“I really need to lose some weight” is synonymous with immediately downloading this handy free app, MyFitnessPal. It’s free, it’s got a MAHOOSIVE database of foods with calorie and macro data for the UK and US and it’s pretty easy to use.
When it comes to tracking calories, macronutrients, MyFitnessPal is a fantastic tool. But as any experienced nutrition coach would attest, there’s more to the nutrition puzzle than just counting macros and calories – in fact, more and more, we’re seeing that these are not even the most important part of the picture, especially if you’re a busy, active person.
Here’s 10 things MyFitnessPal CAN’T help you with…
- Individual Nutrient Timing: While MyFitnessPal can give you a daily report on WHAT you ate, it’s useless for recommending WHEN you should eat. While weight loss is a pretty black and white science when it comes to what works (a calorie deficit). But when it comes to staying full, fuelling training, or keeping energy levels high in a busy lifestyle, WHEN you eat is way more important than calorie tracking apps will gave you believe. This vital piece to the puzzle is missing when you’re working with something as black and white as MFP.
- Personalised Dietary Needs: So many people come to me feeling surprised when I tell them how much they CAN and perhaps SHOULD be eating, after spending so much time trying and failing to lose weight with MyFitnessPal. When you punch in your numbers to create your profile, it seems MyFitnessPal is exceptional at generalising and starving people and absolutely terrible at identifying individual energy and nutrient requirements. These can vary massively through lifestyle, gender, age, body composition and a whole host of other factors and it’s important to remember that MFP simply doesn’t have the same human capacity to work this out as a nutritionist or dietician does.
- Health Insights: Yes, you can track your weight, your macros and your calories in the app. But what does this REALLY tell you about your health?? Not much. Nutrition is about so much more than just weight and energy, it’s about the building blocks required for longevity and daily function and MyFitnessPal is unlikely to tell you what your gut health is like, how to improve your energy levels or identify barriers for your long term health. It’s too simplistic to give you those little insights which are actually the big important things!
- No Behavior Change Strategies: MyFitnessPal doesn’t offer techniques to help you change your behavior over the long term. While you might be able to identify from regular logging that you’re susceptible to regular coffee and biscuits fix in the afternoon, or that you tend to raid the cupboards at night time, you might not be able to figure out WHY and the app isn’t going to give you advice on how to improve these habits. A nutrition coach can work with you to not only establish sustainable productive habits, but also understand WHY you have the habits you do now too, thereby reducing anxiety around food choices and body image,
- Inadequate Focus on Food Quality: MyFitnessPal prioritises caloric content over the quality of food – that’s because identifying the quality of a certain food or meal isn’t as straightforward as looking at the numbers. But food quality MATTERS. It’s vital to ensure you’re nailing all your nutrients, but it can also lead to better energy levels and a better relationship with food. Rather than simply aiming for calorie golf scores and trying to achieve the lowest numbers all day every day, working with a person can give you far more value and insight into the foods your eating and whether you’re sacrificing nutrition and health for the sake of your MFP scorecard!
- Listening to Your Body: Intuitive eating – the art of listening to and understanding your body’s cues – is an essential skill. While tracking apps help with awareness, they can sometimes overshadow your body’s innate signals by encouraging you to go lower and lower with calories or eat more and more in spite of being full, simply because you have calories left.
- Mental and Emotional Aspects of Eating: Stress eating, emotional eating, and other psychological aspects play a massive role in nutrition. These areas require a more personal touch and understanding beyond what an app can offer. In fact, for a lot of people who are struggling with anxiety around food and body image, apps like MyFitnessPal makes this SO much worse.
- Lack of Flexibility: MyFitnessPal can’t adapt your nutrition recommendations in real-time based on your circumstances. You’re off on holiday and can’t track as easily or you’re simply avoiding tracking because you’re bored of it for now, you have a big race tomorrow and need to fuel up or you’re out on the bike all day and so eating habits change. All of these scenarios can lead to an artificially “warped” looking week or graph on MFP, which can lead to anxiety, panic and a brand new “starvation” period when you get back to “normal”. The ability to feel that it’s okay not to type every single food you eat 24 hours a day in an app, but understanding why talking about food and learning about it is important, is pretty important. That’s where working with a person is always going to win.
- No Expert Accountability: Having someone to report to can be a powerful motivator. While MyFitnessPal records your daily intake, it won’t provide you with the accountability and follow-ups that a dedicated nutrition coach would. This also means your progress is likely to be limited because it’s harder to identify the bigger picture and barriers that might be standing in your way right now, as well as strategies to overcome them. 99% of the time, the barriers aren’t to do with food and diet, those are simply choices that are a symptom of something else – MFP can’t tell you that!
- Holistic Lifestyle Integration: Nutrition doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Sleep, stress, training, recovery, and other lifestyle factors all intertwine with nutrition. MyFitnessPal can be a bit myopic, focusing mainly on food intake without considering the broader context.
MyFitnessPal can be a great place to start when you’re trying to be more self-aware and more present and conscious about the choices you’re making when it comes to your food and drink. While it’s database is fantastic to provide a daily report on the numbers side of things, be careful you’re not placing all of your nutritional responsibility in it – it’s a bit like putting your faith in that weird Windows ’95 paperclip to write your whole letter for you, he’ll help you get started, but he’s probably not going to get the complete job done properly for you…
Whatever your goal is, whether it’s losing weight, increasing energy levels or simply trying to improve your long term health, there’s waaaaaayyy more to it than an app can ever tell you. Bots haven’t taken over from people just yet…
And if you’ve decided from this that it’s time to talk to a real human being about your nutrition strategy, then you can book a FREE no obligation consultation call with me here.