Why MyFitnessPal does not work for weight loss?

Anyeong! As you can see from previous few posts, Noona has been trying to religiously key in her calorie intake in a health app named MyFitnessPal. After a month of logging in, unfortunately, she does not see any weight loss despite the target of losing 0.5kg per month. Hmm...

Based on Noona's personal observation, these few points may be the main reason of why MyFitnessPal does not work for weight loss:

(1) The misconception of you can burn your over-consumed calories

While this is technically true if you are looking at it from mathematical point of view, Noona tends to eat higher calorie food for dinner especially when she sees she has enough calorie "quantity" left to consume for the day. So yeah, most of the time after gym session, she will see a whopping available calorie of 900 - 1000 kcal. Instead of sticking to the plan to eat healthy, she usually succumbs to food such as this bowl of fried rice. Uhm...

(2) The calorie database in the app may not be accurate

Some of the portion used to count the calorie in MyFitnessPal are quite vague, to be honest with you. A cup/ a bowl depends on the size of the cup or the bowl. There is no way to gauge the calorie accurately unless you can weigh your food intake (which is not convenient at all). So most of the times, you may end up under-estimating your calorie intake from food. On the other hand, you may also end up over-estimating your burnt calorie from exercising. 

(3) You cannot always find the food in the apps' database

Some of the food that Noona consumes are not available in the database and she has to log in using similar food to key in the calorie intake. The thing is, while both food may be named as "fried kway teow" or whatever, they may have a way different calorie numbers contained in the dish. Because after all calories do depend on a lot of factors such as the way the food is cooked, the condiments used in cooking, the sauces, etc. 

With those reasons being mentioned, MyFitnessPal seems to be able to give more accurate calorie data on more popular food such as McDonalds' or hawker food (if you are living in Singapore). So yeah, while it is not foolproof, you can still check estimate number of calorie for those popular dishes. Hopefully, it will help you to choose healthier option when you are eating out. 

Meanwhile, the weight-loss journey continues. Let's just hope we can find a better way to reach our ideal body weight.

Fighting!