Cronometer
A couple of months ago the My Fitness Pal website was misbehaving, so I switched to Cronometer. I was quite happy with MFP, but I like Cronometer even better because the information I want most is on one page. It might be information overload for a lot of people, but science nerds like me might prefer it. I thought I'd give it a "mini-review".
The process for entering food, adding custom food, and creating recipes is pretty similar to MFP, so I won't say anything more about that. Instead, I'll focus on the key differences between MFP and Cronometer.
Because MFP lets anyone add new foods to the database, you'll find all but the most obscure foods in it, which is nice. However, that information is often inaccurate. You'll often find 4 or 5 entries for the same food.
Cronometer gets nutrition information from high quality nutrition databases, and seems to be far more accurate. While everyone can enter custom foods, they can't see what you've entered, and you can't see what they've entered. This might mean that Cronometer has fewer foods than MFP; however, I haven't found much of a difference (and I eat obscure vegan foods!)
You have to upgrade to separate your food out by meal. I don't care about that feature, but you might.
When I switched to Cronometer, I found that some of my foods were logged with a slightly higher calorie count in my diary than they had been in MFP. This confused me at first because I double-checked all of the MFP listings before using them. However, I figured out that since MFP typically only uses whole numbers, you get a lot of rounding errors, usually under-reporting calories. This is another way that Cronometer is more accurate.
Here's a screenshot. As you can see, you get a lot of detailed information about macronutrients and micronutrient. I doubt you'd want to try to make sure every micronutrient reached 100% by the end of the day; that would be way too much trouble. Instead, you can check your averages over a week or two. But as a vegan, there are some micronutrients I like to keep an eye on daily.
I have been logging since I was diagnosed with diabetes in 1989. More than 30 years. I started doing it on a computer about 1994 and purchased a program on a CD when CD drives first came out. I remember paying $100 for the program and feeling it was worth every penny.
I paid for My Fitness Pal premium subscription when that started in 2005. I needed the premium to get good macro information then. When they added scanning from a cellphone, I was so impressed. I think that was around 2012. Now there is plenty of information with the free service.
Being a real techie person, I used to think it was at least cool to have a disease that involved software. I look for food tracking and blood sugar tracking programs. I looked Cronometer and a lot of good information.
I do have to be careful with My Fitness Pal, because sometimes information is user submitted and not correct at all.
Real life begins where your comfort zone ends
I suppose my question is - does it inspire you to eat any less ?
For me usually when I post the thinking is you too can eat great and maintain your lowest weight effortlessly and healthfully with a few tiny but crucial modifications.
frankly I actually hate and resent the " need " to log what I eat or count calories .
Common sense rules the day - move, eat light ... make the surgery work its best for you .
