The beginner's guide to using MyFitnessPal

Counting calories has been shown to be an extremely successful method of losing weight. In order get results with it, you need to be able to use a calorie counting app, such as My Fitness Pal. In this article we'll show you how to use My Fitness Pal properly, so that you can lose weight effectively.

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What is calorie counting?

Everybody requires a certain number of calories per day. The amount we need will vary from person to person, based on a variety of factors including weight, lean mass, age, how active you are and how much exercise you get.

If you eat the number of calories your body requires each day, you will maintain your body weight.

In order to lose body fat, you must be in what’s called a calorie deficit. This means you eat slightly less calories per day than your body requires. If you have ever followed a diet successfully, you will have been in a calorie deficit.

Counting calories is one method you can use to ensure you stay in a calorie deficit. Put very simply, you add up the total number of calories that you eat each day, to stay within a given target range. One of the reasons many people fail with diets, is because they cut out all of the food they enjoy eating. It’s common to cut out chocolate, wine and pizza right? When you then re-introduce these foods, you end up putting all of the weight back on.

This happens because you don’t have control.

With the calorie counting method, you can always stay in control. If you record and log your food each day, then you can include foods such as chocolate, wine and pizza and still lose weight.

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Setting up a My Fitness Pal profile

To begin with, you’ll need to set up a My Fitness Pal profile. Here’s how you do it.

1. Download the app or log onto www.myfitnesspal.com
2. Press “sign up now”.
3. Follow the onscreen instructions and set your account up.

Logging Food

Once you’re all set up, it’s time to start logging your food. There are three main ways that you can log food on My Fitness Pal:

Scan your food

With this method, you can use the apps in built barcode scanner, to scan the barcode of the food you are eating.

It works well if you are eating foods such as premade salads or sandwiches, as one quick scan of the barcode and all the data will be inputted into My Fitness pal for you. Here’s how to do it:

1. Open the app and press the blue “add” button at the bottom, centre of the screen.
2. Press the orange “food” button.
3. Select the meal you wish to log (breakfast, lunch, dinner or snack).
4. Press the “barcode” symbol, in the top right hand side of the screen.
5. Scan the barcode of the food that you want to log.
6. Adjust the portion size of necessary.

Search and add

This method works well if you are eating foods that don’t have a barcode, such as fruit and vegetables. Here’s how you do it:

1. Open the app and press the blue “add” button at the bottom, centre of the screen.
2. Press the orange “food” button.
3. Select the meal you wish to log (breakfast, lunch, dinner or snack).
4. Press on the “search for food” tab and write down the name of the food you want to log.
5. This is where it can get a little tricky, don’t just rush and pick the top entry, you may need to scroll and find the item that fits most accurately.
6. Select what you want to log, then alter the quantity.
7. Press enter.

After using My Fitness Pal for a while, you will build up a list of recently added food. If you eat an apple each day, then you’ll just need to log the apple from the “recent foods” list, rather than go through the previous steps.

Quick add

This method is handy if you are following a recipe that displays the calories, as you can simply enter the intake without having to add each individual ingredient.

It also works well if you are at a restaurant that displays the calories of it’s food on the menu, as you can quickly enter the total without having to do a search.

1. Open the app and press the blue “add” button at the bottom, centre of the screen.
2. Press the orange “food” button.
3. Select the meal you wish to log (breakfast, lunch, dinner or snack).
4. Scroll to the very bottom of the page and select ‘quick add”.
5. You can now enter the number of calories you are eating. If you have a premium account you can also enter the amount of protein, fat and carbs for this meal.

Knowing how much to eat in the first place

If we have provided you with a calorie target, enter that into the app.

If you're stuck, confused or just unsure, simply send us a message and we will advise you

In Conclusion

After you’ve used the app for a week or two, it should become fairly quick and easy.

It shouldn’t take more than 5-10 minutes per day to log your food, meaning that you can easily stay on track with your weight loss goals.

Make sure you log everything. One common mistake I see is people logging their food Monday to Friday, but not bothering to log the weekends food intake. They then wonder why they are not making progress!

Be honest, log everything and create long lasting habits.

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