60 yrs and up

@BigDfromNJ : She will be welcome here.

My success in promoting MyFitnessPal and calorie counting in general by any method has been very limited. I have two close relatives who have been struggling with their weight. One is in need of losing 100lbs (by her report), and has a number of health problems, including back and legs. One year, at her request, I showed her how to use MFP and gave her a bunch of beginner's tips. A couple of weeks later, she texted me "how can you live your life like this?" She quit on the spot. 🫣 Oh well!

I've never really found it that hard to do for the months where I'm actively losing weight. It's much harder while in maintenance, or on travel where every meal is from a restaurant, or in many other cases where I trail off.

Ladies! I’ll have you know, my latest friend request is in a tux and looks just like the Most Interesting Man In The World. In fact, it may be his stolen photo?

Oh, honey, take my money!!!!!

I used to clean my “friends list” out every three months. If you hadn’t logged in in at least three months, I removed you, with a few exceptions of extremely active users that suddenly stopped and I fervently hoped they’d come back. Remember NorthCascades and the gorgeous mountain photos?

I’d add anyone, in hopes of helping someone, or likewise to pick up useful info for myself from a trusted board poster. I was surprised after a year of culling how consistent the group had become, and how few I had to remove.

The Newsfeed was the magic ingredient of MFP, in my opinion. You needed inspiration? Motivation? Checking your newsfeed over breakfast was more than enough “they’re doing it, so, so can I” oomph.

People would share photos of their walks, their dogs, their Strava circuit, talk about their grandkids or school (both teachers and students), My favorite was a riotous bodybuilding cop (talk about inspiration!) who used to share stories from the beat.

For a “service” app, that was a massive kick in the gut to lose those connections. I’m settled into my routine, but my anonymous ID-and-face-only friends kept me riding the wave of minding my eating behavior.

I did use to have lunch occasionally with a lady who lives about twenty minutes away. Lovely woman, but she moved to the other app. She had to have to social connection, so we’ve fallen out of touch.

That’s the thing. You see new and returning users on here begging for connection and there’s zero, zilch. I’m not going to post the things here I shared there. I’m an over-sharer (ask my kids!). So many people are more comfortable asking questions of, and sharing trials with, a smaller, cultivated, trusted group of friends, than to the world at large here on the boards.

We also used to “out” scammers who’d infiltrated the group by friending friends of friends. That was handy, too.

MFP’s professed service is to help us lose weight and live healthily. How hard is it to maintain a community? Make it part of premium, or charge a separate charge for it. Just bring the damn thing back. It’s sorely missed and sorely needed.

And once again, if you have no intentions of doing so, it’s ridiculous to maintain the “how to add friends” threads, especially that monster thread at the top of this here board.

@springlering62 : You're totally on the money. And, it's all about money, as the service is owned by private equity who's sole purpose is to increase it's value so they can sell it at a profit.

I'll say it again: they should look at Strava, the "social exercise" app and make MFP the "social weight loss" app. I don't think there's much to distinguish it from the crowd, otherwise.

*** It suddenly occurs to me that they may have done some market research and found out that some people didn't like the feed! Is that possible?

I didn't like the newsfeed. I tried, got some things out of it, yeah. But not enough. I didn't like it, and don't miss it.

To me, it was over-filled with cuties posing in gym mirrors who looked nice but weren't remotely close to my demographic or interests so had little to say that interested me; massive volume of auto-posts of people's workouts and "diary completed" messages; mythologies about diet/fitness that made me cringe; and more.

Yes, there were a few good, interesting people whom I valued. Yes, I could've invested more time in curating the friend set, but the reward didn't seem commensurate with the effort.

Overall, a discouraging, profitless time-suck. JMO, obviously.

In the right thread here, I'm happy to (over-?)share anything I would've shared there (and I did post there occasionally). I don't have much fear about this being "too public", personally . . . even though I know the Community is accessible to public web searches, and that I've personally shared enough personal bits and pieces here and there that someone could dox me if they were motivated. Meh.

MFP said too small a fraction of people used it to merit the increasing cost of maintaining the antique code. I assume they looked at total numbers of users, possibly some of them no longer active except for auto-updates of exercise from their fitness tracker, and decided too few people were actually actively using it. Having zero statistical information to evaluate, I have no opinion about that. I know that it's true that really old code costs more and more to maintain - let alone improve - as time goes on. But I don't have details about those effort costs either, so not much opinion about the cost/benefit balance, either.

I do know that some people here valued it highly, and I think it was probably a mistake to get rid of it without a close substitute. Overall, I think corporate MFP under any/all owners is going to put a priority on creating and promoting sexy-sounding new features (like the "photo estimation" and "meal plan" things) to attract new users, and ignore feedback from long-term users. The new features don't even need to be fully effective or well-thought-out, just appealing to the public. That's just how the quasi-free app marketplace works, and MFP is far, far from the worst example in various ways, IMO.

But MFP's changes over the last few years have a way of ticking off established users. Here's a thing, though: MFP, in selling advertising to brokers, can still claim a large X number of users, without revealing how many are actually using the app regularly, if they want to present themselves that way. They get revenue from ad brokers, and from premium users. I suspect the ad side is the more profitable, but I don't know.

As far as people on here begging for connection: Lots of them don't even respond to actual questions that were part of people in the Community trying to help them, after they actively asked for help. Yes, there are exceptions. But I don't have any inclination for my heart to bleed for the average "beg for connection". I think most of them are hollow begs, an attempt to frame things so that they have someone else - failed "accountabilibuddies" - to whom they can attribute giving up.

Yes, I'm cynical.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who can't get IRL friends to join MFP. But perhaps that's better. I actually find it easier to discuss 'getting old' issues and take advice from folks I don't' know IRL! Probably something that stems from my childhood and being labeled 'fat' by people I did know. In any case, I'm enjoying this thread.

I've found the only "accountabilibuddy" I need is me. Keeping myself accountable works for me. Checking in with this thread is part of that!

well, I don’t know what I did right at the time, but that was so not the experience I had with newsfeed.

While a lot weren’t in my demographic, per se, the ones that stuck around (of any age) were serious about loss and maintenance, and the photos were of the “progress” variety. I had a couple of bodybuilders who shared the typical competition photos, or of what they were doing in the gym, but they were hard core serious, and sharing what and how they were preparing for, which was really interesting.

I only had one fellow who shared photos I wasn’t entirely comfortable with, but I chalked that up to my advanced age comparative to him, and my innate Boomer primness. He really just wanted reassurance he was doing OK from the older crowd and we politely gave it to him, along with advice and encouragement. I figured it was just an age gap.

It wasn’t a time suck it was a joy, a mutual reassurance, mutual shared experience, and mutual cheering party, and I miss browsing them over coffee.

Interesting we had such vastly different takes on Newsfeed.

Mixed bag with the news feed. There's some people I sincerely miss who were working on goals like I am. They struggled like I do. We could share our struggles a little more personally than here. There also were some who were just weird. Others had asked for a connection for "accountability," and then gave me the bum's rush when I actually would call them on their … stuff. But I do miss a few great people.

Stick to it whether it's here or somewhere else. Don't quit. That's the main thing.