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software or site to track macros & calories: cons & pros?
I've been tracking calories and I'd like to start tracking carbs, protein, fats, and maybe sodium.
The sites or programs I've heard mentioned most often are calorieking, fitday, and sparkpeople. What are some pros and cons of the different sites and programs? I'm willing to pay for a program if it seems to be more what I need. If it's a downloadable program, I'd be using the Mac version.
If I understand correctly fitday deducts fiber from the calorie totals, and I remember reading that at least one program subtracts exercise from calories. I wouldn't want something like that that changed the calorie total, but if there is a workaround then I'm fine with it.
The calorieking download page says "You can now record up to six meals or snacks per day" Do other programs also limit the number of meals you can record? (I can think of plenty of days when I am at more than 6.)
Do all of the sites & programs allow you to enter some custom foods? Do some use mostly user-created foods and values (which I would think would have it's own problems)?
Thanks muchisimo,
Jennifer
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I've been tracking calories and I'd like to start tracking carbs, protein, fats, and maybe sodium.
The sites or programs I've heard mentioned most often are calorieking, fitday, and sparkpeople. What are some pros and cons of the different sites and programs? I'm willing to pay for a program if it seems to be more what I need. If it's a downloadable program, I'd be using the Mac version.
If I understand correctly fitday deducts fiber from the calorie totals, and I remember reading that at least one program subtracts exercise from calories. I wouldn't want something like that that changed the calorie total, but if there is a workaround then I'm fine with it.
The calorieking download page says "You can now record up to six meals or snacks per day" Do other programs also limit the number of meals you can record? (I can think of plenty of days when I am at more than 6.)
Do all of the sites & programs allow you to enter some custom foods? Do some use mostly user-created foods and values (which I would think would have it's own problems)?
Thanks muchisimo,
Jennifer
Ck limits the number of meals/snacks, but you can put anything you want into the meals/snacks. In the older version, it was three meals and a snack, so you had to put all snacks under the one snack heading.
It's been quite some time since I used it, but the other option was just to put in the food with a time stamp and not list it as any specific meal or snack. I used the Palm PDA version, so I'm not sure that option works on the PC/Mac version.
They all have custom foods. CK also has custom meals, where you combine repeat ingredients or combos of foods together for convenience.
TheDailyPlate.com allows you to use foods that other people have added to the database, too. That means they have a ton of restaurant items in there. Free to try and use, pay for the advanced version if you want to.
I'll bet they all subtract cals from exercise. Fitday and ck do. If you just want to track exercise, create custom exercises that burn zero calories and use them, instead.
I've been tracking calories and I'd like to start tracking carbs, protein, fats, and maybe sodium.
The sites or programs I've heard mentioned most often are calorieking, fitday, and sparkpeople. What are some pros and cons of the different sites and programs? I'm willing to pay for a program if it seems to be more what I need. If it's a downloadable program, I'd be using the Mac version.
If I understand correctly fitday deducts fiber from the calorie totals, and I remember reading that at least one program subtracts exercise from calories. I wouldn't want something like that that changed the calorie total, but if there is a workaround then I'm fine with it.
The calorieking download page says "You can now record up to six meals or snacks per day" Do other programs also limit the number of meals you can record? (I can think of plenty of days when I am at more than 6.)
Do all of the sites & programs allow you to enter some custom foods? Do some use mostly user-created foods and values (which I would think would have it's own problems)?
Thanks muchisimo,
Jennifer
Jennifer,
I can't speak to fitday as I've never used it. I currently use Crosstrainer I really like it. Previously I used Calorie King PC. They each have their pros and cons. I think I'll take each program and list things I like or dislike. As far as individually listing more than 3 meals and snacks I don't think any of the programs allow for that. I haven't found that to be a problem though. I just group all my snack food by time of day ie am, afternoon, evening and put all entries into that particular snack slot. I don't use Sparkpeople's tracker but I do like their message boards and the site has a lot of info.
Calorie King for the computer. It does 3 meals and 3 snacks. Allows for custom entries for both exercise and food. This is the program that subtracts exercise calories which I did not like. To get around this I made all custom entries for exercise at 0 calories each. The food data base is large, includes more convenience, prepackaged and restaurant foods than Crosstrainer does. They also update it frequently so I'm finding that CK has more up to date info than Crosstrainer. I find the reports/analysis to be limited. There is no recipe calculator. The online version which you pay for has more reporting features that the computer version lacked. Also the online version apparently has a cool feature where for instance you can enter a restaurant item like a burger from somewhere and subtract the bun, mayo etc. The pc program doesn't do this. Calorie King comes in both MAC and PC versions.
Crosstainer. I am currently liking Crosstrainer better than CK. It also does 3 meals and 3 snacks, allows for custom food entries. It has a recipe calculator and also allows you to keep recipes in the program. The exercise tracker is much more extensive than Calorie King's. You can track all kinds of variables. It doesn't subtract exercise calories from total consumed although there's a space where you can look at net calories also. It has a lot more reports and analysis features. It tracks more nutrients. I'm finding a lot of items in the food data base are out of date or inaccurate. But it does inlcude the USDA food data base which I love. I like the custom food entry interface better than the CK program's. Crosstrainer has more analysis and reports the summary is much better in my opinion. One thing I haven't figured out yet is how to make the program do a simple exercise entry like 1 hour of weight training for a class or exercise video. The program is set up to enter each exercise separately which is great for tracking progress but is time consuming to set up initially. Although once it's done it's awesome. Crosstrainer is PC only. I'm using it on an intel MAC and it is a pain to go into the windows side every time I want to enter something.
Both Crosstrainer and Calorie King allow you to download the program and try it before you buy it. From my experience no program is perfect and it only gets better as you take the time to customize it to your food preferences. However the initial setup until you have it customized to your eating habits is time consuming. I'm not sure why you're concerned about user custom entries. It allows for more accurate tracking in opinion.
I've been using Sparkpeople. They have a lot of features in their food tracking software. You can track specific nutrients (all vitamins, sodium etc). You can import foods from other users and customize them (I look for my custom foods first by name and if I can import it I do, then I check to make sure the nutrition info is correct). They also have the ability to track exercises etc, but your calories burned is not added back into your available calories for the day like fitday and thedailyplate. Plus they have a lot of nutrition, goal, and other content that makes it interesting.
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Does anyone have the paid version of Daily Plate? If so, what do you get for the $ that you don't get free, and can you still log in from anywhere or do you have to install software onto a computer?
I just started using Fitday, which is free, online, and actually pretty comprehensive. You can enter custom foods, it remembers frequently chosen items, it shows pie graphs plus shows grams and percentages of the macronutrients. I'm pretty pleased with it. I can quickily and easily enter info, and despite doing this I'm trying not to be too obsessive about all this. I tend to get food amnesia so this keeps me on track and does all the necessary figuring for me.
For computer based programs (versus online):
I use Nutribase EZ ... but it appears to be Windows based only.
I have also used DietPower ... which I didn't like as much as Nutribase EZ (it is actually more pretty to look at and just as easy to use, but I didn't like some of the automatic features, like how it estimates your metabolic rate and tells you if it is increasing or decreasing) but I believe they have a Mac version.
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TheDailyPlate.com allows you to use foods that other people have added to the database, too. That means they have a ton of restaurant items in there. Free to try and use, pay for the advanced version if you want to.
After reading this, I used DP last week and LOVED it. I'd tried it before but it's been a while and I liked it much more than FitDay simply because nearly everything I eat is already in there so I don't have to custom add it (like Kirkland brand tuna, for instance). Thanks for mentioning it.
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FitDay is the one I have used for a long, long time! I actually paid the small software fee and it was so much better to have it there on my desktop, plus faster to use and easier to use than online version... ;-)
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software or site to track macros & calories: cons & pros?
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