MyFitnessPal app

An app aimed at anyone wanting to track their food intake and their activity level.

MyFitnessPal app By MyFitnessPal
myfitnesspal app logo Features
  • Calorie counting with food database
  • Weight tracking
  • Integration with fitness tools
  • Community
  • Personalisation

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Cost Free

What does the app do?

By diarising their food intake, this app helps users to track their consumption of all major nutrients such as calories, fat, carbs, sugar, fibre and cholesterol. In addition, the app allows you to track your physical activity from a range of cardio exercises. To get the most accurate information, you will need a basic knowledge of food composition as well as the ability to visually estimate portion sizes in order to select the most appropriate food from the database. For a more detailed description of the app, see Google Play or iTunes and for a detailed review, see Reviews and MyFitnessPal summary.

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Pros

Cons  

✔  The app has an extensive food database and includes many NZ food products.

✔  The app links with many fitness tracking apps and devices such as FitBit.

✔  The app aims to promote healthy eating by providing alerts if under-consuming calories, and appropriate nutrition education is provided in the help section of the app.

✘  This is an Americanized app. Many foods are measured in imperial units and goals are based on American healthy eating guidelines.

✘  Using the app is fairly time-consuming, particularly during set-up.

✘  It can take some time to get used to layout and functioning of the app. It does not seem as intuitive as other similar apps.

Privacy and security

The app has a privacy policy although data is not encrypted, but this is not of major concern to the user as app information/data is stored on your device or on your memory card. Read more about things you can do to improve your safety and security when using apps.

Review details

Date of review: November 2014
Platform reviewed: Android
App version: Varies with device
Download size: 75 MB (December 2017)

Learn more

My Fitness Pal Dietitians NZ

References

The following references relate to articles about apps for weight loss.

  1. Coughlin SS, Whitehead M, Sheats JQ. Smartphone Applications for Promoting Healthy Diet and Nutrition: A Literature Review. Jacobs J Food Nutr. 2015;2(3):021
  2. Chen J, Cade JE, Allman-Farinelli M. The Most Popular Smartphone Apps for Weight Loss: A Quality Assessment. JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 2015 Dec 16;3(4):e104. doi: 10.2196/mhealth.4334.
  3. Flores Mateo G, Granado-Font E, Ferré-Grau C, Montaña-Carreras X. Mobile Phone Apps to Promote Weight Loss and Increase Physical Activity: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. J Med Internet Res. 2015 Nov 10;17(11):e253. doi: 10.2196/jmir.4836.

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