MyFitnessPal Blog

Some of you may have noticed the new "Tools" tab on MyFitnessPal.  The tools section will eventually contain a variety of utilities designed to help you in your weight loss goals. For starters, I've added a BMI calculator which can help you determine your body mass index and consequently, a target healthy weight range to shoot for.  I've also created a BMR calculator so you can see just how many calories your body burns just to stay alive.

If you have any feedback on the current tools, or any other tool requests or ideas, be sure to leave them in the comments below.

Thanks, and hope you're enjoying the site!

I made a couple of small feature updates today: first, you can now view the nutritional information of any food item just before you enter it into your diary.

After you've selected the food you want to enter, just click on the "nutritional info" link below the description and a pop-up window will appear which will show you the nutrition facts for that item.  Hopefully this will be a lot more convenient for folks to see what nutrients the food you're going to eat contains.

I also have created a system to help ensure that the nutritional information in our database is accurate.  One of my primary goals is to vastly expand the food database so that you won't have to enter so many foods yourself.  A few weeks ago, I added an option where you can share the food you've entered with other MyFitnessPal members, and there's been an overwhelming response: we've already had over 8,000 foods submitted!

The only issue is that I can't keep up with checking all of the items submitted to ensure they are accurate.  So, instead, I'd like to ask for everyone's help.  

Foods submitted by members are now shown with an asterix(*) in your search results.  When you select one of these items, you can also get a sense of how accurate the information is because we'll show you how many times the nutrition facts for that item has been confirmed by another member.  A confirmation simply means that another member has compared an actual nutrition facts label to what has been entered into the MyFitnessPal database and has verified that the information is accurate. 

If there have not been any confirmations yet, you can help us make sure the data is accurate by viewing the nutritional information yourself and comparing it to the information on the label.  If you can confirm that the data is correct, just click the "Yes" button in the pop-up window.  

If, on the other hand, it's not accurate, click "No".  I'll review all foods that get No votes and correct the information.

Hopefully, this new system will let me add foods much faster to the database while also making sure that the info we have is always accurate.  

Thanks, and hope everyone is enjoying the site! 

Think you know the facts about getting fit? You may be surprised to learn how many are really fiction.  Check out this list in another great article from WebMD.

Fitness Myth No. 6: If you're not working up a sweat, you're not working hard enough...

Top 9 Fitness Myths -- Busted!

Find yourself constantly feeling tired and drained?  WebMD has a great guide on how to avoid fatigure by improving your diet and energizing your spirit. 

Every day, 2.2 million Americans complain of being tired. Most of us chalk it up to having too much to do and not enough time to do it in, especially during extra-busy periods. But often the true culprits are our everyday habits: what we eat, how we sleep, and how we cope emotionally.

Lots of great tips on what to eat and how often, but there are also some suggestions you might not expect like letting go of a grudge or uncluttering a corner. 

Your Guide to Never Feeling Tired Again

I'm excited to annouce the launch of the MyFitnessPal Blog! I'll use the blog to keep everyone updated on a wide variety of topics including the latest site news, dieting tips, and any other fun and interesting items I come across.

For my fellow geeks out there, I'll also throw in the occasional web development article filled with some of the things I've learned while building the site. Hopefully at least a few of you will find that stuff as interesting as I do - I'm a nerd, I admit it!

And if you like the idea of blogging, stay tuned - soon, you'll be able to create your own MyFitnessPal diet blog and share your progress and experiences with our whole community.

Thanks for listening, and I hope you are all enjoying the site!