myfitnesspal

after hearing this mentioned as a great free tool to help monitor food intake and exercise i thought i would look at it today....

seemed ok to use and got given targets to eat that would also change to take into account of exercise.sounds perfect

My problem is that it gives targets of carbs fat protein and sugars etc

 the sugar is only 24g for the day..and a small banana is 12 and a small 200ml of apple juice is 23.whilst i know large amounts of either of these is not great for you......surely a small banana and a sml apple juice a day should be able to be accommodated in a healthy eating plan...

Am i doing something wrong........otherwise a pint of 1% fat milk on its own would reach the daily limit and this volume or equivalent in other dairy is recommended for the calcium for older ladies

I'm no expert on this site seren but I would think that because it's a diary system that gets you to look at your food intake and make suggestions then 24g is 24g no matter where it comes from - so if you have to cut something, you have to cut something

as for the milk - you could subsititute with calcium supplements if you're concerned about keeping calcium levels up

24g?!  That's less than two teaspoons, in everything.  All day.

(I've just noticed my Waitrose muesli is 23g sugar per 100g, which I easily eat for breakfast!  With milk and sugary coffee!  That takes me up to 9am...)

Where's Sarah?

phil .it seesm so low that I can't see my self ever working to it.exercise does increase it .

 i have been able to have a plateful of chipshop chips tonight as they have no sugar.......not sure that this is going to be the healthiest way for me to go forward

That does seem very low.

The Guideline Daily Amount of Sugar for adult women is 90g.

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I use mfp, I lost over a stone about 18 months ago, and I use it to monitor what I'm eating (making sure I don't overcompensate after a hard session!).   I guess the low sugar target is maybe to stop you going for loads of "diet/low fat" foods which are usually high in it ?

my sugar quota for the day is over as I've had a banana and some orange juice amongst other things , and I'll go over my 'fat' quota later as I'm having an avacado with dinner, but by now I don't get too hung up about it.

thanks fraggle........#i will not get too hung up over it as I feel that to avoid any fruit becuase it is high is not good ......my whole idea is to avoid the high sugars of cake etc.....

but really as a way to reduce the bread intake...

I think for me it opened my eyes as to how many calories I was getting from drinks - I used to drink loads of squash in the evening. Now, I drink it very very diluted or drink fruit tea (0 cals  )

obviously it's not a perfect system, but you can use it to your advantage, but you have to be disciplined (something I've failed to do recently!)

i don't think it needs to be perfect.just having to record it should help......worth a try .its free and so nothing to lose apart from the weight

You can adjust the percentages you want from your daily cals - the defaults are miles away from what I am after.

I tend to ignore the sugars and fat and just look at total cals, total protein and total carbs aiming for the goals I have set myself.  It's working a treat for me at the minute. 

I think the biggest advanage of the programme is that it seems to have every item of food on the planet already loaded.

Have used it since last June and lost over 45lbs so far.

I mainly use the carb/protein/fat as indicators for daily balance and requirements.

You can custom set your daily requirements if you need, I find it a really useful tool.

thanks for letting me know that I can adjust the totals.will work out something more useable for me........

Hi I have just started using Mfp, which I think is really good. However, the calories burnt as per run are nearly double that in comparrision to the calculator RW use. Does anyone else agree?

Thanks

I found the calories burnt for exercise way out to what my Garmin said. I also had to tweak it so that my basic total calories were higher, then the weight started shifting, I was eating too little to lose weight at one point.

It's been great for us; we don't use anything other than the total calories calculator; the calories for exercise has been about right for us. It's only a nominal thing, but we've lost just slightly more lard than the calculator suggested, probably because the basal metabolic calorie allowance per day is a tad low.

Thank you for your responses really helpful. I imputed the same figures in both the RW and Mfp and the difference was huge. The figures were higher than my Garmin but the mfp app came out nearly double the RW we pace calculator. Ill keep looking at it and post up anything I find out. Thanks again