Using an App to Track Nutrition and Exercise: Pros and Cons

Most people who track their diet and exercise use an app on their mobile device. I decided to track everything manually, beginning with the first day of the pre-surgery fast.

I have a beautiful blank notebook that I had never used. It was a gift, associated with a very special memory. (The book was a gift from my mother, a souvenir of our trip to France together in 2014.) I decided that this huge life decision deserved this special book. 

In the notebook, in addition to diet and exercise, I've included my questions for the dietitian, notes from my dietitian sessions, any pain or discomfort I experience, any milestones, challenges, and so on. It's a record of my bariatric journey. 

I really like having a record of all this on paper, and associating it with a very joyous memory. I'll continue to use the book to record notes from my dietitian sessions, and any other issues (qualitative rather than quantitative evidence, as we say in the information biz).

But now that I'm moving into a permanent bariatric diet, I realized an app would be very helpful. I chose SparkPeople, and I signed up for the "premium" (paid) version right away.

The paid level has many good features, but the reason I'm using it is to eliminate advertising. Something I use every day, both on my computer and my phone, cannot be plastered with ads. I'm fortunate that I can easily spend another $5/month. Not everyone can, and there are free versions of all the weight-loss apps.

There are many advantages to using a mobile app for nutrition and exercise tracking. However, for me, there are also disadvantages. In some ways it makes my life easier... in other ways it makes things more challenging.

Advantages

The advantages to using an app are obvious.

1. When you enter the food you've eaten, it automatically enters the nutritional value -- calories, protein, and anything else you might be monitoring, such as carbs, fat, vitamins, and so on. No need to look up anything.

2. It tracks and calculates your totals daily, weekly, monthly, and all-time. No need to look back through your week or month, no need to add anything. 

3. Once you've eaten a food, and entered it into the app in a way that reflects your habits (brand, portion size, method of cooking), the next time you eat it, you just tap or click on it. Easy.

4. You can group foods and ingredients that you eat together. For example, I grouped "milk, 1%, 16 ounces," "frozen berries, 1 cup," and "protein powder, whey, unsweetened, 1 scoop" into "protein smoothie". I'll do this with everything I cook, too. 

For me, these are the advantages. The app saves me time and repetitive work.

5. If you are not accustomed to tracking your habits, using an app would make it easier, and hopefully increase the likelihood that you'll continue tracking.

6. If you need more support, the popular apps offer articles, blogs, recipes, workouts, and so on, and also have communities that support and encourage each other. Goddess knows there is no shortage of any of these things online! But it does put everything in one place, which might help you focus. 

Disadvantages

The disadvantages to using an app are less obvious, unless you already have a good awareness of eating disorders.

1. Most apps track your exercise against your eating. They encourage the idea of exercise as a way of eliminating calories: "I walked 30 minutes today, now I can eat more!" 

This can be the first step down a very dangerous road. 

- We do not only expend calories when we exercise. We burn calories every moment, with every breath, all day, even when we're asleep. 

- There are so many reasons to get regular physical exercise, for both your physical and mental health. Exercise lowers blood sugar, lowers blood pressure, reduces the risk of heart attack, stroke, and diabetes, combats fatigue, helps regulate mood, boosts metabolism, and more. A life that includes regular physical exercise is a healthier, happier life than one that does not. Weight-loss apps encourage you to think of exercise solely in terms of calories burned.

- Tracking exercise against eating can very quickly lead to feeling that you have to "burn off" everything you eat -- that eating anything without exercising afterwards will lead to weight gain. 

Have you ever excused yourself before eating something by referencing your exercise? As you're about to take your first bite, you say (either out loud or to yourself), "It's OK, I'm going to the gym later today." 

Maybe you say it once as a joke. Or maybe you think it all the time. Maybe you privately believe you don't deserve to eat unless you have exercised. Or that eating food without specifically pairing that food with exercise will cause you to gain weight. This is called exercise bulimia. In this case, the purging associated with bulimia takes the form of exercise.

In the paid level of the app I'm using, you can turn off the "track exercise against eating" function. I've done that... and now the app tells me "Calories Burned: 0".

2. The app tells you "calories left to eat for the day". 

Tracking calories over time is useful and important. I get that. Post weight-loss surgery, it would be very easy to eat a tiny bit more every day or every week, gradually increasing your capacity -- and ultimately preventing or even reversing your weight loss. 

However, basing your food choices on "calories left to eat for the day" could also create a dependence on the calorie counter, rather than learning how to assess your own hunger. Last night I noticed the app told me I had 250 calories left to eat for the day. But I was done eating. I had no interest or desire to eat anything else. 

The previous night, I had minus 300 calories left -- that is, I ate 300 calories too many. I had been genuinely hungry, and ate too fast (my ongoing challenge), not giving my brain enough time to register the food intake. 

In the second example, calorie tracking was very helpful. I can look at the daily total and remind myself to continue trying to eat more slowly. In the first example, tracking would encourage me to eat when I wasn't hungry.

* * * * *

I plan to continue to use SparkPeople, both on my computer and on my phone. But I want to stay aware of these pitfalls. I'm hoping awareness, plus my own discipline, is enough to keep me from falling into them. 

But honestly, I'm a bit nervous about it. My January 1 weigh-in is coming, and thinking about stepping on the scale, I'm already getting anxious. I'm not freaking out or anything close, but this is nagging in the back of my mind.