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Calorie Counter by FatSecret: Your App to a Healthy Life

I would not consider myself fat but I really wanted to track what I ate to see if it was healthy and try to lose a little weight.
After using this application for about 1 month I have lost nearly 6 lbs.
Staying consistent with tracking your data will really teach you life lessons.
This isn't just a 10 day diet but a LIFESTYLE CHANGE!!!

**If you think that counting calories can be a hassle listen to how I do it below**



WHAT IT HAS ON THE COMPETITION:

  • Barcode scanner
    Tons of brands from Restaurants, Chains, Popular Brands, Supermarket Brands
    Sync with FatSecret.com account
    Ability to add meals created online at their sites

CONS:

  • Cannot create a saved meal from phone (neither can compared app [Diet and Food Tracker])
    Not very colorful; more color would make it more appealing to the eye
    Cannot show challenges on phone or engage in them
    Cannot create or add meal from your FatSecret cookbook account
PROS:

  • Barcode Scanner=> when you are preparing something for dinner you can scan it and add it to your meal
    Can add save meals (that were created online) to your food diary
    Quickly use what you ate recently or most often for breakfast to today's Food Diary
    You can add food/workouts that are not on there or find items that others have added
    Online support in the form of groups, forums, and challenges

CONCLUSION:

To defend the app, if you did not have an account online (which isn't needed) then you would not have a cookbook.
On the site people post healthy meals either they came up with or found somewhere else.
I believe this app will continue get better and definitely make YOUR LIFE better.

3 SIMPLE STEPS TO COUNT YOUR CALORIES (for fitness and food):
1. Start by just inputting what you eat normally ie a sandwich, cereal, cheeseburger
2. At the end of the day analyize your counter using the "Food Diary" and "Diet Calendar"
a. Check out (% fat, %carb, %protein, and Net Calories)
3. Then just think about how you can improve from there (think baby steps)


FINAL RATINGS:
8/10 Performance
9/10 User Interface
4/10 Appearance

7/10 Overall
 
I have this app, and I can save a meal via the phone, I've done three so far, roast beef sandwich (the bread, mayo, beef, lettuce and tomato), my morning cereal (cereal and milk) and my morning tea. All were created on the phone. It is a nice little app.

Could you go step-by-step how you save a sandwich on this application without typing all the ingredients every time?
 
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Go to whatever meal you want to save for, say Breakfast. Click on Add food, then Saved Meals. Then click on the manu button again, and select New Saved Meal. Give it a name, then save it, then it'll give you the opportunity to add food to that meal. Click on Recently Eaten and make your selections. Check off the ingredients and save it. From now on you'll be able to select that saved meal. Hope this helps! :)
 
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Go to whatever meal you want to save for, say Breakfast. Click on Add food, then Saved Meals. Then click on the manu button again, and select New Saved Meal. Give it a name, then save it, then it'll give you the opportunity to add food to that meal. Click on Recently Eaten and make your selections. Check off the ingredients and save it. From now on you'll be able to select that saved meal. Hope this helps! :)

Helps tremendously! Thanks for taking the time to write that out for me.
 
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This app really falls down on adding new food. It won't even let you try until you've searched. (And I promise, it doesn't know how many calories are in my chili yet.) But, at the bottom of the results page is the option to add a food. Then we get to the problem. It requires you to enter grams of fat, protein and carbs. And if you don't enter good enough values, you'll get a message that the add failed and to try again later. If you keep trying and look up the calories per gram and play until the math works, it will let you enter the food.

Like most calorie tracking software, they took the path of making their database enormous rather than useful. 92 pages for bread? Really?

On the food diary page, at the bottom is an interesting chart showing what percentage of your calories you've eaten. But it doesn't adjust for exercise.

I recommend adding a food called "food" or "calories" so you can add calories that you don't want to enter in more detail. It's a trick I learned from LoseIt on the iPhone.

The app does what it needs to do but can be pretty frustrating at times.
 
Upvote 0
This app really falls down on adding new food. It won't even let you try until you've searched. (And I promise, it doesn't know how many calories are in my chili yet.) But, at the bottom of the results page is the option to add a food. Then we get to the problem. It requires you to enter grams of fat, protein and carbs. And if you don't enter good enough values, you'll get a message that the add failed and to try again later. If you keep trying and look up the calories per gram and play until the math works, it will let you enter the food.

I don't see what the problem is. either scan the individual ingredients or enter in the total per serving of your calculated values for the chili.

Like most calorie tracking software, they took the path of making their database enormous rather than useful. 92 pages for bread? Really?
I eat some pretty unique kinds of bread. I find this helpful.

On the food diary page, at the bottom is an interesting chart showing what percentage of your calories you've eaten. But it doesn't adjust for exercise.
that because you CAN'T directly subtract the number on the treadmill from your total calorie intake, it doesn't work that way. If you want to keep track of your exercise, fine, but saying "I ran 259 calories today" means nothing.

the app can be a bit daunting because of the sheer amount of food but if you learn to rely on the barcode scanner it can be really useful.
 
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