Fitness

I use text messages and send to a blocked number, such as 555-0100 (any area code) and that way I never need to worry about the app crashing or them paywalling useful features after becoming reliant on the "free" app.

It's extremely simple and you can add that person as a contact and give them a name such as "calories" or whatever you find useful. You can then pin that conversation to your text messages so it's always at the top of your texts.

Screenshot as an example: https://i.imgur.com/HpLM2yu.png

Best of all, it doesn't require a specialized app, which can be shut down or made unusable at anytime. You are at their mercy, which is their business model once they sell or start paywalling their most useful features.

Been using Macros for almost 3+ years. It's basically just a convenient excel sheet, but that's the beauty of it. It's simple and works.

I use Cronometer.

Myfitnesspal is a dumpster fire, I used fatsecret for a while but cronometer is much faster to input meals and repeats and recipes and doesn't have core features locked behind a paywall.

Plus cronometer supports Health Connect which integrates with other FOSS local-only projects like gadgetbridge.

I want to try a fully FOSS app like Waistline to be fully open source and not sell eating habits to advertisers and insurance companies, but they all lack Health Connect support with issues for them open for 2+ years with almost no response.

Edit: also just trying out the new FOSS NutriTrace app (not on play store or fdroid yet, just github) and it is quite good as far as features, it has almost all of the core features except its search is a bit rough still and you can only pull from locally saved foods while making recipes. But it also can be self hosted with a PWA, or synced with a server interface through an android or iOS app. Seems like it might be a bit vibe coded with some weird bugs and fast development, but it is pretty good so far.

MacroFactor is nicex

It's not an app, but I use a kids erasable tablet thing I picked up on clearance. I have used MyFitnessPal and Fat Secret in the past but this time around I realized that apps don't really provide much value (for me at least). I don't need to keep a history of my caloric intake and I certainly don't want that data feeding some insurance company or AI model. For my needs at least, the only thing that matters is if I hit my calorie goal or not, the rest is just noise.

Having the calorie values of most food in the app is nice, but searching is just as fast.

If you care about the app being open source, I've used Energized: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.flasskamp.energize/

Worked well enough for me, but my needs are low 👍

I love fatsecret. I tried a lot and used MyFitnessPal for a long time. I prefer fatsecret

Counting isn’t for everyone. If it makes you feel extra shitty about some choices, or extra anxious about hitting particular numbers, try to learn the nutrient density of foods you regularly eat and don’t use the app to track things.

Lose It has been perfectly fine for me, and I use it about half of each year. I’m grandfathered into a 10 USD annual subscription, which I think is a bit silly, but switching over to anything else with an extensive database is overpriced by comparison. They also regularly give me “exclusive offers” to buy a lifetime plan for some ridiculous price.

MFP had a better database but they made their actual app utterly unusable over time. Sadly Lose It is messing with their UI too and frankly I liked it better a few months ago. The war on information density has to end, please.

My friends like MacroFactor.

This being Lemmy I think the expectation is to abhor all subscription services, and for good reason, but I think I’d still get my money’s worth even from an overpriced one if it contains enough food from my part of the world and if its UI isn’t too tedious.

As the other commenter said, I recommend not counting calories. I don't necessarily recommend low-carbing (I've done it, it works, but I don't think it should be the first line for weight loss), but I agree that counting calories is not a great strategy.

Here is the thing: you used MyFitnessPal 10 years ago. And yet, here you are again, looking to lose weight. Either you gained the weight back, or you never really lost it the first time. This is a familiar experience for almost everyone who counts calories. Because the thing to realize is that all (reasonable) weight loss programs work, just as long as you keep doing them. But if you stop doing them, you gain the weight back. So the only way to achieve your body comp goals and stay at that level the rest of your life is to figure out a body comp strategy and keep doing it for the rest of your life. And counting calories, for most people, is onerous and annoying and just one more thing to do, and now you can't eat as much pizza and ice cream as you want, and it sucks.

Instead, most people who stay lean for years and years simply focus on living healthy lives. The long term solution for most people isnt going low carb or counting calories or whatever. It is creating a fundamental shift in their identity to "I am a healthy person, who does the things healthy people do." And then by doing those things and spending time with other healthy people, their body comp naturally stays in check.

Honestly, my biggest recommendation for achieving long term body comp goals is to go make lots of skinny friends and hang out with them as much as possible. You'll naturally adopt their habits, lifestyle, and mindset, and the weight will come off without even trying.

On your own, I do think the most impactful thing you can do is track what you eat. But track quality rather than quantity. For this, you can just use a normal notes app, or just a pen and paper. Every day, track how much you weigh, and track what you eat. Eg:

5/16 - 100kg
egg sandwich at home
taco bell burritos
grilled chicken + veggies at home

Then every week, review your weight fluctuations and what you ate. Then with, for example, the taco bell, you can ask yourself "why did I do that, and how can I avoid doing it in the future?" That might mean asking why you were stressed out, suggesting you coworkers go somewhere else for lunch, or leaving your credit cards somewhere difficult to access so you are less tempted to eat out. Over time, you change your lifestyle and habits, and you find you are eating unhealthily far less often.