Bodybuilding Forums

LiveStrong (MyPlate) http://www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate/users/myplate/

PROS:

Solid site with lots of cool technology. You can start typing in your favorite foods and a list of items you've already eaten before comes up.

Allows you to create meals by selecting multiple pre-existing food items by just searching and checking boxes from foods you commonly eat. This is good because you can build stacks of stuff that you commonly eat each day. For example, I have a meal that sums up my post-workout, breakfast, mid-morning snack all in one. With the click of a button, I have all my typical daily foods added in a matter of seconds

Of all the online diet tracker programs on the Internet that I have found and tried out, it contains the most common foods by brand. Other members are adding items by the day. I have found the most obscure products that I consume already listed. It doesn't rely on the standard generic database of foods which are not very accurate.

The Livestrong team goes through items added by people and verifies their ingredients and when you look up an item, it will say, "VERIFIED" to indicate so.

You can add twitter login so when you add food it automatically throws in a tweet about what you ate, although this is most likely more of a marketing/advertising for them.

You can buy a iphone app (or use the web from an iphone for free).

Up until recently, the site didn't account for weight gain goals, but it does now.

CONS:
Sometimes there are 10-20 of the same item all with the same, similar, or different nutrition information, which forces you to compare your label to find the most accurate one. (verification is your best choice).

Hidden carbs are not accounted for. You can't make adjustments to the food so low carbers are forced to track carbs by hand for more accuracy. What I end up doing is eating only 20 grams of carbs as shown on livestrong, so as to account for hidden carbs.

Sometimes verified items are not listed correctly, particularly in carbs. I've seen "egglands best large eggs" as verified but it is listed to have 1 or 2 grams of sugar and no carbs. This is a major problem when you start looking at your totals for carbs.

You can't see a summary of fats. Therefore, you cannot look at all your days foods to see what type of fat you might be missing or in need of supplementing. This might not seem important but monounsaturated fats are known to help cholesterol and for people who have finicky cholesterol this is good to eat.

The "what I eat often" lookup list is sometimes not represented as what you eat often. Sometimes I have to go and search for the same food item that I've eaten for weeks.

The "what I eat often" lookup list sorting doesn't sort. It's useless.

The site can be really slow. It's jam packed with advertisements and server calls... the site never takes foever (so it seems) to load 100% as it's constantly pushing and pulling data from the server and your browser. This results in slow usage which can be annoying. Sometimes the page just never loads and sits there... sometimes it times out, yet you can click refresh and it loads instantly. Other times the page loads halfway.

Sometimes it logs you out for no known reason when you return to the page and so you start plugging in food but it's not attached to your log-in.

It doesn't summarize all your nutrition information in useful ways... only the basic totals per food items (fat, protein, carbs, cholesterol, sodium, sugars, fiber)

Many of the features seem useless, like charts that show you the foods you eat and the percent they contribute to fats, protein, etc. Simple match can get you those numbers just as fast.

Unless your a gold member (which doesn't seem to offer much benefit compared to a free member) you cannot see all your food from the past. Eventually it truncates the earlier foods, but I don't know how far back. Gold members can organize their food summary in groupings like "Breakfast, lunch, dinner". I don't see that as a reason to pay more.

Offers a 5-day free trial of gold member but makes you put in a credit card number (probably in hopes that you'll forget and it will begin rolling over and charging you!) That's a scam and a turnoff.

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FitDay (http://fitday.com)

PROS:
It's a simple site and therefore loads quick. I don't have problems with stalling or failed to load errors.

Advertisements are at a minimum and are not very invasive.

Page loads completely, so it's not constantly talking to the server creating a lag.

It contains a comprehensive and useful food report that can show you fat totals (saturated, poly, mono, carbs, fiber, protein and even alcohol. You can do that over day, week, 2 weeks, 4 weeks, this month, or 2 months. It's a great way to see if you're over-consuming a certain far or need to balance out another kind (important for cholesterol minded folks)

Goes back a long time. I can go back to when I first started low carbing/THT/MANS and look at what I ate and my weight, mood, etc.

The membership offers enhanced reporting, tracking and no advertisements.

I think this is the most beneficial item: You can make your own private foods that other people won't see. That means that you can account for HIDDEN carbs, thereby making your daily totals accurate. Once you have added your own foods, you have quick access to them by a drop-down list.

CONS:

Uses the standard generic database of foods which are not very accurate since they aren't specific to a product by brand. For example, if you look up sirloin steak, you will get 10's of listings on different cuts, with all these variations that typically don't match the packaging label of the meat you have.

It's a bit more cumbersome to use than TheDailyPlate. Typically it takes me a bit more time to plug in my foods.

It's not as cool looking... very html.

It doesn't use Javascript so it loads/reloads on many actions (although it does so quicker than TheDailyPlate

It's more for weight loss so many of the tools are not applicable to bodybuilding


My choice: Although I'm not a fan of TheDailyPlate because of it's advertising and SLOWWWWWness, and above all hidden carbs that cannot be adjusted for, I like it overall because it has a more product oriented list of foods. If fitday had a more specific list of foods and not that generic USDA-type of database then I would be there in a heartbeat. Although, if TheDailyPlate gets any slower, I'm just switching to fitday and creating all my own foods from the labels, adding hidden carbs which would be nice.

Reasons I use Livestrong instead of Fitday now:
iPhone client. And iPhone client.

I even paid for a gold membership on Livestrong... it gives you nutritional micronutrient breakdowns by day as a gold member. That was the main reason I upgraded.

--Matt B.

redgiki wrote:Reasons I use Livestrong instead of Fitday now:
iPhone client. And iPhone client.

I even paid for a gold membership on Livestrong... it gives you nutritional micronutrient breakdowns by day as a gold member. That was the main reason I upgraded.

--Matt B.

Does Gold Membership give you breakdown like what I have below??
Fats totals for today:
Saturated: 50 grams
Mono Unsaturated: 40grams
Poly Unsaturated: 50 grams
Trans Fats: 2 grams

redgiki wrote:I even paid for a gold membership on Livestrong... it gives you nutritional micronutrient breakdowns by day as a gold member. That was the main reason I upgraded.

I like the reporting too. I have paid memberships on both, but I haven't been using FitDay. I think Livestrong is more useful because of the ability to access what other people have input. It's 100 times faster to put together nutrition info for things I eat at Rudy's, Sonic, Freebirds, Jimmy John's, Potbelly, Schlotzky's, etc., because somebody else has kindly already put the components in for me, and all I have to do is assemble them into the configuration that I actually ate.

Still doesn't help me for my other favorite places, locals like Chuy's, Trudy's, and Texadelphia, which don't have nutrition info available. Come on, people, get with the 21st century!!

andrewpmast wrote:Does Gold Membership give you breakdown like what I have below??
Fats totals for today:
Saturated: 50 grams
Mono Unsaturated: 40grams
Poly Unsaturated: 50 grams
Trans Fats: 2 grams

It doesn't have trans fats, but yes, what you're looking for is called "Custom nutrition label", and it's one of the two main "Gold Member" (heh heh, Goldmember...) features.

marochka_raduga wrote:"Gold Member" (heh heh, Goldmember...)

Ah, this is good. I just may become gold.