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Honestly, as someone who values efficiency, I found MyFitnessPal way too slow and clunky. A food tracker should get out of the way. Otherwise you'll - in the he

Honestly, as someone who values efficiency, I found MyFitnessPal way too slow and clunky. A food tracker should get out of the way. Otherwise you'll - in the heat of the moment - decide not to log things. It also lacked flexibility for those times you dine out, skip meals, or skip logging. Which leads nicely to the shameless plug for https://www.joyapp.com https://www.joyapp.com . Built it for myself, then it spread through forums and has quite a few users. Benefits: - Once you learn the ropes, it's an order of magnitude faster to add entries. It was designed to be opened for as little as possible each day. - If you make it hard to log your food, you won't do it. This makes it trivial. - Also, there are no community-entered foods. This is a feature in most cases. All the food is either from a professionally curated database (Nutritionix) or custom foods you enter. - No ads whatsoever. And we don't sell your data. Privacy is very important to us.

moneywoes 7y ago
Way too pricy for what you offer.
- cadwag 7y ago
  I understand that $2 / month is not trivial for everyone, but this criticism alone is simply not helpful. If a person, such as yourself, does not value the benefits the service provides as greater than the price, they are simply not his/her target market. Your argument could be that the price asked would limit his/her market needlessly by simply being too high, but at this price point I doubt that to be the case. He / she built a service with a clear value prop (fastest food logging possible, backed by high quality / custom data, with a privacy focus). For those interested in food logging without having their eating and nutrition habits / data sold off, I doubt the price would be a deterrent. Maybe you can say the service is not meeting expectations in some way. That’s fair, but then please provide more specific feedback. Given the nature of this forum, let’s try to be either more supportive or at least more clear about what could be improved. Drive-by negativity is just not helpful to anyone. I, for one, applaud his/her efforts, find the offering enticing and the price to be very reasonable (Probably too low, in reality) given the attention to detail, data provided, and problem being solved. Disclaimer: I have not used the service and have no association, only browsed the site. I rarely comment, but wanted to balance out this low-effort negativity.
  - silviogutierrez 7y ago
    Thanks for the reasonable take! I think payment ensures a few things: - Makes the business sustainable. You know we'll be around because we have a "revenue > costs" model. - It switches the incentives from "the customer is the product" to "the product is the product". You know how we make money.
- sidlls 7y ago
  $2/mo is absolutely trivial for the market that this app will target.
- tomasdore 7y ago
  Username checks out!
flexd 7y ago
I'll try it out!
flocial 7y ago
"Also, there are no community-entered foods. This is a feature in most cases." For me this is the only thing keeping me on MFP (also I don't live in the US so it's a big time saver). The barcode scanner is a godsend. There are a lot of people dissatisfied with the stagnation of MFP though, I think with the right value proposition they're ripe for displacement.
- silviogutierrez 7y ago
  I will add it, if I figure out the proper way to rank entries. That is, make it clear what's community-entered but peer-reviewed in some way. Right now, MFP is a Wild West in the regard. Oh and to be clear: Joy does have a barcode scanner. It picks up 99% of foods out there.
  - flocial 7y ago
    "Oh and to be clear: Joy does have a barcode scanner. It picks up 99% of foods out there." That's nice to know (I looked for the info but couldn't find it mentioned on the landing or iOS app page). The community entries are a mess. Spelling mistakes abound, sometimes the nutrition profile gets changed by the manufacturer, and barcodes get re-used. But it still covers most of my needs.
- acemarke 7y ago
  I'd used MFP years ago for a bit, then stopped. I just tried to get back into tracking my meals about a month ago, and tried out an app called LoseIt (Android: com.fitnow.loseit ). I compared them by entering the same meals into both for about a week, and decided to switch to LoseIt, mostly due to the food search feeling snappier and the presentation of the stats looking nicer. Also, LoseIt made it easier to re-enter meals that I'd had recently.
  - silviogutierrez 7y ago
    Redux Royalty in the flesh! Your articles and tutorials were helpful in building Joy. Fun fact: it uses Redux heavily, with TypeScript. Your posts a few years ago in /r/reactjs/ and your site were instrumental. Different username on Reddit, but I'm sure you can find me. Many thanks. [1] [1] Even if you use a competitor!
rubidium 7y ago
I’ve been using the free version of Lose It and it works amazing. Any major differences?
- jpster 7y ago
  I second this. I find it easier & quicker to use than MFP.

moneywoes 7y ago

Way too pricy for what you offer.

cadwag 7y ago
I understand that $2 / month is not trivial for everyone, but this criticism alone is simply not helpful. If a person, such as yourself, does not value the benefits the service provides as greater than the price, they are simply not his/her target market. Your argument could be that the price asked would limit his/her market needlessly by simply being too high, but at this price point I doubt that to be the case. He / she built a service with a clear value prop (fastest food logging possible, backed by high quality / custom data, with a privacy focus). For those interested in food logging without having their eating and nutrition habits / data sold off, I doubt the price would be a deterrent. Maybe you can say the service is not meeting expectations in some way. That’s fair, but then please provide more specific feedback. Given the nature of this forum, let’s try to be either more supportive or at least more clear about what could be improved. Drive-by negativity is just not helpful to anyone. I, for one, applaud his/her efforts, find the offering enticing and the price to be very reasonable (Probably too low, in reality) given the attention to detail, data provided, and problem being solved. Disclaimer: I have not used the service and have no association, only browsed the site. I rarely comment, but wanted to balance out this low-effort negativity.
- silviogutierrez 7y ago
  Thanks for the reasonable take! I think payment ensures a few things: - Makes the business sustainable. You know we'll be around because we have a "revenue > costs" model. - It switches the incentives from "the customer is the product" to "the product is the product". You know how we make money.
sidlls 7y ago
$2/mo is absolutely trivial for the market that this app will target.
tomasdore 7y ago
Username checks out!

flexd 7y ago

I'll try it out!

flocial 7y ago

"Also, there are no community-entered foods. This is a feature in most cases." For me this is the only thing keeping me on MFP (also I don't live in the US so it's a big time saver). The barcode scanner is a godsend. There are a lot of people dissatisfied with the stagnation of MFP though, I think with the right value proposition they're ripe for displacement.

silviogutierrez 7y ago
I will add it, if I figure out the proper way to rank entries. That is, make it clear what's community-entered but peer-reviewed in some way. Right now, MFP is a Wild West in the regard. Oh and to be clear: Joy does have a barcode scanner. It picks up 99% of foods out there.
- flocial 7y ago
  "Oh and to be clear: Joy does have a barcode scanner. It picks up 99% of foods out there." That's nice to know (I looked for the info but couldn't find it mentioned on the landing or iOS app page). The community entries are a mess. Spelling mistakes abound, sometimes the nutrition profile gets changed by the manufacturer, and barcodes get re-used. But it still covers most of my needs.
acemarke 7y ago
I'd used MFP years ago for a bit, then stopped. I just tried to get back into tracking my meals about a month ago, and tried out an app called LoseIt (Android: com.fitnow.loseit ). I compared them by entering the same meals into both for about a week, and decided to switch to LoseIt, mostly due to the food search feeling snappier and the presentation of the stats looking nicer. Also, LoseIt made it easier to re-enter meals that I'd had recently.
- silviogutierrez 7y ago
  Redux Royalty in the flesh! Your articles and tutorials were helpful in building Joy. Fun fact: it uses Redux heavily, with TypeScript. Your posts a few years ago in /r/reactjs/ and your site were instrumental. Different username on Reddit, but I'm sure you can find me. Many thanks. [1] [1] Even if you use a competitor!

rubidium 7y ago

I’ve been using the free version of Lose It and it works amazing. Any major differences?

jpster 7y ago
I second this. I find it easier & quicker to use than MFP.