Alright. I've had sooo many people come to me asking which program is better: Weight Watchers? or myfitnesspal?
Honestly, whichever one works for you. The "trick" to losing weight is more calories out than in (well, that's the basic laymen's version ).
But then they ask me the difference. Well, since I didn't know anything about myfitnesspal, I decided to look into it. What I've noted is that you input your needed information, and it calculates your daily nutritonal intake values for you as well as allows you to log your meals/snacks. Sounds like a plan to me.
Yes, Weight Watchers is based on the Points programs. But ultimately those points are given based on the food's nutritional value as well. Toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe.
Which one is easiest? I haven't a clue seeing as how I'm only on WW and only familiar with it's process. I also chose to do WW online, and I use the iphone app for everything (simple, simple, simple).
But....that has changed as of today. How? I've done gone and joined myfitnesspal.com as well. Why? To run a comparison on them, and to gather more information so as to help provide friends and family with more information on which to make their choice of program.
One thing I noticed right off the bat with myfitnesspal is that it does have a great database of foods. Then came the problem. Upon trying to log a certain food down (O.R. Smart Pop 94% fat free - 100 calorie bags to be exact), I found that out of all the entries for it, absolutely zero were correct in their nutritional values. It seems that no one seems to acknowledge astericks on labels nor read the fine print at the bottom of the label. If they had, then they would've noticed that a few of the values changed once the popcorn was popped vs. in its original kernel form. Unfortunately, it didn't stop there. I found that most foods have soooooo many entries with many of them being wrong with their nutritional values. This could cause skewed results with someone relying on the program 100%. One needs to be quite diligent in checking the nutritional values of their choice on the list before just logging it. Just sayin'.
On the other hand, WW costs you approx. $18/month whereas myfitnesspal is $0.00. To many, that little detail offsets the aforementioned one in the above paragraph.
Right now, from what I know, both programs allow you to log your daily food and liquid intake (WW can take you really in depth with that) as well as log daily activity.
My goal is to see how close the programs are in terms of their daily guidelines/recommendations, and how the difference(s) could/would affect one's weight loss outcomes (depending on choice of program).
Today:
With WW, not counting my possible bag of OR 94% ff-100 cal popcorn, I only have a single point left. My bag of popcorn would cost me 2 points. (not a big deal seeing as how I have my activity points from today to "take" from or my weekly "overage" allowance points to take from)
According to myfitnesspal, even with my bag of popcorn, I still have 196 cals, 31 carbs, 3 g fat, and 3 g protein available for the day.
The difference came in with my lovely 2 cupcakes I ate today in lieu of lunch (I know, I know...whatever ). It seems myfitnesspal has much less of an issue with them that WW does.
This should be an interesting project, and if anyone is interested, I'll keep y'all updated. I plan on logging with both programs for at least 8 weeks.
Honestly, whichever one works for you. The "trick" to losing weight is more calories out than in (well, that's the basic laymen's version ).
But then they ask me the difference. Well, since I didn't know anything about myfitnesspal, I decided to look into it. What I've noted is that you input your needed information, and it calculates your daily nutritonal intake values for you as well as allows you to log your meals/snacks. Sounds like a plan to me.
Yes, Weight Watchers is based on the Points programs. But ultimately those points are given based on the food's nutritional value as well. Toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe.
Which one is easiest? I haven't a clue seeing as how I'm only on WW and only familiar with it's process. I also chose to do WW online, and I use the iphone app for everything (simple, simple, simple).
But....that has changed as of today. How? I've done gone and joined myfitnesspal.com as well. Why? To run a comparison on them, and to gather more information so as to help provide friends and family with more information on which to make their choice of program.
One thing I noticed right off the bat with myfitnesspal is that it does have a great database of foods. Then came the problem. Upon trying to log a certain food down (O.R. Smart Pop 94% fat free - 100 calorie bags to be exact), I found that out of all the entries for it, absolutely zero were correct in their nutritional values. It seems that no one seems to acknowledge astericks on labels nor read the fine print at the bottom of the label. If they had, then they would've noticed that a few of the values changed once the popcorn was popped vs. in its original kernel form. Unfortunately, it didn't stop there. I found that most foods have soooooo many entries with many of them being wrong with their nutritional values. This could cause skewed results with someone relying on the program 100%. One needs to be quite diligent in checking the nutritional values of their choice on the list before just logging it. Just sayin'.
On the other hand, WW costs you approx. $18/month whereas myfitnesspal is $0.00. To many, that little detail offsets the aforementioned one in the above paragraph.
Right now, from what I know, both programs allow you to log your daily food and liquid intake (WW can take you really in depth with that) as well as log daily activity.
My goal is to see how close the programs are in terms of their daily guidelines/recommendations, and how the difference(s) could/would affect one's weight loss outcomes (depending on choice of program).
Today:
With WW, not counting my possible bag of OR 94% ff-100 cal popcorn, I only have a single point left. My bag of popcorn would cost me 2 points. (not a big deal seeing as how I have my activity points from today to "take" from or my weekly "overage" allowance points to take from)
According to myfitnesspal, even with my bag of popcorn, I still have 196 cals, 31 carbs, 3 g fat, and 3 g protein available for the day.
The difference came in with my lovely 2 cupcakes I ate today in lieu of lunch (I know, I know...whatever ). It seems myfitnesspal has much less of an issue with them that WW does.
This should be an interesting project, and if anyone is interested, I'll keep y'all updated. I plan on logging with both programs for at least 8 weeks.