No direction

beardpar

The app has no direction. I don’t need to see things not related to my goals. I thought the app worked by asking what your goals are and then telling what to do with monitoring tools. It doesn’t feel very custom if I still need to make decisions on the diet type when it knows my goals. The point of parting is having the app take place of paying someone to tell me what to do. Am I missing something?

Alatariel75

You are missing something indeed. This app is here for you to log your food and exercise to ensure that you keep within the calorie goal and, if you choose to, macro goals that are set when you do the set up quiz, or when you customise them.

It doesn't tell you what to eat, when to eat, how to eat, choose a diet for you etc, nor does it claim to. It tells you (roughly) how much to eat in terms of calories based on how much you told it you weigh, and how much you want to lose per week, and gives you the most common macro (carbs/fat/protein) split that you can either follow, change or ignore. That's it.

The paid version has customisable options such as setting up an intermittent fasting window, or giving yourself different calorie goals depending on the day, but in the end, it's an electronic diary that exists for you to put information into and interpret the data from. How, what and when you eat is entirely up to you.

sollyn23l2

beardpar wrote: »

The app has no direction. I don’t need to see things not related to my goals. I thought the app worked by asking what your goals are and then telling what to do with monitoring tools. It doesn’t feel very custom if I still need to make decisions on the diet type when it knows my goals. The point of parting is having the app take place of paying someone to tell me what to do. Am I missing something?

This is a calorie counting app, not a specialized diet app. It's for tracking calories in (food) and calories out (movement/exercise). It can't make decisions for you or tell you what to eat. There are specialized diet apps depending on the diet you want to follow. Look for your preferred diet in your app playstore.

ddsb1111

MyFitnessPal is a health and fitness app that helps users track their food and exercise to reach their goals. It includes tools for creating meal plans, tracking calories, and monitoring progress.

Features:

Food diary: Log meals, create recipes, and view macronutrients

Exercise tracker: Track steps, physical activity, and heart rate

Goal setting: Set goals for weight, nutrition, and physical activity

Reminders: Set reminders to record meals and water intake

Community: Connect with an online community for support

Graphs and reporting: View graphs and reports to monitor progress

Customization: Customize calorie and macronutrient goals, and view them by percentage or grams

Use what’s useful to you and disregard the rest. There is no specific diet needed to lose weight, just a calorie deficit, so MFP enables you to track that deficit. You have to do the work and eat within the goal calories set up for you when you answered the goal questions. Take some time to familiarize yourself with the app; you may find useful tools you initially didn’t realize were helpful or important. That’s what I’ve found with the community forum.

beardpar

Thanks, thought the app was better. If my goals are to gain weight, it shouldn’t show me meal plans for losing weight. If my goal is to gain muscle mass, it shouldn’t show me work outs for losing weight. It’s a simple addition I can’t believe isn’t a desirable quality.

vingogly

beardpar wrote: »

Thanks, thought the app was better. If my goals are to gain weight, it shouldn’t show me meal plans for losing weight. If my goal is to gain muscle mass, it shouldn’t show me work outs for losing weight. It’s a simple addition I can’t believe isn’t a desirable quality.

Better?? It does exactly what it's supposed to do. It's not intended to do anything else, like show you workouts or tell you which approach to losing weight is best for you. If you want those things, you need another app for it. I'm a retired software engineer; adding what you are asking for to MFP is far from a "simple addition".

springlering62

If it’s suggesting you “lose weight”, it’s based on what you entered under goals.

Garbage in, garbage out, as my generation used to say.

Go check and adjust your goal entries as needed.

There’s a board here specifically for those looking to gain weight.

Also, many helpful users who can provide suggestions and advice on gaining muscle.

You get out of it what you put into it- much like gaining that muscle you want.

😘

AnnPT77

Look, lots of people here - most people here - are trying to lose weight, so that's most of the content in the blogs, plans, etc.

Not everyone here is trying to lose weight, though, so there IS other content for gaining weight, maintaining weight, getting fitter, adding muscle, and more. It's just not as obvious because there's less of it, since weight loss is by far the most common goal.

If you want only goal-specific information, this is not the app for that. This one supports many goals, and guess what: Many of us have multiples of those goals. I do.

Get an app specific that's absolutely tailored to your (single?) goal, if such a thing exist.

If you want an app that's kind of like a conveyor belt, where you hop on at the start and it delivers you to your goal without added thought and work from you, I don't think there's any such app. IME - long experience - goal accomplishment doesn't work like that, at least not for serious, life-altering goals like the ones MFP supports for many of us.

This app not suiting you doesn't make it a bad app. Some people want a hammer (only). Some want something more like a full toolkit. A toolkit takes more knowledge and effort to use, but can do more things. MFP is more like a toolkit.

Best wishes, sincerely: I hope you find what you need.

Alatariel75

beardpar wrote: »

Thanks, thought the app was better. If my goals are to gain weight, it shouldn’t show me meal plans for losing weight. If my goal is to gain muscle mass, it shouldn’t show me work outs for losing weight. It’s a simple addition I can’t believe isn’t a desirable quality.

Oh, honey. That's like saying "I can't believe the Empire State Building doesn't have a floating infinity pool at the top of the spire, it's a simple addition!"

There's nothing simple about that, it would be a complete reworking of the app requiring huge work and recoding. It would be a completely different app. It is what people have set out above - a tool. And as Ann says, one that's primarily geared to people losing weight, because that's the vast majority of their user base.

It isn't designed to pick and choose blogs, exercises or food suggestions to fit a users specific goals, it just gives you a bunch of resources to pick and choose what you need. The rest is up to the user.

AnnPT77

beardpar wrote: »

Thanks, thought the app was better. If my goals are to gain weight, it shouldn’t show me meal plans for losing weight. If my goal is to gain muscle mass, it shouldn’t show me work outs for losing weight. It’s a simple addition I can’t believe isn’t a desirable quality.

Bad news: Some exercise plans may say they're for losing weight, but that's just a marketing hook.

Exercise doesn't inherently cause weight loss. It can improve health, add muscle mass, give a person better physical abilities of various types, and more, including burn a few calories. But that can all happen while gaining, losing or maintaining weight, depending on calorie intake.

I got very athletically active in my late 40s, after decades of being a couch lump, pretty much. I did pretty intense cardiovascular exercise, lifted weights, worked out 6 days most weeks, even competed as an athlete (not always unsuccessfully in age group comps). I added muscle mass. I got a little smaller, because muscle is smaller pound for pound than fat. But I stayed overweight to class 1 obese, constant weight . . . for around a dozen years.

Why? Weight gain or loss is about calorie balance. If you want to gain weight, eat more calories than you burn. If you want of most the gain to be muscle mass, do strength exercise progressively and on a regular schedule. Weight lifting is the most efficient strength exercise, but not the only one. Get overall good nutrition, especially but not exclusively adequate protein for that goal. Ideally, do some cardiovascular exercise alongside for heart health among other benefits.

MFP can help you figure out the calories, monitor the nutrition, make sure you fuel the exercise, help you find exercise plans, and more. Yes, it will take some effort and learning.