Food/Exercise Tracking

I've seen alot of people on here talk about MyFitnessPal. That site is a joke! I personally use CalorieKing but I just wanted to see what this MFP was all about. It asked me for my current weight and my goal weight. It asked me how many times I wanted to work out each week, but it would let me select no higher than 7 times a week??? I currently work out 14+ times a week (45 min/workout) and am striving for 21 (3x/day). It asked me how much weight I would like to lose a week but let me select no higher than 2#/week. Yeah like ummm I definitely need to lose more than that. Than it went on to tell me that I can eat 1700 cals/day (my current is 800-950 cals/day) and the more I exercise the more I can eat. Yes it actually said that. I mean, what's the point of exercising if you're just going to eat more? Like don't bother exercising then and eat less, or exercise nonstop and continuously stuff your face...ok, that works... It told me how many cals I'll be burning as well. BUT not all exercises are created equal so how do they know how many cals I'd be burning? CalorieKing asks you to set your own goals of how many calories you want per day and how many minutes of exercise per day. Than you enter your foods and it tracks your cals, carbs, protein (you can set it to track whatever values you want, I track sodium as well). You put in the type of exercise you did and it tells you based on your size, approx how much each specific exercise burned. Like any app or journal, you lie to it, you're only lying to yourself. And if you honestly don't know what goals you should set to put in CalorieKing, ask one the vets on here and they'll tell you ACTUAL goals. Has anyone else come across any really good tracking sites that I might want to check out?

PS- MFP said with hard work, I could lose 10# by June 26. HA! My current goal is 20# by June 19 :) Thanks for the encouragement MFP lol

You can modify most of the numbers in MFP.

It has limitation, but overall it has a great database for nutrition of different foods.

Any database is limited to what it can do. "Take what you need, ignore the rest".

I used to be on MFP all the time as I was losing. I could modify it to show me what I needed. I always ignored the "earned calories due to exercise".

Thank you for the input and I LOVE your quote about failure... love it!!!

I also just saw this site has a food/exercise tracker, I'll try it out too :)

All those things are completely adjustable.

You may prefer CalorieKing (which I found largely inaccurate) - but MFP is certainly not "a joke" -- especially since many of us with great success use it exclusively.

KAT- I totally agree!! The "joke" has served me well...I am 15 years post RNY, and 15 lbs below goal...could NEVER do that without tracking

Thanks for your input, ladies! :) lol the joke part was where it actually told me and I quote the more you exercise, the more you can eat!" it actually said that. And it said I can eat 1700 cals a day??? lol I WISH both of those statements were true, I'd be a skinny, happy, face stuffing fool and if that's not a joke then idk ;) lol and I'm definitely not trying to hurt anyone's feelings, I'm glad it worked for you guys. It's nice to hear other opinions on different sites and sometimes we all might learn something new or better. I strive to learn one new thing a day as well as lose a pound a day lol sometimes I only accomplish one of those goals :D What about CalKing did you find inaccurate? Most of their meals are from restaurants, so unless you eat alot you can enter your own custom foods and save them to use again.

Well, that's not inaccurate or a joke. You may not desire to "eat back" your exercise calories; however, if you burn more calories through being active you create more of a deficit and can afford to eat more. People that want to balance a reduction of calorie intake and extra calorie burn to lose weight in a slow and steady fashion benefit greatly from this.

WLS patients are not the norm. We eat a lot less calories and lose a lot more in a short period of time because our overall health is at risk because we are severely morbidly obese when we start. When you get further down the line and want to find a more sustainable routine/eating habits, "eating back" some exercise calories can be a great way to find balance.

Well really though, it is a joke since I am a weight loss patient having a discussion on a weight loss site. I am not on a site having a discussion with people who ARE the "norm" as you call it.

If any single one person on here that needs to lose more than idk 50#, can honestly say that they would gladly eat back those cals that they worked so hard to get off and risk stretching their pouches, sleeves, whatever and are not worried about losing weight, then I hope they can find a good way to reach their goal weight, cause "slow and steady fashion" isn't how WLS works. So that's a joke, maybe not a ha ha funny joke but a cruel twist to dig a knife a little deeper, taunting you with calories that we WLS people can not have

Ok, fine. It's a joke. I won't argue with you about it. I, too, am a weight loss surgery patient, still trying to lose a bit of weight, and I eat back some exercise calories. I'm glad you've got it all figured out already.