Should I Delete MyFitnessPal App?: The Many Problems with Online Calorie Calculators
Online calorie calculators like MyFitnessPal make weight loss seem like a simple equation of calories in and calories out. Despite their simplicity, weight science is a lot more complicated than that. Read this post to learn about the many, many problems with online calorie calculators, and why you might want to delete your MyFitnessPal app.
The idea behind an online calorie calculator is simple. Plug in your age, sex, height, and weight, along with how many pounds you’d like to lose and how fast, and in less than a second you’ll get a personalized recommendation of exactly how many calories to eat to achieve your goals. All you have to do is obsessively track every bite of food and you can pick your weight as easily as you pick out your underwear!
Anyone who has used an online calorie counter like MyFitnessPal knows it’s not quite that simple. As a weight-inclusive eating disorder dietitian who regularly works with clients whose disordered eating was triggered or exacerbated by these apps, I’ll admit I’m biased on the topic. Many people reading this post have likely had a negative or harmful experience with MyFitnessPal, and may feel a sense of relief in knowing their experience wasn’t unique. Others might be actively using MyFitnessPal and find it helpful (don’t worry, I see y’all in the angry comments!). Per usual, this post isn’t about what you should or shouldn’t do, but making sure you have information and lesser heard perspectives so you can make the best decision for you.
My Personal Experience With MyFitnessPal
My personal experience using MyFitnessPal was in college, when as a dietetics student we were assigned to track our intake for a week. Note to all the nutrition professors out there: giving this assignment to a group that is at higher risk for developing an eating disorder probably isn’t a great idea! I was really upset to learn how many calories I consumed on my first day tracking - it was a Clemson gameday, so tailgate beers and pimento cheese added up fast! Naturally, I tried to be really “good” for the rest of the week (i.e. eat less than the already low calorie range MyFitnessPal suggested for me), but perhaps unsurprisingly, this led to hunger-fueled trips to the drive through almost every night.
I felt so embarrassed that I, a dietetics student, could not manage to eat my recommended calorie needs, that I totally lied on the assignment and made up my version of what I thought healthy eating looked like. I became convinced I was a willpowerless eating machine, when in reality, I was just suffering from the predictable side effects of excessive hunger. For a few years afterward I would sporadically track my intake in MyFitnessPal, in hindsight, always during times I was struggling in other areas of life. Sometimes I could stick to my calorie goal and other times I couldn’t, but no matter the result, I just found myself obsessing over minutiae instead of paying attention to the big picture of how I was feeding myself.
Almost 20 years later, I can look back and recognize how easily my calorie counting could have gotten out of hand. With more experience and a better understanding of the complexities of weight science, I can see that not only how harmful these calorie calculators can be for ones relationship with food, but also just how inaccurate they are.
The Many Problems with Online Calorie Calculators
How do Online Calorie Calculators Work?
The MyFitnessPal app and other online calorie calculators work by using mathematical formulas designed to estimate basal metabolic requirements, i.e. the baseline amount of energy (aka calories) your body needs at rest to do it’s daily functions, like breathing, regulating temperature, circulating blood, oxygenating cells, and building cells, hormones, neurotransmitters, and more. It does not include energy expended through movement (not just exercise but any movement) or what’s called the thermic effect of food, or the energy used in digesting food.
There are many different formulas for calculating needs, as different predictive equations are more or less accurate for different people based on their age, gender, height, weight, etc. If you want to get real nerdy with it, I have a very long paper I wrote during my dietetics internship on which formulas are best for different populations that I can dig out of a box in my attic that I have carried around for almost 20 years and 5 different homes because one day I might need the notes I took on end stage renal disease in Medical Nutrition Therapy 4250 back in 2005.
MyFitnessPal uses the Mifflin St. Jeor formula to predict your basal energy needs, then it multiples that result by an activity factor determined by your usual daily activity level. If you’re using it for weight loss, like most people are, it then asks how much weight you’d like to lose and in what time frame, then uses the old 500 calories in a pound of fat rule (which has been thoroughly debunked) to give you a daily calorie estimate. Lest you plug in a goal that’s not exactly metabolically realistic, there is a minimum amount of calories MyFitnessPal will recommend, however this number is also the amount of calories recommended for a toddler or small child.
Online calorie calculators are based off the idea that weight science is as simple as calories in and calories out. While calories certainly can have an impact on weight, it is much more complex than that. Over 100 different factors that impact weight have been identified, including genetics, environmental toxins, medications, certain health conditions, socioeconomics, stress, gut microbiota and more.
That said, even if weight was as simple as calories in and calories out, there still would be problems with MyFitnessPal and other online calorie calculators. Here’s some of the reasons why I am personally pro-delete your MyFitnessPal app.
Why You Might Want to Delete Your MyFitnessPal App…
The calorie recommendation from MyFitnessPal isn’t very accurate.
MyFitnessPal uses a formula called Mifflin St. Jeor to estimate your basal energy requirements. As far as predictive equations for energy requirements go, this is a pretty decent one. While it’s generally more reliable for higher weight individuals, and does have the tendency to underestimate needs, it’s usually within about 10% when compared to actual measurements of energy requirements. Still 10% is a big chunk, especially when most people panic when they go slightly over or just get close to their limit.
As dietitians, there are clinical situations where we might need an estimate of one’s energy needs, like tube feeding an acutely ill, ventilated person in the ICU, or in eating disorder treatment when someone needs nutrition rehabilitation and/or weight restoration. We’re trained to know which formulas to use and how to adjust for individual needs. Still, most of us know to use those estimates as an estimate, not a rule. For example, when I was working with patients in the ICU, I often used calorie estimates as a starting point, and would increase tube feed or TPN (IV nutrition) recommendations based on labs or other clinical information. Even today, as an eating disorder dietitian, we often need to multiply clients estimated needs by factors of 2 or more, because malnutrition has such a profound impact on metabolic needs - and I still may find myself increasing nutrition recommendations based on clinical monitoring.
Basically, as dietitians we’re taught to take calorie estimates with a grain of salt, but when someone uses MyFitnessPal, they view the calorie recommendation as a hard and fast limit. Even more dangerous, will try to see how far under the recommendation they can “get away with.” Rarely does anyone consider they might actually need more than what MyFitnessPal is calling for.
It’s worth remembering that individual needs vary. Every 45 year old, 5’6”, 200 lb woman who exercises 3-4 days a week does not have the exact same energy needs. While caloric needs are influenced by age, sex, height and weight, there are other factors not captured in these formulas:
Body composition - muscle tissue is more metabolically active so athletes or more muscular people will require more energy.
Diet history - people with a history of dieting and significant weight loss often have lower metabolism, as displayed in the Biggest Loser study.
Medications
Genetics
Microbiome - The gut’s microbiome can influence the efficiency of nutrient absorption from food.
Medical history - Certain conditions can increase or decrease the amount of energy the body requires.
Race and ethnicity - These formulas were developed through research in not very diverse groups, and therefore are less accurate for people of color.
Energy needs aren’t static.
Online caloric calculators give you a single, static number, but energy needs aren’t the same from day to day. Sure, you can adjust for exercise in MyFitnessPal - although formulas to estimate calories burned through exercise are even less accurate than predictive energy equations. But even outside of physical activity, energy needs can fluctuate quite a bit day to day based on factors like hormonal shifts (especially around menstruation), sleep, illness, stress levels, weather/temperature, and more.
When we’re listening to hunger and fullness cues, appetite can adjust to these shifts in needs. It’s one of the reasons you might feel extra hungry one day, even after eating meals and snacks that typically satisfy, or experience a low appetite for seemingly no reason. Using MyFitnessPal teaches you to trust a mathematical formula more than your own body.
Calorie Counts Aren’t Accurate
Even if your calculated energy needs were 100% accurate, the calories listed on the nutrition facts label may not be. Food companies are allowed to use any one of five different methods to calculate nutrition facts, and the FDA permits variances of up to +/- 20%. So a yogurt with 130 calories really has 104-156, a a frozen meal with 450 calories really has 360-540, and a bag of chips with 220 calories really has 176-264 calories. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with this - an incredible amount of precision would have to go into producing and packaging foods that are calorically equal from package to package, and because humans are designed to be flexible with food, we don’t need to eat a precise amount of calories each day. Still, it’s a fact worth remembering if you’re getting overly focused on calories.
When I’m working with a client who struggles with calorie counting, I like to teach them about how calories were originally measured using a machine called a bomb calorimeter. This extremely fun machine (I had the pleasure of playing around with one in a Food Science lab) essentially combusts food until it’s charcoal, then determines the amount of energy stored within it by measuring the heat and gasses produced during combustion. Super fun to experiment with, but also, not remotely similar to how the body digests food.
Because a stomach does not combust food in order to obtain nutrients, the amount of energy absorbed from a food is often different from how much energy is actually stored in the food, and the calories listed on the label. Some foods have energy and nutrients that are more bioavailable, while others may be more difficult to break down and extract nutrition from. Nuts are a great example. With a hard texture and nice dose of fiber, most people will absorb about 75% of the calories listed on the label.
Preparation methods also matter. There’s a difference in bioavailable calories in a well done steak (ick) versus a medium-rare steak (yum), mushy green beans (ick) versus crisp-tender green beans (yum), and a soft boiled egg (yum) versus a hard boiled egg (also yum).
Another surprising factor that influences bioavailability: temperature! When carbohydrate containing foods, like rice or potatoes, are cooked and cooled, some of the starches convert to resistant starch. While chemically still a starch, resistant starch acts more like fiber and isn’t broken down for energy (i.e. calories).
Using MyFitnessPal may lead to eating more processed foods.
While I’m not aware of any research that’s been done on this, when I talk to people who have used MyFitnessPal, I’ve found it often pushes them to eat more processed, packaged foods, which are easier to track. When the information is on the label or already uploaded in their database, it’s much easier to click a button versus individually adding ingredients, measurements, and dividing for the number of servings consumed. Now, I’m not here for demonizing processed foods, which can absolutely be part of a healthy diet, but there are nutritional benefits to eating more fresh, whole foods. When someone is ostensibly using MyFitnessPal to improve health, doesn’t it defeat the purpose if it’s impacting the nutrition quality of their eating patterns?
The Bottom Line.
Unfortunately, mainstream diet culture has imprinted the idea that less calories is better - the idea that “healthy” eating is trying to eat as little as possible without keeling over. We are taught that “healthy” means maintaining a certain BMI - another inaccurate calculation that gets applied much too rigidly - and that restricting calories is key to that. While human bodies are designed to run best on adequate fuel, we’re taught to try and function on a half tank.
There are very real dangers to underfueling. Outside of the risk of developing an eating disorder, eating too few calories for an extended period comes with many risks and side effects:
Osteopenia and osteoporosis
Amenorrhea (loss of period) and low testosterone
Mood issues, including anxiety and depression
Digestive issues, including IBS, constipation, severe bloating, and reflux
Sleep disturbances and fatigue
Low heart rate
Low blood sugar
Anemia
Infertility
Hypothyroidism
Difficulty concentrating
Not only that, but most of the time it doesn’t actually lead to sustained weight loss, the very reason most people are using MyFitnessPal. Decades of research has shown that no matter the method, not more than a very small number of people are able to lose a significant amount of weight and keep it off permanently.
You can nourish your body adequately and appropriately without calorie counting. In fact, we only discovered calories less than 200 years ago, so evolutionarily speaking, we’ve done a pretty good job without it! We are designed to self regulate around food using hunger and fullness cues to help guide eating. Using MyFitnessPal and other calorie counting apps is a distraction from these internal cues - not to mention a distraction from living your life.
Only you can know what your body needs - not some arbitrary formula on the internet. Of course, if you have spent years dieting or counting calories, the idea of letting go of it can be really overwhelming, even when you know it’s causing harm. We work with clients virtually in multiple states throughout the US with clients who are seeking a healthier relationship with food and their body. Feel free to reach out and see if we’re a good fit for what you are looking for!
If you like this post on why you should delete your MyFitnessPal app, follow my intuitive eating pinterest board for more inspiration.
If you like this post on why you should delete your myfitnesspal app, you might also like:
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