The Best App for Weight Loss

What would calorie counting look like if it were easy?

Probably something like Amazon for shopping.

No wasting time on tangential activities like driving to a store or waiting in line to check out. You’d easily find what you need online, add it to your virtual shopping cart with one click, and be done.

Introducing MyFitnessPal.

MyFitnessPal is like Amazon for weight loss.

Just like Amazon gets you the products you need quickly and efficiently, MyFitnessPal cuts straight to the core of what you need for weight loss (a calorie deficit).

This is the primary reason why it is the best app for weight loss: It’s results-oriented.

Five reasons why you should use MyFitnessPal:

1. Results-Oriented

When I say this, I mean that their whole system is centered on helping you generate a calorie deficit for weight loss.

If you’re not sure how many calories you need to eat to lose weight, don’t worry! MyFitnessPal will tell you the answer.

MyFitnessPal estimates your basal metabolic rate (BMR) using your age, gender, height, and starting weight when you sign up. Your BMR accounts for the majority of your daily caloric expenditure, which is why it is an important factor in weight loss. It then gives you a recommended daily calorie intake to lose weight based on your activity level.

From the get-go, they force you to specify a weight goal and a deadline. No screwing around. They are in the business of getting you results, which I love.

2. Comprehensive Food Database

MyFitnessPal has the most comprehensive food database on the web.

It will assign a calorie count to almost any food you can think of. It also provides in-depth nutritional information on macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, fat), cholesterol, fiber, and vitamins and minerals. In fact, the reason I started using MyFitnessPal was to monitor my carb intake.

Many of the numbers from restaurant items come directly from the nutrition facts on their websites. There is even information specific to variations of popular chain restaurants in different countries!

3. Accounts for Daily Activity

You probably know by now that calorie intake is only half of the weight loss equation.

You must also estimate how many calories you are burning from living, breathing, daily activity, and exercise in order to target an appropriate calorie intake for weight loss.

As I mentioned, MyFitnessPal accounts for the living, breathing, and daily activity part automatically when you set your initial weight loss goal.

That leaves exercise.

MyFitnessPal also allows you to log your workouts to capture day-to-day fluctuations in calories burned from exercise. This helps keep your overall calorie expenditure estimate as accurate as possible.

MyFitnessPal provides estimates for calories burned from many different types of exercise based on the amount of time you spend on the activity. The exercise database includes various speeds of running and walking. It even has two levels of soccer (casual and competitive)!

Some people may find logging their exercise too cumbersome. After all, you already have to log all your food.

Fortunately, MyFitnessPal integrates with many popular activity trackers. So if you have one of these, then you don’t have to log any exercise in MyFitnessPal at all.

I don’t log exercise in the MyFitnessPal app anymore because it automatically estimates my daily calories burned from exercise by syncing with my Fitbit.

4. Social Media Component

The average US Android user spends nearly two hours a day on Facebook and Instagram combined. There are many reasons why these apps are so addictive, but some of the bigger ones are their friends/followers, status updates, news feed, likes, and comments features.

MyFitnessPal also uses these features in their app. You can add people as friends and post status updates (or have it auto-post for you when you complete your food log, record a workout, or achieve a log in streak). Your friends will then see your status in their news feed and have the option to like and comment on it. This encourages people to continue to check the app and log their food and exercise.

In addition, MyFitnessPal has a huge user base, support forum, and a popular blog featuring recipes, success stories, and weight loss tips. Their reach on traditional social media is massive: more than a million Facebook fans and over one hundred thousand Twitter followers as of the time of this writing.

All of this helps to build a strong community that fosters interaction and support in helping people reach their weight goals.

5. Simple and Free

Last, but not least, MyFitnessPal is extremely user-friendly.

We’re all busy. We can’t spend hours a week counting calories.

We need a system we can execute in less than five minutes a day.

With MyFitnessPal, it’s ridiculously easy to search for foods and enter them into your calorie log for tracking. The mobile apps offer the functionality of the main website and additional time-saving features such as a barcode scanner, so it’s even easier to track your calories while you’re on the go or away from a computer.

Best of all, the website and smartphone apps are 100% free.

Unfortunately, no apps are perfect.

There are limitations to MyFitnessPal.

People are able to submit their own meals to the food database with self-reported calories and macros.

This is good and bad.

Good because it expands the food database and you will almost always be able to find what you’re looking for.

Bad because you have to watch out for some of these “generic” or “homemade” user-submitted entries, which may be inaccurate.

Despite these limitations, I still believe MyFitnessPal is the best tool you can use to track your calories and achieve your weight goal.

But don’t take my word for it. Try it out for yourself. It’s free, so you have nothing to lose!

Sign up for MyFitnessPal and add me as a friend. My username is agulamali.

If you enjoyed this post, here are three more things you might like:

Calorie Counting Made Easy: My book on how to set a weight loss goal and use MyFitnessPal to lose weight counting calories in less than five minutes a day

Weekly Weight Loss Spreadsheet: A spreadsheet to help you lose weight on a predetermined schedule

Trying Not to Suck at Life: My weekly newsletter with specific and actionable tips and tools to help you improve your health, wealth, productivity, and happiness