Fitness and diet management are perfect fits for technological tools. Both are based on counting and tracking numerical data and retrieving information from well-established and universally available databases. Therefore, it is no surprise that a wide range of devices, web programs, and smartphone apps designed to help us attain our health goals are now available.
A few months ago, a technician at my company put together an excellent program about fitness gadgets such as Apple Watch, Samsung Gear Fit, and Fitbit. She tested and evaluated the pros and cons of each and presented this information at a community forum. It was an extremely popular presentation, attended by twenty community members trying to improve their fitness levels. It seems like everywhere I go, I encounter people wearing these devices.
I am a devoted subscriber to a different family of technological solutions – web programs. The specific duo that I use is MyFitnessPal plus Samsung Health. Both offer web accounts, powerful apps, and work in synch with one another.
I attribute much of my success losing fifteen pounds last year and my ability to maintain my weight afterward to MyFitnessPal (MFP). I use it so frequently and have gained such value from it that I now pay the $50 annual fee to the developer instead of just taking advantage of the free version.
MFP is a web-based service with an associated Android/iPhone app. Once the user sets up an account, they may immediately begin using the robust features via laptop, tablet, or smartphone. The app is my primary interface for MFP and I expect most subscribers will interact with the information through their smartphones as well.
Several features make the app especially powerful for healthy weight loss and diet management. The first is that it calculates the subscriber’s daily calorie allowance by using readily available and accepted averages for gender, weight goal, height and current weight. I double-checked my calorie allotment against other resources on line and, after evaluating my own results, determined that the calorie budget is on target.
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| Menus from restaurants are available through MyFitnessPal's robust food database. |
MyFitnessPal is tied to a robust database which contains a phenomenal range of food products. Thus, the user may easily access nutritional information for generic raw ingredients along with niche brands and restaurant meals. I recently searched for a snack I purchased in a hotel lobby called a “BudiBar” (I’d never heard of it before) and it popped up instantaneously displaying nutritional contents that matched the product’s label. The database contains entire menus from restaurant chains – even regional chains. Last week I ordered dinner at Chipotle and was able to select each of the components for the bowl – down to the specific type of salsa, beans, and rice. The database allows users to select the specific quantity consumed for each item in units including grams, ounces, cups, and tablespoons.
The daily food diary is intuitive and easy to use. The user may scroll back and forth between days, copy meals from one day to the next, set up frequently eaten foods, create recipes, and more. If desired, the premium on-line version allows the user to download and print their history for tracking or analysis. This could be especially useful if working with a dietitian, physician, or coach.
Lastly, MFP provides a field into which the user enters their exercise for the day. The calories burned are then recorded as a net add in the daily calorie journal.
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| Programs like MyFitnessPal can help users make informed decisions when selecting food. |
The magic of MFP is that the features and methodology built into the program reinforce the concept of a calorie “budget”. The user starts each day with a set number of calories. Then, the user “spends” those calories over the course of the day to power (or “fund”) their body’s functions and activities. The food diary is like a “check register”, into which the user enters each meal and the calories are deducted. The user watches the calorie balance decrease over the course of the day. If the user exercises, calories are “deposited” back into the account and the balance increases. Voila – instant gratification in the form of more calories to eat!
MFP’s real potential for helping users improve their health is when one starts to play around with the allocation of calories between “buckets”. In financial management, this is like putting more money in the rent budget by taking money out of the entertainment budget. With MFP, the user moves calories among protein, carbohydrate and fat buckets to hit optimal targets for each. Therefore, MFP allows the user to micromanage their own diet to the degree desired: One may monitor calories only, macro nutrients, or manage nutrient intake down to milligrams of calcium, iron, types of fat, sugars, and vitamins.
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| MyFitnessPal allows users to learn about the nutritional value of a wide range of foods. |
I recently began using the Samsung Health app that came on my new Galaxy 7 phone. The app is synced with MyFitnessPal and I set it up to track running and walking – my two most common forms of exercise. Now, when I walk or run (as long as I am carrying my phone), my steps automatically populate MyFitnessPal diary and then MFP calculates the calories burned and adds those back into that day’s calorie budget. So far, the app accurately and automatically detects when I start and end a walking or running session and appears to successfully differentiate between walking and running - I don’t have to activate or deactivate the app for each session nor do I have to tell it which activity I am engaged in.
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| Samsung Health app displays all kinds of useful and fun information about workouts. |
As with most software, there are many other features that an individual might choose to utilize. MFP, for example, has an excellent blog with short articles, practical and creative recipes, and quick guidance on workouts. Samsung Health accesses a wider range of articles from news sources about health topics and offers a heart rate monitor.
These two programs work together seamlessly and provide the user with powerful capabilities to achieve and maintain individual wellness goals.
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| The excellent MyFitnessPal blog offers creative, scalable, fast recipes. |
I highly recommend digging into these next generation diet and fitness tools because they provide much needed accuracy and ease for those of us wanting to improve our health.
