Nutrition Student Here! Want to share your experiences?

Kelseyg11

Hello everyone! My name is Kelsey Gatto, and I am a long-time MyFitnessPal user and graduate student studying Nutrition at Montclair State University in New Jersey. I am hoping to hear about people's experiences using mobile weight loss apps to learn more about what factors may predict people's success, looking at frequency and consistency of food logging, portion estimation ability, and concept of portion norms.

If you want to learn more and help us learn more about what makes an app like MFP work, check out my group! http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/109031-share-your-experience-nutrition-app-research

T1DCarnivoreRunner

Here's my experience: Some users on the forums have limited knowledge and are unwilling to admit, even to themselves, that there is more knowledge than what they know. It is like a religious belief such that if a user presents something that doesn't fit within that belief, then they attack that user... sometimes for months. It gets brutal.

Here's something else from my weight loss experience that most find difficult to understand or believe: Plateaus are real. I've personally experienced a couple of long plateaus that lasted for several months. The first is the best example... here is what happened:

-I stopped losing weight, despite continuing to eat at a deficit. Sure, I had fluctuations of a few lbs. every time I weighed, but it was always up and down within the same range.
-After 2 months, I changed to an IF plan which actually caused me to be in a huge surplus overall, but at a large deficit every other day. It's the EODD if you want to look into it.
-After 6 weeks of eating at a large surplus and still not seeing any losses still (except fluctuations, but really shouldn't I have gained during that time? No, because that isn't how a plateau works), I went back to a regular daily deficit.
-After another 2 months of no gains or losses, I suddenly started dropping several lbs. in a few days (a "whoosh"). It was about 7 lbs. lost, but I always believe it could have been more if not for eating at a surplus during the IF diet, which was intended to force a loss / whoosh (it didn't).

zcb94

OP, I just took your survey, and it was really enlightening. I hope I helped.

Kelseyg11

Thanks for the interesting feedback! Please consider filling out the full survey at tinyurl.com/WeightLossAppSurvey if you haven't yet. I would lose to be able to use your insights!

zcb94

Kelseyg11 wrote: »

Thanks for the interesting feedback! Please consider filling out the full survey at tinyurl.com/WeightLossAppSurvey if you haven't yet. I would lose to be able to use your insights!

I already did, but will look at the other version and report back to you.

zcb94

Ok, both are the same. I hope that my answers/data will further your project in some way!

T1DCarnivoreRunner

I did the survey, but there was a problem with one of the screens for measurements and I'm positive that screen just had all 0's.