Good App Needed

  • Hi. I'm new here. I don't know if I am in the right subforum - my apologies if I am not.

    I am trying to re-start a weight loss plan, and am looking for a good app for my ipod touch that counts carbs and calories. If it also keeps track of other nutrients and water, I wouldn't complain, but mostly I want something that has a big food database, some ability to customize (set my own goals & create my own foods), and a focus on carbs and calories. Any recommendations?
  • My Fitness Pal
  • I second MFP
  • Thank you! MFP seems focused so strongly on Calories over other nutrients though - unless I'm doing it wrong, the calories are the only thing showing up on the home screen. And truth be told, I'm more interested in the carbs (because they are more of a mystery to me). Are there folks here who do more carb-based ones?
  • Quote: Thank you! MFP seems focused so strongly on Calories over other nutrients though - unless I'm doing it wrong, the calories are the only thing showing up on the home screen. And truth be told, I'm more interested in the carbs (because they are more of a mystery to me). Are there folks here who do more carb-based ones?
    MFP provides carb counts... and you can customize the amount of carb g's in your plan...
  • I started using MFP after using SparkPeople app for quite some time. I am not sure how to explain what I mean but i'm gonna try lol.

    To me, it is SO hard to input foods volume (in oz., grams, etc... ) The foods there only have say 4 oz. boneless chicken breast. So if you eat 5.75 ounces you have to change the quantity to 1, then readd another entry to add the remaining 1.75 ounces.. It makes it SO confusing to me. What am I doing wrong?

    Hopefully someone knows what I mean. SparkPeople was so simple you could change any listing to either grams, tsp, tbsp, cups, anything...
  • Well I ended up trying 4 different apps: MFP, CarbsControl, Carb Manager, and Carb Master (CarbsControl & CarbsManager were not free). I have to say I liked MFP second best, because the calorie count is displayed so large, and the carb count is hidden below with the other nutrients - psychologically, I need the carbs to be the thing that I see most prominently.

    I ended up using CarbsControl and liking it a little better, because of the way it displays the carbs. It also has some nice input features. My 2 critiques of it are that it doesn't track calcium, and it doesn't have enough regular, non-branded foods in its food list (ie - there was no listing for "avacado" even though there were listings for a couple of products that had avacado in them). But the custom input is good enough (and my eating habits are patterned enough) that I can work around that problem. Oh, and it doesn't have a passcode. I am private about telling my family my weight, so I've been tracking my weight on MFP instead.

    (I don't remeber exactly what I didn't like about the other 2 programs, but they were definitely not as good as MFP and CarbsControl.)
  • Quote: ...To me, it is SO hard to input foods volume (in oz., grams, etc... ) The foods there only have say 4 oz. boneless chicken breast. So if you eat 5.75 ounces you have to change the quantity to 1, then readd another entry to add the remaining 1.75 ounces.. It makes it SO confusing to me. What am I doing wrong?

    Hopefully someone knows what I mean. SparkPeople was so simple you could change any listing to either grams, tsp, tbsp, cups, anything...
    Now the 5.75 oz is hard to figure. But if you ate, per say, 6 oz, and the portion size is 4 oz, then you can just put in the portion size 1.5, and the system will figure out 6 oz. but the .75 require a bit of a math.... Sometime, in the drop down box, it does tell you 1 oz. Then you will select that you ate 6 servings of 1 oz each. Does it make sense?