Why Use MyFitness Pal

When keeping a food diary, as I stated before, it isn’t just about ticking a box. If your food diary reads something like this:

Breakfast – cereal
Lunch – sandwich
Tea – pasta

Then to put it bluntly, it is a pointless exercise.

It is important when you are keeping your food diary that it is detailed. What we eat is more than just the name of the meal. It is a combination of different ingredients, all of which in themselves contain different nutritional values.

You will start to see this when you use MyFitness Pal.

Take something simple like a sandwich and a bag of crisps as an example. What it actually is is:

- 2 slices of bread (100kcal per slice)
- 10g butter (80kcal)
- 40g cheese (170kcal)
- bag of salt and vinegar crisps – (170kcal)

Total Calories – 620


Now you might think, it takes a lot of effort to go into that much detail. But firstly, to get that level of information you can quickly scan the barcode on the back of the packets of the ingredients you have used. And secondly, by being aware of this level of detail you can start to see opportunities for improvement, just by tweaking simple things.

You could make the same sandwich, equally as tasty, and satisfying for nearly half the calories, just by altering your ingredients.

- 2 thin slices of bread (50kcal each)
- 10g lighter butter (50kcal)
- 40g 30% less fat cheese (120kcal)
- bag of quavers (80kcal)

Total Calories – 350

Considering for fat loss a daily calorie deficit of around 500 calories a day is a good target, you will have created half that deficit just from altering how you make your sandwich.

Its changes like this that can have a massive impact on your life because you’re not avoiding your favourite foods, having to change your normal eating habits, you’re making slight alterations to the ingredients you use, which can help create a significant calorie deficit.

Hopefully that is an eye opener as to how simple this can be and why it is so important to keep a detailed food diary.