My Fitness Pal

[Irulan]

What kind of diet did you follow, was there a ration of carbs to protein that was different than the default setting in the app?

All I did was enter age,weight, weight goal, followed the settings. I did have some additional guidelines through a trainer at my gym for eating for recovery/exercise, portion size, exercise, high value foods and so on. I didn't and don't follow a "diet". I watch portion size, stay away from processed foods & junk, cook from scratch, make healthy choices and eat 4-5 small meals a day. The app allows you to see where you are at for balance, various nutritional components and I would just adjust accordingly.

[chatnoire]

All I did was enter age,weight, weight goal, followed the settings. I did have some additional guidelines through a trainer at my gym for eating for recovery/exercise, portion size, exercise, high value foods and so on. I didn't and don't follow a "diet". I watch portion size, stay away from processed foods & junk, cook from scratch, make healthy choices and eat 4-5 small meals a day. The app allows you to see where you are at for balance, various nutritional components and I would just adjust accordingly.

This is what the boyfriend and I have been doing, and we've been at it for 2 months now. I'm down 13 pounds, he's down 19, and I wouldn't say we've been super diligent (there have been friday night fish fry dinners, happy hour afternoons, etc.)

What I love about MFP is that it keeps you aware, more than anything. If I have a glass of wine, I know what I've just put into my body, and that makes it less likely I'll have an entire pint of Ben and Jerrys ice cream. Even if the app over-calculates, I try to at least log the work I'm doing.

Also, as a vegetarian, I've been focusing on sodium and protein - pre-packaged foods often have way more sodium than necessary, and protein is hard to come by in veggies. So it's forced me to be more creative about my nutrition. I've learned to like kale, eggs, and beans a lot more than I thought I would.

[Irulan]

This is what the boyfriend and I have been doing, and we've been at it for 2 months now. I'm down 13 pounds, he's down 19, and I wouldn't say we've been super diligent (there have been friday night fish fry dinners, happy hour afternoons, etc.)

What I love about MFP is that it keeps you aware, more than anything. If I have a glass of wine, I know what I've just put into my body, and that makes it less likely I'll have an entire pint of Ben and Jerrys ice cream. Even if the app over-calculates, I try to at least log the work I'm doing.

Also, as a vegetarian, I've been focusing on sodium and protein - pre-packaged foods often have way more sodium than necessary, and protein is hard to come by in veggies. So it's forced me to be more creative about my nutrition. I've learned to like kale, eggs, and beans a lot more than I thought I would.

no kidding on the sodium in pre packaged foods! Even so called "healthy" ones. If anyone can ever find a low sodium Siracha type product, let me know.

[bluebug32]

It's hard to find reliable calorie burn information. Even heart rate monitors tend to estimate on the high side and the machines at gyms are usually off as well. I'm on MFP and I find that what works best is to just input the calorie burn straight from my Garmin, which is typically a few hundred calories lower than MFP's estimation. Even the calorie counts for the same food can vary on MFP. My advice: use it to help guide you nutritionally, but understand that it's just an estimate and adjust your diet/fitness accordingly.

[beccaB]

I decided to modify the calories fitness pal says I burned to about half. Except for the week preceding a century ride. then I have to eat more.

[goldfinch]

It is fairly easy to figure out how many calories you take in, but it is almost impossible to figure out how many you burn outside of a lab. All the tools are not accurate. The closest is probably a power meter. The next closest probably a heart rate monitor. The problem is that there are too many variables and when you estimate so many variables there is potential for error stacked on top of error leading to sometimes wildly inaccurate results. You might enter your age, sex and height into a heart rate monitor but the monitor still doesn't know your fat mass, personal metabolic rate, individual heart rate differences, your general fitness and health, your stress level, the air temperature (heart rate goes up when it is hot), and even your adaptation to a type of exercise, all of which can effect calories burned or the estimate of calories burned.

Calculators that estimate without heart rate, like online tools, are so inaccurate as to be useless. They add the variable of guessing your effort. Twelve miles an hour may be easy effort on the flats and a bear on the hills. Sixteen mph may be hard effort for some and easy for others, or hard in a head wind and easy with a tail wind, hard on a rough road, easy on a smooth. Easy on the road bike and next to impossible on a mountain bike. Etc.

[beccaB]

I do know that there are days that if I stick to 1450 calories, to lose the 7 or so pounds I want gone, I will crash and burn. On the days I only do strength training I can stick to 1450 and feel ok. But not bike days. So the credit for half of what fitness pal says I burned seems to get me through most of those regular bike riding days, but maybe not the long hauls.