#carbmanager

I have officially decided to drop Chronometer and Lose It.

I dropped Chronometer because while it does offer a lot of macro insights, I don't use them. And I frequently find food that is either a different nutritional value than listed on the package or another app, if I find that food at all. It's lovely to view, but it's just not overly helpful.

I dropped Lose It because while it does have a pretty good database, it is just not visually appealing on the web (the phone app is fine), and it doubles up entries. I just didn't see enough good features to make me love it.

I tried out FatSecret. I used to use it a million years ago (last time I logged an entry was January of 2022, so almost 2 years ago). It's... ok, at best. But there are no reports and it's kinda clunky. I decided to just drop it before I tried to get too committed. I mean, zero reports or insights just can't compare to the other sites I'm working with who do have them.

So now we're at My Fitness Pal and Carb Manager.

My only complaint with CM is that I wish it let me focus on calories instead of carbs. The only time I care about carbs is when it's from an allergen. But not all carbs are, so this focus just doesn't do anything for me. Outside of that, though, it's awesome.

As of yesterday, I have been using all 3 food logging apps for 2 full weeks. I have logged each thing I ate as best I can (all food has been logged, but sometimes the app doesn't have exactly what I ate so I do as best I can; like one didn't have Little Greek Fries, so I found other fries that were similar in calorie count).

The overall, I think Lose It is my favorite. I have a lot of 🚫items on it, but the pros outweigh the cons (haha, outweigh). I don't want to have to keep up with each of them daily, but each one has something much better than the others do. With Lose It, it feels like the most complete and useful. With CarbManager, it's food logging is the most user-friendly and the daily page is just more robust and useful. With Chronometer, the breakdowns of macros is way better.

Here's where I am with each of them:

Lose It - Overall there are a lot of 🚫 on this list, but it's not my least favorite.

Food Logging

🚫Visually, it's not appealing. At least on the computer. I actually like it's phone app but the computer app just isn't very nice.

🚫It ingests from Apple Health which is ok, except that because I enter stuff on LI, and then the same stuff on the other apps, I have to go back and find duplicates all the time. This is, I'm sure, an easy setting to fix and it won't matter when I've dropped to just using one app.

✅It seems to have most of my food

🚫While it has most of the food, it doesn't show the brand on the diary page, which I weirdly hate

🚫Zero hotkeys or shortcut buttons/clicks. I also hate that

🚫In the meal search box, if you start typing, it can auto-hover on something and stops letting you type. It's a pain

Reporting and Insights

I really like the Patterns insight. It shows me "On days you eat (...) you tend to keep you (...) lower/higher" which is super helpful already, but I'm sure it will be much more so after I've used the app for a long time

The Food Insights (where it shows what items contributed to the highest calories/sodium/fat/etc) is pretty cool, but it doesn't let you pick the date range so ... meh

Budget shows the days you were over/under on your calories. That's kinda nice but I almost never look at it. It doesn't really lend to any changes in behavior so far

Nutrition insight is useless, because there is an "Unknown" slice in the pie. And it doesn't tell you what contributed to it. How can I take stock in anything it's showing on that chart when there is such a large portion that is unknown?

The weekly summary is kinda nice, I do like this one

The weight chart is pretty clear and easy to see my trends.

CarbManager - Overall, this has the most ✅ marks, but I just don't know that it's my favorite. I think this is 100% because it's focused on carbs and that's not my goal. I feel if they were to let you choose which macro is your focus and display accordingly, this would be my favorite by a lot.

Food Logging

✅Visually, this is my favorite. It's clean and crisp, both on the computer as well as on my phone

🚫It's focus is on Carbs (I mean, it IS called CarbManager) and I don't focus on Carbs. I really really wish it would let you decide to do Carbs OR Calories as your focus.

✅It has most of the foods I'm looking for

✅It tells you the name of the brand/restaurant and even shows pictures

✅It's super easy to copy from one day or meal to another, which is awesome

✅I actually just did a recent call with them for market research. I love knowing that they're that interested in their user base and take time (and spend money) to find out user's preferences and ease of use. They did a portion that was touch-point/pain-point and I LOVE that!

🤔There are a ton of recipes on the site (which is awesome) but they are all carb-focused (again, it's right there in the name) which is not my goal. So yay recipes, boo they are carb-focused. HOWEVER, because I'm not supposed to be eating wheat and select other grains, this is actually pretty good. I'm not Keto, but I share a lot of the same needs.

🚫Your weight isn't listed on your diary page. I want to see all the info I care about in one place

Reporting and Insights

If we're being honest, the reports section is shit. I get way more useful information looking at the day-to-day charts, because the reporting section is 100% lacking

Chronometer - I really like this one, except the lack of items in the database. I think if I had no issue looking stuff up, I'd absolutely love this app. I know that if I used this long enough, and I entered in everything that it didn't have in the db whenever I found something missing, eventually it would even out and I could find everything even if it was because I entered it. But I just don't have that kind of patience or desire to put in the extra work for an app I'm paying for.

Food Logging

✅Visually, this is almost an exact mix between the other two.

🚫🚫I find a lot of the food I'm looking for just isn't here. I have to frequently find "close enough" type foods, which means that the macro summaries that I like so much aren't really accurate.

✅It's very easy to drag and drop, rearrange stuff, etc. That's really nice

🤔I always talk about how much I love the nutrient targets, but if we're being honest, I rarely look at them. It seems the only time I care about this level of depth is when I get bloodwork done and I want to see what contributed to a specific thing (like sodium).

Reporting and Insights

I tried to find a clever way to tie in ‘keeping track of data’ and ‘learning makes you more aware and make better decisions’ for my title... Failed but going with it XD

I am one week in on my food charting. I have narrowed it down to Carb Manager and Lose It, but I still find both a bit lacking. Carb Manager gave me a week’s trial after I messaged and requested it (I requested a day but they gave me a week). 

The reports aren’t great, Lose It definitely has better charts/graphs/reports, but I’m still not 100% on which I’m going to choose, and I’m ALREADY thinking back to Cronometer wondering if I took it out prematurely. I’m still good with not having MyFitnessPal. That one SUUUUCCCCKKKKS unless you pay. 

I can say that yesterday, I made all my food decisions based off of numbers. I had Panera Bread for dinner, but rather than my typical sammie and Mac N Cheese, I went with a caesar salad w/chicken and a 10 vegetable soup. I came in under my calories for the first time in prolly forever. Mind you, calories are not my goal, being a particular size is not my goal. My only goal is to feel good. But eating better is key to that, so for right now, I do look at calories (and fat, protein, carbs, sodium, vitamines, and everything else). 

Today’s lunch is 2 angus burger patties ith aged cheddar and bacon inside, A couple leaves of iceberg lettuce for wrapping, and a tbsp of mayo and sugar free ketchup on the side. Zero sugar Pepsi for the drink, and water of course