I’m finally finding some sort of balance with the blogging and the fitness again. It’s taken a little time and I still find I need some way of monitoring both my fitness and my food/drink intake.
In the past I’ve used My Fitness Pal. Admittedly, it’s American in concept and there are times when searching for food you need to be a little creative, or simply add ingredients, but it’s worked for the last few years.
Nutracheck recently got in contact to suggest I give them a try as an alternative – like My Fitness Pal, they offer both an app and a desktop login, so they’re equally accessible, though Nutracheck is a paid service, whereas MFP is free. Curious, I agreed to review.
Let’s begin at the beginning.
You need set up Nutracheck using your vital statistics, height, weight, what weight you want to end at (you can select whether you want to lose, gain or maintain your weight) so make sure you have these to hand.
You’ll need to look at how active your job is (if you run around to meetings all day, you’re going to be more active than if you just sit at a desk) and add in how much you’d like to use a week. Then the app will do all the calculations, work out your calories for each day and how much exercise you should be doing. From there, it’s all down to you and maybe this is my biggest piece of advice when it comes to any of these apps.
Be truthful.
Nobody else is going to see it, judge you or be interested in what you ate or drank. But if you’re serious about it, you have to be truthful to yourself. No point in ‘forgetting’ about that bar of chocolate you had or the extra few grams of cereal you put into your bowl at breakfast, or that glass of wine you had with dinner. You’ll only be cheating yourself.
Now you’re set up and ready to go. Start adding in your meals.
And to a certain extent this is Nutracheck’s strength. Shop in supermarkets? Everything is covered, all the brands, ready meals, individual items, it’s all there – from Aldi to M&S.
All the brands are here too – from Kelloggs to Heinz, all the UK ones are listed, whereas you often have to search through to find the right ones on MFP, skipping over the US versions of your favourites, that may be a completely different recipe.
And like MFP, you can even input the barcode to find your food. Select it, select portion size and add it to your day. Add for every meal if you’ve got it all planned, or add it bit by bit if you’re less organised.
Make your own dishes? Then there’s a section for recipes – those submitted by other users and a small number already in the databank.
This is perhaps the only element that I find frustrating. The recipe list is nowhere near as comprehensive as that on MFP. If you have time to add your own, then you can do that relatively easily. My problem is, I don’t have the time to faff around adding extra recipes, and so have to either add the separate elements, or just find something similar and add a portion of that to my meal.
Admittedly, there are times when I need to do this on MFP too, and an increase in recipes listed is only down to time and people building the lists, but on more than on occasion, I was frustrated that something simple, such as bolognaise sauce, wasn’t there on its own. It was there with spaghetti in the finalised recipe. I don’t eat pasta often, I’m more likely to have the sauce with roasted vegetables or a baked sweet potato. Frustrating.
Either way, once you’ve found your food or your recipe, you can add a portion to your day, and the time you ate it and complete each day. It’ll list the fat levels, the calories, how much percent of your 5-a-day you’re hitting and you pop in your exercise so it gives you those extra calories earned on there.
Rinse and repeat for a week, and so long as you’re hitting your targets and being honest with yourself, watch the pounds drop off and feel smug.
Every week you can check your progress, see how many of your calories are coming from alcohol and, also if you’re susceptible like me, keep an eye on your emotional eating.
You see for me, where Nutracheck is really good is on the reporting side of things. Checking where my weakensses are, keeping an eye on my booze intake and looking at easy food swaps that may be lower in calories is brilliant.
If you have a Fitbit, even better – Nutracheck can work with your Fitbit or you can buy one via the site and get two months access for free.
However, where it doesn’t suit me is where it still leans on the old outdated idea that fat is bad for us. It wants to monitor my fat, I’m happier to monitor my carbohydrate intake. I know that low carbohydrate, high fat works for my body and weight loss, but whereas MFP allows me to adjust my macros to what suits, Nutracheck doesn’t. It gives me a standard overview, whereas I want to see this sort of information.
But, as ever, that’s me. That’s what works for me, and the other elements make this app and the online tracking system really good.
Overall, this is definitely a good programme, but for me isn’t necessarily worth paying for, when I can have the detailing I need for free. Fix this, and at £7.99 a month, I’ll be buying in. Til then, I’ll stick with what works for me.