My Fitness Pal

Let's make this really short and easy. myfitnesspal.com is the best health and fitness site on the plant. Anywhere. Ever. Ok, we're done. Or if you'd like more...

MyFitnessPal does a fairly basic thing (track your food and exercise), but it does that thing extremely well. Here are the top eight reasons that I couldn't get through a day of my diet, let alone a week, without MyFitnessPal:

1. They're everywhere - MyFitnessPal go out of their way to make sure that they are wherever you are. They have a great website, and mobile apps for every platforms that you can imagine. This makes it incredibly easy for you to track your food and exercise wherever you are, whenever you are.
2. The database - A service like this is only as good as the database of foods and exercises that it contains. Luckily MyFitnessPal contains EVERYTHING. Sorry, did I not make that clear? EVERYTHING. A quick search will find even the most obscure of foods, conveniently logged with complete nutritional information and serving sizes. The occasions where you'll have to enter any amount of data yourself are few and far between. Surely it couldn't get easier than that?... oh yes it can...
3. The barcode scanner - The MyFitnessPal mobile apps contain barcode scanning functionality. You might have seen this before in apps that allow you to price compare in shops. It is a thousand times more useful in a food logging app. You'll be surprised how few foods you eat that don't have a convenient barcode, and it makes most new entries a matter of seconds. I said "new" entries, didn't I?...
4. Recent/Popular Foods - Once you get going with your diet, you'll probably find that you eat similar things for similar meals quite a lot. MyFitnessPal remebers everything you enter, and offers you a selection of what it think you might be about to enter. If you are as predictable as me, it is usually correct. Spookily correct.
5. Synchronisation - Everything you do in MyFitnessPal on any platform is immeditately synchronised with their servers. While this can sometimes lead to minor waiting times between adding entries, it means that you never have to worry about losing data, and whenever you use their service anywhere, it will be just the way you left it the last time you saw them.
6. Recipes - I'm big on making and perfecting recipes, and MyFitnessPal allows you to create your own recipes from the items in their database, and then save and use in your own food diary. This is great for things that you cook regularly, and even better, your significant other can log in and copy the recipe from your food diary, saving time for them as well.
7. Net Calories - This is something that is quite difficult to keep track of yourself, but MyFitnessPal makes it super easy. Basically, you have a goal of the number of calories that you want to eat each day, and entries in your food diary work toward (and beyond) that goal, but exercise that you enter (from an equally good exercise database) rolls back your calories, giving you more to eat. Yum!
8. It's Free!!! - Yes. It's free. I don't know if they have a business model. I don't know if they have plans for a business model. I don't much care. If they asked me to pay, or even offered to allow me to pay, then I would. But they don't. It's just free. Free.

If you're not convinced by now then I don't know what to tell you. Just try it. It's quick, it's free, and it is your fitness regime's best friend.