MyFitnessPal alternatives

On food alone, three specialists beat fitvee, and they’ve earned it. Nobody here is short of a good diary, which is why the next table matters more.

Here’s the gap that makes the pick. In the trackers below, exercise is largely something you record once you’ve decided what to do. fitvee does the deciding.

fitvee is the most expensive line in this table, by a distance. The price is for a daily plan and a coach as well as the diary, and that’s the whole case for it.

Start with your records. Data Export is a Premium feature7, so take your copy before the last paid day. On Free, the website has a printable report (what’s free). Then write down your calorie goal, your macro split and the ten foods you log most. You’ll want all three within the week.

If you’re paying, turn off renewal on the platform where you paid, more than 24 hours before the date, and Premium runs to the end of the period (cancel help). In the US, its terms call purchases final unless it decides otherwise25.

The first thing you’ll meet is a new daily number. The quiz that picks your plan also works out your goal: your weight, height, age and goal weight go through the Mifflin-St Jeor formula, with light activity allowed for and 500 kcal a day taken off only if your goal weight is below your weight. That’s about a pound a week, and the goal won’t drop below 1,200 kcal. Prefer the figure you had? Press Edit and type it in: anything from 1,000 to 5,000 takes over1.

Your macros cross over the same way. Protein, carbs and fat sit under the number as bars with gram targets: 120 g, 160 g and 53 g on a 1,600 kcal goal at the standard split. Pick a preset such as More protein, or type in the split you wrote down, in whole percents. Where some foods carry no macro data, a line tells you: “From 7 of 10 foods.” It’s a small thing, and it’s the kind of honesty we want from a tracker.

Then there’s the scanner, with no upgrade in front of it. A scan drops the food into your Today list, and Not right? and Undo are right there if it picked the wrong tub1. Search goes to your own foods first, then 415 common foods from USDA data, then Open Food Facts, a free database built by volunteers1. Short of time? Say the meal into the mic or photograph the plate. Up to 12 foods come back for you to check, and nothing logs until you confirm.

This is the real cost of moving. MyFitnessPal knows what you eat, and on day one fitvee doesn’t, so expect to search more than you’re used to. That fades as you log. Each food joins your recent foods with its last portion1, and the ones you star, up to 300, go to the top of search, so the list you wrote down is where to start. “Usual at lunch” then offers the three foods you log most at that meal.

By the end of the first week it has a rhythm. You scan breakfast on the way out and type lunch at your desk, and the number on Today drops as you go. You do the day’s session, say it felt about right, and the week gets a tick1. Thursday gets away from you, so on the walking plan you ask Vee for the short version. Sunday’s cereal is already waiting, because it’s a usual by now.