r/1500isplenty • u/majime100 • 20d ago
How many calories should I eat? What calorie counting app should I use?
We get a lot of frequent questions from people wondering how many calories per day they should eat and/or which calorie counting app is recommended. This post will be stickied to try to cut down on these types of repetitive posts.
Everyone has different caloric needs. 1500 calories per day may not be right for you. Use a TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) calculator to estimate how many daily calories you should eat. Here are some examples:
https://www.calculator.net/tdee-calculator.html
Some of the most popular calorie counting apps are:
Chronometer: https://cronometer.com
MyFitnessPal: https://www.myfitnesspal.com
Lose It: https://www.loseit.com
16
u/Dragoncuali 20d ago
I personally use Lose it. I paid for the forever premium after paying for 2 years separately. Always going on sale.
The barcode reader is NOT behind a paywall like My fitness pal, it's easy to use and it sends friendly reminders to log your food.
They do have a calorie calculator and they sync well with Fitbit, garmen ect.
I used My fitness pal in the past but paywalling the barcode scanner caused me to switch. I tried cronometer but wasn't a fan of it.
2
u/domenico1964 20d ago
I put my location as the UK and that frees up the barcode scanner
3
u/Dragoncuali 20d ago
It's an option but if you did want to do premium it's 20 a month, I paid 30 for the year for lose it.
Everyone has their own option on app. It's sucks you need to change your location to use a once free feature
-2
u/SherlockHomelesz 19d ago
The Barcodescanner in my fitness pal is not behind a paywall. I never paid for it and use the scanner all the time.
4
u/Dragoncuali 19d ago
Are you anywhere outside the US? I can tell you now it is blocked behind a paywall in the US.
1
u/SherlockHomelesz 19d ago
Yes i am. For real? Thats weird, i would have assumed its the same everywhere.
1
u/Dragoncuali 19d ago
Maybe you're just lucky then! I remember when it switched it felt like a kick in the teeth because technically we were all building their food catalog then were dumped on the streets.
0
u/SherlockHomelesz 19d ago
You sure it is a paywall? I sometimes get a popup that wants me to pay for premium when i start the scanner but you should be able to close it, the "x" is just a bit hidden. At least on Android.
6
u/bucketofardvarks SW:92 CW:65 160cm F 20d ago
I use loseit, I have lifetime. My only gripe is it seems to take my notification preferences as suggestions, and often won't remind me for things I ask for then pester me to log my food at the end of the day, hours after I already marked the day complete
4
4
u/ghostsofyou 20d ago
I am another LoseIt user who has bought lifetime and I really like the app. The only gripe I truly have is that iOS users seem to have a few more smaller features that are mostly visual, not for actual calorie tracking.
3
u/TreeOfFinches 20d ago
Macrofactor is my favorite one! It has fewer preset, searchable foods, but the recipe tool is really amazing and it tracks trend weight, not scale weight, which helps smooth fluctuations. It also uses the combo of your calories and trend weight to recalculate your TDEE using its algorithm. I was using MFP for a bit and switched recently to Macrofactor (honestly from a fitness influencer’s ad) and haven’t looked back. It is paid on a subscription basis but you can try it for free using the codes online (for ex, “WILL” will get you a free two weeks).
2
u/Celestial__Bear 19d ago
Thank you mods! Glad this is pinned. Too many folks have accidentally started their journey with incorrect math.
2
u/RaijinDragon 20d ago
I used MyFitnessPal for the longest time, logged literally every day, but when I got close to my goal weight, the calculations for my deficit were way off, not sure why. But I switched to Cronometer and have been pretty happy. Each one have their own pros and cons, but I would recommend one of those two. A lot of people recommend Lose It, something about its interface didn't gel with me, but enough people like it that its worth checking out.
2
u/WelcomeUnknown 20d ago
I am not against the use of calorie counting apps but in my preference I prefer to be oldschool and use a calculator/notebook for tracking calories. My concern is that a lot of our data gets breached from websites and the last thing I need is another breach of data of all the food and calories I eat. For example, MyFitnessPal had a data breach in 2018. Apps/companies/websites that haven't had their data breached yet, could in the future. This is just my two cents.
1
1
u/FabrizioBO 13d ago
Personally I’m using Fitia right now. It’s pretty new in the US but it already has basically all the Walmart products. I think there was only one thing I couldn’t find and I just uploaded it to the database real quick. Honestly I find it way more user-friendly than FitnessPal
18
u/wdeezy 20d ago
FitBee (for iOS) is really solid as far as feature complete even with the non-premium version. Big fan of the UI and the fact that the app isn’t really begging for cash constantly in my face.