MyFitnessPal Blog

We have partnered with the Withings Wi-Fi Scale so you'll never need to manually enter your weight on MyFitnessPal again!  The Withings scale is an elegant device that measures your weight and body fat and wireless sends both to your Withings and MyFitnessPal accounts.

Withings is an intelligent scale - in addition to measuring your weight, body fat, and BMI, it also recognizes who is standing on the scale.  The Withings scale automatically differentiates between different users, so it's the perfect scale for the whole family to share.

With the addition of Withings to the MyFitnessPal App Gallery, every time you step on the Withings Wi-Fi Scale, your weight and body fat % update automatically on MyFitnessPal. This makes sure your weight is accurately and instantly recorded to help you keep track of your health and stay motivated to reach your fitness goals faster!

Withings scales are also unique because of their Position Control feature. This feature detects how you're standing on the scale and makes sure that you are standing correctly in order to ensure the most accurate measurement possible. This takes the guesswork out of weighing yourself and guarantees an accurate measurement every time, allowing you to track your progress precisely.

Withings is also offering a special discount for MyFitnessPal members. MyFitnessPal members get 15% off using the code "myfitnesspal" at checkout. This offer expires 11/4/12 so visit Withings soon if you're interested.

And if you're ready to get your Withings Wi-Fi scale synced up with your MyFitnessPal account - start here.

Thanks, and hope you're enoying MFP!

Mike, Al, and the MFP Team 

MyFitnessPal is excited to announce another new partner to help you reach your fitness goals: BodyMedia.  

Founded in 1999, BodyMedia pioneered the development of wearable body monitors that automatically track your calories around-the-clock.  BodyMedia's proprietary technology has been clinically validated for accuracy.

The BodyMedia system includes:

• A comfortable and adjustable Armband that automatically collects 5,000 data points per minute from 4 different sensors
• An online Activity Manager that analyzes your data and gives you personalized feedback via the BodyMedia FIT coach (monthly subscription is required)
• Free apps for on the go and up-to-the-minute readings throughout the day to track progress against your goals

We recently partnered with runtastic as one of the new connected apps available in the MyFitnessPal App Gallery, and so we wanted to take a few minutes to tell you about the cool features runtastic offers to make tracking your fitness activities more fun.

runtastic has two apps for your phone that help you keep an accurate count of your calories burned - the original runtastic app for tracking running, hiking, cycling, and other exercises, and the runtastic Pedometer app for counting your steps as you walk.  Best of all, both now seamlessly update your MyFitnessPal account.

For running, hiking, cycling, and other exercises, the runtastic app uses your phone's GPS tracking to automatically record your precise elapsed time, distance, calories burned, speed, and elevation.  You can set specific goals and track your progress automatically. You can even compare your results against friends!

Upgrading to runtastic Pro will turn on additional features including voice coaching, an integrated music player, live tracking and cheering, Google Earth view (Android only), and auto pause.

At MyFitnessPal, we know that we all succeed best with a little help from our friends. One of our favorite Pro features is runtastic's Live Tracking and Cheering which allows your friends to monitor your real-time progress and support you with their cheers.  You can even send them a live photo showing how awesome you are and what they are missing!

runtastic also recently released a new Routes feature that lets you create, edit, and save your own routes at runtastic.com and sync them to your phone.  You can also look for other public routes in your area - especially great if you are travelling - and get new ideas and inspirations for your next activity.   Android users can even retrace their route with Google Earth 3D video playback of every run.  Pretty cool stuff!

And if walking is more your speed, the runtastic Pedometer app will assist you. All you need is a smartphone and the app's on-board accelerometer will track your steps. Distance and elapsed time during your activities are clearly shown thanks to a clever built-in algorithm.  The runtastic Pedometer app can run all day in the background using little battery life.  Bring your phone in your pants, jacket, or purse, and the app will track all your steps.

runtastic's apps are available on iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone 7 and bada. Learn more the differences between their various apps here.

If you've tried runtastic, let us know what you think in the comments below!

Thanks, and hope you are enjoying MFP!

Mike, Al, and the MFP team 

We’re pleased to announce that a new version of our Android app is now available from Google Play.  Here's a quick rundown of the new features:

• Reminders:  It’s now possible to set yourself reminders to help you remember to track your diet and exercise daily.  Just go to “More”, “Settings” and press “My Reminders to get started.
  
  
• Notifications: Use Android notifications to receive real-time updates when you receive a new message, get friend requests and more.
  
  
• Turn Off Offline Search: In a recent update, we added the ability to search a streamlined version of our food database even without an internet connection.  A side-effect of adding offline search was that we had to increase the size of the app. If you're using a phone with limited storage available, you can now disable offline searching which will reduce the size of the app. Just go to “More”, “Settings” and uncheck the option labled “Offline Search Enabled”
  
  
• Make Multi-Add the Default:  For everyone who loves multi-add, you can now make multi-add the default way to add foods or exercises to your diary
  
  
• Lock Screen:  A simple way to passcode protect the application to ensure maximum privacy on your phone or tablet.
  
  
• Bug fixes: Numerous performance enhancements and stability improvements

As always, if you run into any issues with the latest version of the app, please just let us know and we'll look into it ASAP.

Hope you are all enjoying MFP!

Mike, Al, and the MFP Team

Just a quick note to let you all know that we've released version 3.4.1 of our iPhone app today.  This is a bug fix release that fixes a few of the issues we missed in version 3.4. Some highlights: 

• Sorting your favorites lists are back!  The button is now labeled "Options", but now provides both the option to change your sort order as well as toggle your favorites lists between showing only one meal vs. "All Meals"
  
  
• Meal name headers are visible again for iOS 4.2.1 users
  
  
• Adding ingredients to a recipe while in multi-add mode works again
  
  
• ...and a whole slew of other minor bug fixes

At long last, we've released an update to our iPhone app today.  In this release, we've added a few small but very helpful features:

• Search Your Favorites Lists: If you’ve been using the app for a while, your favorites list may be quite long, and it may be hard to find the food you’re looking for.  In version 3.4, you can now search within your favorites lists only.  For example, if you know you’ve eaten “strawberries” before, just tap on the “Recent” tab, then start typing “strawberries”.  Your Recent list will be filtered as you type, showing only items that match the search term you’ve entered. Even with hundreds of entries in your Recent tab, you can still quickly find the one item you are looking for.
  
  
• Easily repeat your last meal: If you ate the same thing for breakfast today that you ate yesterday, we’ve added a new feature which let’s you easily log the same meal with just a couple of taps. Let’s say you had coffee, granola, and a grapefruit for breakfast yesterday, and you had the same thing for breakfast today.  Under the Meals tab, you’ll see a new row at the top of your meals list.  Tap on it, and you can quickly add the same items from your last breakfast.  On the next screen, you can edit portion sizes or quantities as appropriate, then hit “Add” to add those items to your diary - that’s it! With just a few taps, you can now repeat your entire previous meal.
  
  
• Use multi-add mode automatically: If you frequently use the “multi-add” button on your diary page to add more than one food at a time to your diary, just turn the “Always Use Multi-Add” option on, and the multi-add checkboxes will now appear every time you add to your diary.
  
  
• Change your default tab: If you find yourself using your Meals tab or your Recipes tab more often than your recent tab, you can now change your default tab.  Tap “Default Search Tab Settings” and choose which tab you want to open by default when you start to log a meal. 
  
  
• Passcode lock: Last of all, we’ve added a Passcode Lock option to the app, for added privacy.  Set a passcode, and you will be required to enter the passcode each time you open the app.

I'm very happy to announce the addition of two new members to our volunteer moderation team!

• PSULemon
• LeeKetty1176

• _Sally_
• T0M0
• wenders123
• _Ben
• arewethereyet
• catcrazy
• MCDerin
• stormieweather

• Scott
• josh
• julie
• Steven

The forums are busier than ever. Adding two more volunteers helps us to keep the things flowing smoothly on the boards.

Please join me in welcoming  PSULemon and LeeKetty1176 to the team! And thank you to all of our moderators for the amazing work you do to ensure the forums remain such a vital support resource for all of our members.

See you around the forums!

Mike, Al & the MFP team