Why You Should Delete Your MyFitnessPal App: The Many Problems with Online Calorie Calculators
Finding the calorie content of your food has never been easier thanks to online calorie calculators. But it’s a waste of your time and mental energy. Read on to learn why I think you should delete your MyFitnessPal app.
The idea of an online calorie calculator is lovely. Plug in your age, sex, height and weight, along with how much weight you’d like to lose and how fast, and in less than a second you get a personalized recommendation of exactly how much to eat to achieve your goals. All you have to do is obsessively count every bite of food and you can pick your weight as easily as you pick out your underwear!
As anyone who has used a calorie counting app like MyFitnessPal knows, it’s not quite that simple. As a dietitian who frequently works with clients struggling with eating disorders that were triggered or worsened by online calorie calculators (and their super disordered message boards), I’ll admit I’m biased.
My personal experience using an online calorie calculator was in college, when as a dietetics students we were assigned to track our intake for a week. P.S. nutrition professors out there, this assignment is not a smart one to give to a group that’s at risk for eating disorders. I was incredibly distressed by the high number of calories I consumed on my first day tracking (it was college gameday - tailgate beers and pimento cheese add up!), so I tried to restrict the whole next week to get my average intake to the amount MyFitnessPal suggested for me. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this led to hunger-induced binges every single night. I was 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 not eating enough food. For a couple years afterward I would sporadically track my intake, in hindsight, always during times I was struggling in other areas of life.
Now that I’ve had a little more space since that time, along with a lot more understanding of weight science, and my own personal weight biases at the time, I can see what a waste of time it was spending those countless hours tracking my food. Not only because it made me feel all crazy around food, but also because it wasn’t even accurate!
The Many Problems with Online Calorie Calculators
The MyFitnessPal app and other online calorie calculators use mathematical formulas designed to estimate basal metabolic requirements using height, weight, age, sex and adjustments for physical activity. Any dietitians reading this are familiar with these formulas, as they are used by clinical dietitians every day to estimate nutrition needs for hospitalized patients. We estimate basal metabolic requirements then multiply these basal needs by factors based on our patient assessment. In this use, they are…fine. These estimates are extremely useful for feeding patients requiring tube feeds or IV nutrition, and somewhat useful in providing a starting point for nutrition interventions for malnourished patients and feeding patients with diabetes or other issues with blood glucose, as high or low blood sugars affect the healing and outcomes. They’re not perfect, but at least they give us a ballpark for a starting point which we’re able to adjust.
But that’s not the way these formulas are used with online calorie calculators. The number that gets spit out is typically viewed as a hard and fast limit on caloric intake. Plus, add to the fact most people enter rapid weight loss goals of a couple pounds a week and that number is even lower than what your body needs. In reality, the number is supposed to provide basal needs. Eating significantly less will not only shortchange you nutritionally, but likely also lead to a suppressed metabolism as your body tries to conserve energy.
For a number that’s often viewed in a pretty hard and fast way, it isn’t even that accurate. These formulas were developed through research in not very diverse groups, and therefore are less accurate for people of color and higher weight individuals. Plus, there are other factors that influence basal metabolic needs that aren’t represented 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.
Also, energy needs aren’t static. Your needs may change day to day based on the weather, time of the month for those who menstruate, sleep, energy intake, physical activity, illness and stress levels. If you wonder why you might feel hungrier or have no appetite one day, it’s just your hunger cues reflecting your needs.
Calorie Counts Aren’t Accurate
Even if your calculated basal needs were 100% accurate, the calories listed on food aren’t. Food companies are allowed to use any one of five different methods to calculate nutrition facts, and permits inaccuracies 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. Also, the amount of food packed can vary by small amounts too - we’ve all opened that snack bag just to realize we were totally ripped off.
Calories in food were traditionally measured using a super fun machine called a bomb calorimeter, which essentially combusts food until it’s charcoal and measures the amount of energy stored within by measuring the heat that’s produced. Needless to say, this is not how we digest food, otherwise cases of spontaneous combustion would be much more common. Over 150 years ago, this machine was used by a chemist who determined carbohydrates and protein have approximately 4 calories per gram, and fat has approximately 9 calories per gram, and this formula is used in calculating the caloric content of food today. However, more recent research shows that this does not account for how energy is absorbed from different foods. Foods with harder to break down cell walls, like nuts, may not have as many calories as listed, while carbohydrate containing foods, which can vary in absorbability based on the types of carbohydrates contained, may be higher or lower than what’s listed.
Preparation methods also matter. There’s a difference calorically 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). For carbohydrate-containing foods, like rice and potatoes, cooking and cooling, then reheating it again or eating it cold (think leftovers or potato salad) converts some of the starch to resistant starch, which the body can’t obtain much energy from.
Also, it goes without saying, if you’ve over or underestimated your portion sizes, the calorie count will be off too.
Is MyFitness Pal Affecting the Quality of Your Diet?
I’m not aware of any research that’s been done on this, but subjectively Ive noticed that using online calorie counting apps often pushes people towards more packaged convenience foods and away from more homecooked meals, especially mixed dishes that are easier to incorporate a variety of food groups into. That’s because those dishes are harder to count calories for. If you’re buying something packaged, you can just look at the back of the label, but for mixed dishes, you have to know exactly what ingredients were added and how many portions the recipe serves, which is hard to do! That’s not to say packaged foods are bad for you, just that it can make it harder to get those nutritious whole foods in a way that tastes enjoyable.
Why You Should Delete Your MyFitnessPal App
I know it’s frustrating to learn this stuff. We’ve been sold all these myths about calories (and about weight for that matter) and many of us have wasted time, energy, and money because of it. It’s crappy and unfair.
I don’t want to give the impression that calories don’t count, because they do. Calories are our bodies only source of energy, and we need adequate calories to fuel our bodies and brains. Calories are hella important, but because we live in a world where fear of fatness is intense, so is fear of calories.
The thing is, you can nourish your body adequately and appropriately without calorie counting by tuning in to hunger and fullness cues. You don’t need external rules about how much to eat, your body has got that on lock. When you listen to and respect your body’s hunger and fullness cues (most of the time), you’ll eat an appropriate amount to fuel your body. If you’re not sure where to start, here’s a post I wrote on how to use the hunger and fullness scale in intuitive eating.
Using MyFitnessPal and other calorie counting apps is a distraction from these internal cues, and a distraction from living your life. More often than not, calorie counting will lead to suppressing hunger cues to trying and eat an amount of calories that’s waaaay too low for you and your needs, followed by backlash eating in response to that deprivation. Or, you know, starving yourself, which isn’t so great.
Only you can know what your body needs - not some arbitrary formula on the internet. I encourage you to delete your MyFitnessPal app and put that time and energy into making peace with food and your body instead.
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:
How to Use the Hunger and Fullness Scale in Intuitive Eating
Why You Don’t Need to Read Nutrition Facts
The Many Problems with BMI
