Ready
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Does anyone use a smartphone app like "Lose It" or "My Fitness Pal" to track your calories and weight?
I used it consistently for about two years, and I was able to maintain a very consistent weight. Then I went on a mountain retreat during the last week of the year where it was very difficult to exercise and my friend was cooking three gourmet meals a day. I gained five pounds and have kept it on since. I also stopped tracking my calories, which I believe led to me continuing to gain weight, until I realized I was now seven pounds above my pre-New Year weight.
So I'm back to tracking calories (and eating a lot fewer) again. But I'm having a hard time figuring out how these apps calculate the total calories required to either maintain weight or lose x pounds per week. It seems to add any exercise calories that it sees on my Apple Watch if I use the activity app to track it. But if I walk three hours in one day, it might only give me a "step bonus" of 125 calories, when that much walking would clearly burn more calories. I can enter "walking 3.0 mph" and it will add the exercise calories in, but then it also gives me a step bonus, which makes me think it's double counting.
I've found the support forums for these apps to be somewhat useless, and there is basically no tech support. So I'm left wondering how accurate they are when trying to lose weight.
I used it consistently for about two years, and I was able to maintain a very consistent weight. Then I went on a mountain retreat during the last week of the year where it was very difficult to exercise and my friend was cooking three gourmet meals a day. I gained five pounds and have kept it on since. I also stopped tracking my calories, which I believe led to me continuing to gain weight, until I realized I was now seven pounds above my pre-New Year weight.
So I'm back to tracking calories (and eating a lot fewer) again. But I'm having a hard time figuring out how these apps calculate the total calories required to either maintain weight or lose x pounds per week. It seems to add any exercise calories that it sees on my Apple Watch if I use the activity app to track it. But if I walk three hours in one day, it might only give me a "step bonus" of 125 calories, when that much walking would clearly burn more calories. I can enter "walking 3.0 mph" and it will add the exercise calories in, but then it also gives me a step bonus, which makes me think it's double counting.
I've found the support forums for these apps to be somewhat useless, and there is basically no tech support. So I'm left wondering how accurate they are when trying to lose weight.