Is myfitnesspal healthy longterm?

psychod787

born_of_fire74 wrote: »

janejellyroll wrote: »

elisa123gal wrote: »

WinoGelato wrote: »

elisa123gal wrote: »

My view is MFP is what you want to make of it...it is a tool..it can be a support system..and a place to vent and just connect with a variety of people..who have different opinions on weight loss. It is also helpful to learn the calories of the foods you eat.

What I think is unhealthy about a lot of the vibe on MFP.. is the "eat what you want and fit it in your calories." be it junk, fast food... and processed foods. You do lose weight.. and losing weight is more healthy than being overweight. But, how much you weigh is just a component to true overall good health.. The MFP focus is CICO..and nutrition, whole foods... fitness for life.... are underplayed and not emphasized.

So use MFP for you... make it fit your goals..be it short term or for life.

As always when someone makes these claims that all people focus on is CICO without any acknowledgment of overall health and nutrition being a priority, I’m going to ask you to point to some examples where you feel this information is not highlighted. Maybe not by every single poster but to indicate that the overwhelming vibe of MFP forums is to downplay nutrition, I challenge that.

I just wrote my opinion from my long experience on MFP... any time I mention in a post about my experience that CICO is NOT something I do and I don't believe works as an exact science I get attacked to some degree each time. Not that you attacked me..but you "challenged me to list ?? I dunno sources." but I know from my experience..that eating unprocessed foods and improving my nutrition has been vital to my personal weight loss journey. And this will upset you.. but counting calories has never worked for me. All I did was yoyo for years 10 pounds and experience diet burn out. But that is my journey - as the OP asked if logging and counting calories forever was healthy. It clearly works for many of you and that is fantastic. I find it obsessive and it kept me from developing a healthy relationship with food.

Me? I lost all my weight last year pretty quick... never counting a calorie and eating all food groups all day long. No fasting.. I eat carbs.. I eat fruit... I don't eat sugar.. I don't eat fatty foods.. or processed foods at all. My way of eating works like a charm for me..and I'm as thin as I was in my youth.

I don't understand how someone can eat fruit and not eat sugar. What fruits are you eating?

Or processed foods. It's virtually impossible to refrain from eating processed food unless all you eat is raw fruit and veg right off the vine. Cooking food is processing it for crying out loud.

Processed... more MINIMAL refined yes. That and limit HIGHLY process definatly.

psychod787

I want to add this....
You can maintain eating loads of Hyperpalitable highly refined foods. CICI, right. For most of us, we would be ravenously hungry most of the time. Picking less refined foods and allowing a smaller amount of Hyperpalitable highly refined foods, MAY help curb some of that. Generally, as most of us know from PERSONAL experience, less refined foods tends to have higher satiety with LESS cravings.

Johnd2000

Lillymoo01 wrote: »

chromilo wrote: »

elisa123gal wrote: »

My view is MFP is what you want to make of it...it is a tool..it can be a support system..and a place to vent and just connect with a variety of people..who have different opinions on weight loss. It is also helpful to learn the calories of the foods you eat.

What I think is unhealthy about a lot of the vibe on MFP.. is the "eat what you want and fit it in your calories." be it junk, fast food... and processed foods. You do lose weight.. and losing weight is more healthy than being overweight. But, how much you weigh is just a component to true overall good health.. The MFP focus is CICO..and nutrition, whole foods... fitness for life.... are underplayed and not emphasized.

So use MFP for you... make it fit your goals..be it short term or for life.

^^ this. Exactly my thoughts on the MFP vibe.

If this is the vibe you get can you please show posts to support it. I have never read on these boards to eat what you want if it fits your calories. I have read that what you eat does not affect weight loss, but how much you eat which is always followed by the warning that what you eat will affect your overall health.

The problem is that some people believe certain foods are actually harmful in themselves (ie regardless of the dose). This is frankly nonsense, IMO, but it’s a viewpoint that gets reinforced by every restrictive fad diet out there.

psychod787

Johnd2000 wrote: »

Lillymoo01 wrote: »

chromilo wrote: »

elisa123gal wrote: »

My view is MFP is what you want to make of it...it is a tool..it can be a support system..and a place to vent and just connect with a variety of people..who have different opinions on weight loss. It is also helpful to learn the calories of the foods you eat.

What I think is unhealthy about a lot of the vibe on MFP.. is the "eat what you want and fit it in your calories." be it junk, fast food... and processed foods. You do lose weight.. and losing weight is more healthy than being overweight. But, how much you weigh is just a component to true overall good health.. The MFP focus is CICO..and nutrition, whole foods... fitness for life.... are underplayed and not emphasized.

So use MFP for you... make it fit your goals..be it short term or for life.

^^ this. Exactly my thoughts on the MFP vibe.

If this is the vibe you get can you please show posts to support it. I have never read on these boards to eat what you want if it fits your calories. I have read that what you eat does not affect weight loss, but how much you eat which is always followed by the warning that what you eat will affect your overall health.

The problem is that some people believe certain foods are actually harmful in themselves (ie regardless of the dose). This is frankly nonsense, IMO, but it’s a viewpoint that gets reinforced by every restrictive fad diet out there.

Fad diets are very hard for most people long term. Completely eliminating all food groups and macro types. The original post was asking if mfp tracking was unhealthy. I was simply talking of an alternative way for some people who dont want to track. Food choice can have a massive effect on food volume eaten in a day.

**edit** if needed I can post links to several studies that show this.

PAV8888

A friend of mine stops eating delicious food when he has had enough for the time being.

I say things like for sure you don't want like a bit of ice cream or a small dessert?

He answers: But I'm not hungry right now, why would I eat?

I eat delicious (and even semi delicious food) because it is (semi) delicious, because I am hungry and also because it is there, because I'm happy, because I'm sad, because I'm annoyed, because I'm anxious, because I am bored, because I enjoy it, because I am trying to stay awake, because.... but I sort of stop eating, most of the time, when my red numbers start creeping in the three to 400 range!

Coincidentally, at maintenance, I've set my daily goal at approximately a 450 Cal deficit.

While I still log more accurately than most people who log accurately, I most certainly do not log as accurately as when I was trying to lose weight. And I may even use approximately equivalent substitutes just because they're in my recent list, something I would have never done in the past! (No, not all my chocolate jello puddings were chocolate, and some of that Godiva blood orange dark was actually a Hershey kiss, the horror!!!!)

MFP is a very imperfect but still fairly flexible and useful tool!

And humans are tool users!

forestdweller1

After losing 30 pounds during the last 6 months while on MFP, I'm still tracking while I'm maintaining. Adding a few hundred calories allows me a couple glasses of wine when I wish. Calories in \ Calories out , I'm a believer !!

BUT...Those little macro trackers were vitally important to me. Once the calcium - iron - vitamin C - protein figures were met, I felt confident to add a few "luxury items", as long as they fit in my calorie count. Actually, I usually consumed double the amount of protein...kept me full longer. And the amount of nutrients in stuff like bok choy and turnips amazed me.

No obsession here, I just decide what I'm going to eat for the day and log it in. 10 minutes and I don't have to agonize about whether I'm overeating or missing something like my calcium allotment.

A "surprise" lunch date with my grown kids isn't a problem, don't even log that Big Mac, just take a looong walk that evening, or chase the Cat up and down the stairs. Calories out.

And eating as close to the earth as possible is a big help with logging foods. Cook and season fresh veggies, rotisserie your own chicken...if you need to throw away a box, maybe you shouldn't be eating it...and yeah, I love me some bacon

I see there are some "woo monsters" on this forum...go for it...LOL.

HeliumIsNoble

You know, whenever I'm on MFP, sooner or later I end up reading a debate on whether MFP forum culture pushes eating extremely processed food within your calorie goal to new users without acknowledging the importance of meeting your nutritional needs while in deficit.

I think the problem here is context. When people start threads asking for advice about whether a calorie deficit will really work, whatever they eat, it's generally pretty clear from context that the OP knows that they should make room for broccoli in their life and that it would be pretty bad for you, healthwise, to subsist on nothing except sharing size bags of M&Ms.

So no, the backbone users of MFP (many of whom take time out of their day to reply to questions they've seen hundreds of times before with as much care as if it were the first time they've ever heard such a question) probably don't always, 100% of the time, bother to append a lengthy disclaimer explaining in detail why just eating M&Ms would be really bad for you. Simply because it wasn't relevant to the thread- the OP they were replying to had indicated very clearly already that they were aware of basic nutritional recommendations and what they needed was reassurance that they could allow chocolate to cross their lips and lose weight.