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0 pointsjoshstrange10y ago0 comments

In high school I tracked my weight and what I ate everyday in a mini composition notebook I kept in my back pocket at all times. I was exercising (not to mention younger) at the time and lost 30lbs over 4-6 months. I now have a withings scale (along with access to a myriad of food tracking apps) and I can't help but feel that my pen and paper approach was easier and yielded better results... I always feel like entering what I eat into an app is more trouble than it's worth especially when it starts listing calories because I feel compelled to get it as close as possible so I'm busy searching for calorie counts of what I'm eating. In HS I just wrote "Ham and cheese sandwich, sandwich bag of chips, fruit cup" and that was it. MUCH simpler IMHO. I know calorie counting "works" but I just always feel like the counts aren't accurate b/c I cook a lot of things myself and have no desire to calculate the calories of the dishes I make. If they aren't going to be accurate then why do it at all?

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6 comments · 3 top-level

nkozyra10y ago· 2 in thread

I did what you did at one point in my life. In fact, I got perversely granular.

It's not sustainable unless you have a very real mental condition. I think Withings is compatible with a number of apps such that you should't have to enter anything into it to have it tracked.

Food is notoriously difficult to track, and even harder to accurately quantify. A burger and fries meal at one place could be +/- 500 kilocalories despite looking the same. After a while I determined food tracking to only be worthwhile at high level - ie, "ate burger" - rather than to do the legwork necessary to get accurate kilocalorie counts.

dylanjermiah10y ago

>"not sustainable unless you have a very real mental condition"

How does a mental condition correlate with sustainability?

Food is easy to track, if you cook yourself. And fairly easy to estimate if you're eating out.

I've tracked ~96% of my meals for the last 3ish years. As well as my weight every morning. It takes an extra 10 minutes max per day, the benefits of the data is well worth my time.

nkozyra10y ago

That was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but I mentioned it because it requires tireless devotion to get right, for ultimately not that much payoff.

I did it for five years and I don't think there was much benefit over writing down what I ate.

nd110y ago· 1 in thread

I wonder if your point about pen and paper feeling like it worked better is because the app approach puts even more focus on the component data itself and not on what is probably more important - what we actually need do to reach our end goals which is not always so obvious.

A big problem I see with a lot of the current generation of health apps (at least those I have used) is that they've become pretty good at capturing and presenting data (making it pretty) but there's often still a huge gap to fill on actually interpreting this data and telling the user what they now need to do to improve and reach their goals. That's where I personally feel the real value is. (And to be honest I think this is a theme outside of health apps as well...)

Again another personal example - I've been getting into running more and more over the past few years and like a lot of people have been using GPS running apps to track the runs (Runkeeper, Endomodo, Strava etc.). The majority of these apps gamify and give encouragement on things like fastest mile/5k/10k, average pace for the month, frequency, longest distance etc. So as an unknowledgable and fairly ignorant runner I've ended up just trying to beat these metrics - by trying to push harder and run faster on every run.

The problem is it's only recently, now that I've become more keen and have started doing research, that I found out that this is completely the wrong way to do things. Almost any decent training program or coach would recommend running at different paces on different runs and spending up to 70-80% of your training at a relatively comfortable, easy pace [1]. This is much more effective at helping you to run longer, faster and avoid injury.

And it's this knowledge that was completely missing from these apps.

PS @tomeglenn, I love the idea of the app "measuring what really matters" - and in a way addressing the problem with BMI. If you can make the measurement as easy as possible that would certainly be a bonus. But for me combining it with coaching/education on how to actually reach goals (rather than just setting the goal and tracking/rewarding the deltas along the way) takes it to the next level, although is probably much harder to do. Best of luck, and congrats on shipping!

[1] http://www.goodrunguide.co.uk/TrainingGuide.asp

tomeglenn10y ago

Thank you for your comments. I will definitely try to provide guidance and coaching in app to help people take accurate measurements.

smackfu10y ago

The Weight Watchers points system (the older one) was essentially trying to solve this. Points are essentially calories divided by 50 (with adjustments to emphasize low fat and high fiber) and are easily memorizable. It doesn't matter exactly which bread you ate, because it's probably 1 point per slice anyway.

(I don't know much about the "new" points system. I think there are a lot of things that are just 0 points.)

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