Doohickie

Anyone else using it?

I got my first cell phone and tried several times to set it up on the phone but had issues. I finally went to their website and set it up there and it's all good now. (The issue was data that didn't "stick" when I entered it; it would revert back to default values; I think the problem was that until I had an account, I couldn't change that stuff.)

When you set up your account, it asks some basic parameters about your weight, gender, how much you want to lose, etc., and it sets up a calorie budget for you.

Then as you go through the day, you can enter your food intake and exercise and it tracks it. There's a pretty substantial database for food, and a decent one for exercise. You can enter it online on a computer, or using the phone app. One of the cool things about the phone app is that for foods that have a barcode, you can scan the code and it enters the data very quickly; all you have to do is verify serving size.

I've been doing it for a week and it's easy to follow and so far... IT WORKS. It gives me that extra attention-getter to flag food I shouldn't be eating, especially snacks at the end of the day. If I've had a light day or I've exercised a lot, I can eat that late snack, but if I'm already maxed I know I can't have that snack. So as I go through my day, I'm more conscious of my snacks and meals, knowing that they may prevent me from having a snack later on when I really want one. Funny thing is, a lot of the time I get to the end of the day and don't feel the need to eat that snack I've saved room for in my calorie allotment.

When you enter exercise, it adds calories for that to your calorie budget for the day. So if I ride hard, it gives me extra calories to eat. Again, though, I find that I don't feel compelled to eat up to my limit after a hard ride.

What I really like about this is that even though I'm trying to eat healthy-ish things, if I want to splurge and eat some crap food (like cookies or a greasy burger), I have to balance them against the rest of the food I eat during the day. So if I have that 1000-calorie burger, I can't get the milkshake, too. Or if I have a basic burger, I can have a small shake with it. Or.... if I want both, I have to ride hard to expand my budget for the day. It's a series of tradeoffs. I did these tradeoffs in my head previously, but they were as much emotional as rational. Now it's all down to the numbers, and that makes it easier for me.

Down 7 lb. so far...

Mr. Markets

Using Lose it! ( www.loseit.com ) myself and down 17.6 lbs in 9 weeks so far. Would be better if I were more serious in the first two weeks.

If you keep the discipline, weight loss is really attainable, and these kind of apps make it very easy to keep the discipline. Te key is always keep logging everything to maintain your own accountability.

Jarrett2

I'm using LoseIt! and down 78lbs today.

I was just thinking, one of these two needs to incorporate a GPS app into theirs. So it could track your biking exercise and plug it right into the app. As it stands, I use Cycledroid to track my ride, then move the numbers into LoseIt as exercise to get my negative calories in.

Mr. Markets

Amazing loss! May I ask where you started?

My goal is 60lbs. If I went 70 I would amaze myself, and anything past that and I would not look good, even if 'the tables' say I should lose up to 90lbs. I remeber that size and looked like a scarecrow.

Jarrett2

Yeah I started at 400 and 322 today. Down three shirt sizes and four pants sizes. It's been so easy it should be illegal. Something about knowing calories and plugging them in like a financial budget all clicked with me for some reason.

I say I started. I downloaded the app, plugged in what I was eating for a couple of days and was shocked. After that it just occurred kind of naturally, I just started eating things that had less calories in them. Then I started playing racquetball, but it was making my knees hurt doing it more than once or twice a week. So I figured I needed something I could do daily, so I got a bike, which lead me here three months back.

The diet change was really what caused the weight loss, but the biking helped for sure. Definitely raised my fitness. I started off hoping to lose any pounds, then 50lbs, then 80lbs which I might hit this week. If I do that, I'm shooting for 100 next.

Mr. Markets

Yeah, I hate even going out to eat anymore unless I can get a nutrition menu. Yesterday I had to eat out so I chose the lowest cal thing at Taco Bell. The other night we went to eat at Maggiano's, a nationwide small italian chain. They don;t give you nutrition menus so I pulled one up on my phone. Absolutely shocking how many cals in those dishes. Some were a whole day's calories for me now! I had two crab cakes and some spinach leaves. Squeaked by at under 650 cals. Wont eat anywhere I cannot get a nutrition menu.

With your attitude I bet you make it to 150 or more! Great job!

MattInFla

You can now connect RunKeeper to your MyFitnessPal account, and it automagically enters your exercise in your diary.

ndredsox

I really like MyFitnessPal. I'm down 70 and some change from 320lbs. in December. I started with fitbit and MFP at first and the integration really made it simple. Started my day weighing myself with the fitbit aria...this sync'd over wifi to the fitbit app(I just felt the fitbit food tracker really lacked, so I used MFP to input my meals/water and the fitbit synced my steps/calories/sleep). As my fitness improved, I found a way to sync my garmin connect/strava to fitbit, so now my food intake/water/calories burned/steps are all synced to one place. It really helps to be connected since I am a bit of a geek myself.

mrodgers

I went on my first bike ride on July 31st at 235 lb. I was only curious about how much I think I ate just in regular meals and started MyFitnessPal on August 5th. I didn't think I was eating as much junk food as I was and we cut out the junk from our diet back in the beginning of summer. I log everything in even though I was just curious about the meals and started using the app every day.

I think I overestimate my meal calories as I'm not weighing anything up. I at least I hope I am overestimating, that's what I'm attempting to do. I looked up online about BMR and everything tells me my BMR is about 2100 calories (I think this is stated as the calories your body will burn if you do absolutely nothing all day, thus, what it burns just functioning.) I gave myself a roughly 1800 calorie per day goal which is stated as a 2 lb per week loss. Some days I'm over on days I am taking a rest off the bike or weather puts me off but I'm always at least under the 2100.

I'm not losing 2 lb. a week, but Tuesday I weighed in at 225. 10 pounds in 21 days. As long as I'm losing, I'm happy.

I always read folks here mention that online calorie calculators for exercise are way over actual. I noticed that in general the online calorie calculators I've used usually tell me a number of about 800-900 for an hour of biking at 12 mph. Just going by the MyFitnessPal app also always gives me an 800-900 calorie burn calculation for my riding of 12-14 mph. My cheapo Bell bicycle computer gives me roughly 600 calories burned per hour of my 14 mph riding. I definitely don't go by the MyFitnessPal calculation and enter in manually what I read off my bike computer. I don't know, even that could be way over what I actually am burning, but it is a smaller number than every online calculator I've used.

I'm actually not doing any of this for weightloss. The weightloss is just a benefit. I have high cholesterol and really high triglycerides along with slightly high blood pressure and that is why I started riding the bike. Another 2 weeks of riding to do and I have a doctor's appointment to check it all out (previous numbers were from a "Wellness Check" program at work.)

mr,grumpy 

I think that his is by far the coolest thing about these two apps! For ships and giggles, enter a day's worth of what you would "regularly" eat into the old Fitness Pal. I was flabbergasted!

Mr. Markets

Nothing seems to work like calorie tracking. Especially in our 'super size' world...

Divtos

Using Fitbit which is a wristband to track activity plus you can log food and exercise. www.fitbit.com. I started just about a month ago and have lost 15.4lbs. https://www.fitbit.com/user/2747KV is me.

brianogilvie 

I've been using MFP since January 7, and I've lost about 37 lbs. (from 214 to 177). Tracking everything has made a huge difference for me. I do use a food scale to weigh foods, except when eating out, when I try to eat only what would be a normal portion at home.

I lost weight in grad school by exercising more and being mindful of food, without calorie counting. Unfortunately, I slowly gained it back in my 30s, and the last few years have shown me that what worked in my 20s no longer works in my 40s. I actually put on weight in the fall, which is what pushed me to MFP.

Mr. Markets

I'm less than 1/2 lb away from 20lbs down. I credit it all to tracking.

It's all in accountability.

Jarrett2

88lbs down today. Just trackin' them calories

bbbean 

Food and activity loggers are great. I used Carbs Control becaue I was more oncerned with carbs at the time, but as you note, aything that forces you to keep a running total helps you make better decisions. My splurges are much more reasonable now than before I was logging.

FWIW, I'm down from 325 to 168, and I credit smartphone food and activity loggers with a huge amount of the credit. Keep up the good work!

Jarrett2

157 lbs! That's awesome man! How long did it take you? I'm hoping to break 100 down, but just knowing that 157 is possible is pretty cool.

bbbean 

About 2 years. I lost around 2 lbs a week when I stsarted, and it's been around 1 lb a week for the past year or so. It's simultaneously the easiest and the hardest things I've ever done.

Mr. Markets

Hit 25lbs+ down Weds morning. Quite a shock as I thought I had another week before I hit that one.

Went and grabbed a 25lb plate off the weight set and brought it upstairs. Os others came home in the evening I told them my achievement, and then had them pick up that plate to know EXACTLY what 25lbs really means -- it's kind of nebulous otherwise.

Later saw some friends who we had not seen since I started on my "journey". They noticed the change like so many really do not when they see you every day of your life. Nice feedback.

Now another 35-40 or so to go and i'll be happy to stabilize out.

I really owe this all to www.loseit.com (the other MyFitnessPal app). Nothing has ever worked as well as tracking and having a community of fellow 'losers' to help me along.

mrodgers

That's an interesting concept I never thought of doing. Saying 25 lb doesn't sound nearly as impressive as handing a 25 lb weight to someone and saying, "this is what I lost so far."

Doohickie

I'm probably losing too fast, but I'm making hay while the sun shines: Lots of riding and not replacing the calories spent. I'm down 15 lb. now in 30 days. Winter will be here soon enough, and I won't be exercising as much.

goldfinch

Though research is far from definitive it doesn't look like losing weight fast in any way correlates with the inability to keep it off. In fact, it might even help. This is one of the myths that come from the "reasonableness bias," the gut feeling that something must be true because it seems reasonable.

Mr. Markets

Entirely possible.

OTOH I like trying to stay @ 2lbs/wk so hopefully most of the skin shrinks up along the way too.

genejockey 

I suspect it's not so much the rapidity of the loss that correlates with putting weight back on, but rather the method. Starvation, boot camp, etc. might take pounds off without leading to the lifestyle changes that KEEP it off. This is one thing that I think about when I see the 'riding to lose weight' threads. Don't ride to lose weight, ride to become, AND STAY, fitter and healthier. It only works if you make it part of your life going forward.

I've given up my nightly beer, and my lunchtime Coke, and stopped 'Defensive Eating'*, and I find I'm not pining for them.

*Defensive Eating: You're not hungry for that second hamburger or second serving of Jambalaya, but you know if YOU don't eat it, one of your teenage sons will eat it and you won't get any leftovers tomorrow, so you eat it anyway.

Doohickie

I have another weight-related theory on "reasonableness bias." People say it's not healthy to be a yo-yo dieter- that going through several cycles of weight loss and weight gain puts a stress on your system. I think back to my ancestors, Poles, who every year would go through lean times, and the people who survived were the ones who could pack on the pounds during time of plenty. I'm pretty sure I've got the "fat gene" that makes it easy to gain weight. But when I set my mind to losing weight, I tend to lose pretty quickly. I think this is a modern adaptation on my part of using the "fat gene"- yes, I gain weight quickly, and can lose it quickly, and so did my ancestors. It's the way I'm built, and maybe there's nothing wrong with going through cycles of weight loss and gain. Without this ability, my ancestors would have never passed on their genes.