutrition breakdowns so I can pinpoint when I’m lacking iron, or calcium, or etc in my overall diet.

What I don’t like is that there is not much language change when you go from “loosing weight” or “gaining weight” settings to just maintain weight. Every day when I finish logging food and exercise, it says, “If every day were like today, you’d weight xxx pounds in 5 weeks!” I understand why this concept is useful in maintaining weight, but I suggest that it be done less often.
Perhaps it could be a weekly recap, or a button you could push to check whether your habits will lead to incremental weight gain (much like you have to navigate to the nutrition breakdown when you want to see it). I know that on Easter Sunday, I ate richer foods and more of them than is healthy everyday; I don’t need that reminder just before bed. It steals some of my joy in the day and in the celebration I chose to indulge in that day. Maybe have something pop up that is encouraging every once and a while - like you hit your calcium goal this week! Or you logged exercise 5 days! Something that is focused on weekly, not daily, behavior. And something actually encouraging and NOT focused on weight!

this app is an incredible tool for getting a handle on your health and fitness. MyFitnessPal makes it easy to log the food you eat. The calories as well as the grams of each macronutrient. There are too many features to list, but a couple deliver tremendous value. this app automatically updates from my Strava feed, so all my running, biking and strength workouts automatically show up. The food database is very extensive, but you have to know something about the nutritional content of food because some of the food items submitted by users are pretty sketchy. There is, a huge catalog of verified food items, so with a little bit of comparison, you get some accurate data.
I do intermittent fasting, where three days a week I eat a very low calorie diet and the other days, I eat normally. this app doesn’t like that and warns me that I’m not eating enough on my low-calorie days. The week view, however, smooths out the daily peaks and values and you can see your averages over time.
this app is a valuable tool in my health and fitness program. Along with my Tomtom Cardio watch and Strava, it delivers the metrics I need to stay on track.

This health/fitness/diet app claims to be comprehensive, but has a huge gap in its user experience for diabetics. There is no way to input blood sugar readings in real time or to integrate readings from glucose monitors on here. Given how tied to diet and macro nutrients diabetes is, you would think this would've been a basic aspect of MyFitnessPal already - or an add-on that could pop up along with adding food or exercise.

I've been a this app member for years and do appreciate the detail, massive database, and ability to input your own recipes you get for free. The meal time stamps it already offers with Premium would be really useful for tracking blood sugar, but nope, the only way to track that is manually adding a bunch of blood sugar categories, and then tracking them under progress, like it's your weight. This is useless when you have to do it 4 times a day or more at different times, and you can't look back at sugar levels as part of your diary (linked to your diet). Do the manufacturers just assume that people interested in fitness and diabetics are mutually exclusive populations?

We need either a setting to add our readings with a timestamp, similar to foods, that then can be read as part of the diary; or integration with the most popular glucometer apps. This should be a basic feature, or at least Premium, for a so-called leading health app.

I've come back to MFP after a few years and am very pleased at the many improvements in capabilities, user friendliness, standalone mobile usability, social features, and the UI in general. There are 2 glaringly obvious QoL things that are missing.
The first is Recipe Sharing. As it is now, the only way my Hubs and I have found to share entries between people is to copy an Entire meal from someone's diary. It would be much simpler to be able to share the recipe with him on the front end so he could use it as he chooses. It would be even More helpful if we were given a little space to jot down actual directions so these "recipes" weren't solely lists of ingredients and I could recreate things. That may be asking too much though.
The other, much more important issue is that there isn't a setting to switch from displaying Total Carbs to Net Carbs (total Carbs-Fiber). There isn't even a way to show macros and Fiber at the same time to do the math yourself. The custom settings only allow for 3 nutrient selections (you'd need 4 to show Carbs, Fiber, Fat, Protein). This is something that needs to be updated ASAP.
Oh, and fyi if you're using a macro based method know that you'll need premium to get access to those tracking features.

I’ve used MyFitnessPal and other similar apps on and off throughout the years, and I’ve noticed little things that annoy me about them that always eventually makes me stop using them for a while. This time, it seems to be the calorie and macro percentages.
Yesterday I was excited to see how much protein I got because I ate more than usual, and I’m normally low on protein, according to MyFitnessPal at least. When I checked the macros summary page it said only 14% of my macros yesterday were from protein, along with 33% from fat and 53% from carbs. What confused me was that it also said I got in 60g of protein yesterday and 61g of fat. So why were the percentages so far off? When I calculated it myself I got about 18% for both fat and protein and 64% for carbs. Maybe they calculate it in some special way I don’t know about and those percentages aren’t what I think they are, but I’m doubtful. And even if this was the case then that just means MyFitnessPal should be more clear.
Also, this is more nit picky but on the nutrients page it said I got 61g of protein and 62g of fat. That probably just has more to do with the way it was rounded I guess, but shouldn’t it be the same way all throughout MyFitnessPal ? And for those percentages I see no excuse. Makes me wonder what else on MyFitnessPal is inaccurate.

I’ve been a this app user for 6 years now. I want to start by saying when I first started using it, I was using MyFitnessPal religiously. I managed to lose 15 pounds in 3 months. However, I was losing weight for all the wrong reasons and found myself tracking my diet and making sure I was only eating 1500 calories a day when I should have been getting 2000. As soon as I stopped using it, I kept the same weight until I went to college. Freshman 15 is a real thing and that is exactly what happened. I gained all my weight back but it wasn’t just fat, I was gaining muscle too because I found myself weightlifting regularly. 2 years later, I found myself big with a slightly higher than normal fat percentage. That is when I started using my fitness pal again. Now I use MyFitnessPal correctly, and have been losing a moderate and healthy amount of fat a month, by keeping track of my macronutrients and making sure everything that I eat align with my goals. MyFitnessPal does exactly that. Now I have gotten into a routine of logging my food. It used to be a chore, but now it’s a habit and it’s a habit I’m happy to have!

I first started using MyFitnessPal when I began bodybuilding. I would have never gained over 15 pounds in muscle and completely changed my body if it wasn’t for this app. A few years later, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. I had to alter my diet entirely. I had no energy to even work out for 3 months while I waited for my body to respond to the changes I made so I stopped using MyFitnessPal , as I only associated it with tracking my macros for bodybuilding. I also had no knowledge of how little calories the majority of my extremely clean diet consisted of, and because of that, I ended up losing 16 pounds. All those years of consistent hard work, gone...just like that. After hearing this alarming number, I immediately started using this app again to gain my weight back. I have not only gained the weight back, I have learned so much about the new foods I am eating. I am also happy to say my health is finally turning around and I am working out again!! While my doctor was the one who saved my life, I this think this app had an incredibly strong positive impact as well. And for that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I’ve used MyFitnessPal on and off for over 4 years, including paying for the premium features for a couple years now too. I’m constantly put off by the frequent crashes and glitches requiring me to repeatedly close and restart MyFitnessPal just to log food. Creating a recipe, which should be a basic feature, is near impossible thanks to awful interface problems. For example, when you try to scan a food to add it as an ingredient in a recipe, if the barcode isn’t recognized, it acts as though you had closed out of the recipe creating process entirely and everything you had added to that point is lost. And even when you manage to get the entire recipe added, it seems like a coin flip as to whether it will actually let you save and log it rather than erase everything and make you start over again. I have been patient with MyFitnessPal (clearly, to be paying for it still after years of this stuff!) but not only have these bugs not improved in the time I’ve been using it, they seem to have gotten worse. After just sitting here and spending 20 minutes trying to add a simple recipe with nothing to show for it, I am finally done with MyFitnessPal, just canceled my subscription and I’m going to see what else is out there.

I've been using this app since February at the recommendation of my trainer. I am 45 and have never really had to worry about my weigh or diet until recently. I had put on 10 pounds and was shocked to discover it wasn't easy to loose (it had always been easy before). With MyFitnessPal, it shows you it's all about math :-). I've lost almost all the weight I want to loose, and the reason I haven't lost it all is because I eat too much lots of days (or I should say, I eat too many high cal junk foods instead of protein and veggies that will fill me up without all the calories). I am eating much healthier though and have learned to fill up on the healthy lower calorie foods most of the time. I feel great!! I'm 5'6' and 125 pounds at the moment. Still a work in progress, but I love MyFitnessPal and am so glad my trainer turned me on to it!

I also recommended MyFitnessPal to my brother, and he has been much more conscientious with his food intake. He has completely turned his health around and lost 30 pounds! Thirty pounds in five months! He is 5'10' and now weighs 145 pounds. He looks great and is eating so healthy!

Periodically refuses to allow the amount of food in a serving to be changed from what was entered in the past. If I had a third of a cup of cottage cheese (for example) one day, and then the next day a quarter cup, My Fitness Pal fights with me when I try to use the fraction or decimal counter to enter the amount of food to reflect the most recent serving. It also usually won't allow the amount to be entered manually as a decimal--I can't enter 0.25 cups, it won't accept input of the 0.XX number and shows, in this case, 25 cups. This happens occasionally, but more and more often, and usually after an update.
ETA: After the most recent update, I cannot change the serving sizes AT ALL if I copy a meal from another day to save myself the trouble of typing and searching. It will not let me. Don't you people understand the concept of leftovers? There might be a smaller serving left the second or third time you eat a portion. I am sick and tired of fighting with MyFitnessPal when I'm trying to be accurate about serving sizes.
ETA: MyFitnessPal goes "offline" and then I can't search for any past foods, this happens with increasing frequency after every update, is becoming tiresome. Updates seem to be adding bugs, not fixing bugs.