Manual Food and Habit Logging Gets Abandoned Fast
People struggle to maintain consistent tracking habits, finding the effort required for detailed logging unsustainable. They recognize the value of the data but are overwhelmed by the manual processes and time commitment, leading to abandonment of tracking tools. This highlights a disconnect between desired outcomes and the effort required to achieve them.
SOURCES (60)
“So far I’m very impressed! I logged my breakfast this morning. I’ll use the in-app “send feedback” button later today after using it more, unless you’d rather I get info to you another way.”
“Hi! I’d be glad to check this out for you! I’ve been logging my meals using “Lose It!” but I’m always looking for alternatives. I’ve been logging workouts via Hevy. This sounds like it may bridge the gap between the two. I’m looking forward to giving it a try and will start with tomorrow’s breakfast. Let me know how/where you would prefer I report feedback. I do have an app of my own I’ve been working on. You’re welcome to check it out, if you have an iPhone and any interest in a tv episode trac”
“Over the last few weeks I went through public 1–3 star reviews of the biggest calorie-tracking apps (116 reviews total, tagged by complaint theme not just 1-star, since that overweights billing rage). Two things stood out: 47% mention price/subscription/support issues (expected) 34% mention "they redesigned it and now core features are gone" especially long-time paying users losing things like multi-macro views or one-click navigation to a redesign Smaller but real: 6–7% mention inaccu”
“Totally fair, honestly. I can see how logging every snack could quickly turn into another chore, and the notification fatigue is real too. Thanks for being straight with me — this is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for.”
“I see the vision but I'd never stick with it. the mental load of logging every bag of chips and box of cookies feels heavier than just glancing at the cabinet once a week and tossing the one sad thing that got pushed to the back. my kitchen is chaos and I know myself well enough to admit I'd use this for three days tops before the notifications started annoying me”
“https://preview.redd.it/2ahckgmta7nh1.jpeg?width=1536&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=76a39624133cd98aaf4b7ee6e3c90add519d6b9b”
“12 Week Year is a good book on this topic. Every single goal must be measurable. Every single one. Rn I’m losing weight. I have every day “tasks”: 10k steps, didn’t eat sugar, etc. I used a weight loss calculator online to know how much in deficit I must be for my goal. If I do everything right, then there’s no way my weight will not move. Same way with spiritual goals: I pray x times; if I don’t feel improvement, I need to reassess.”
“[MyFitnessPal] ★★★ 3/5 (v26.35.0) — I miss being able to quickly check calories consume vs calories exercised at the top of the diary. Why would they take that away??? I’ve been using this for 10 years and I’m so disappointed in this update. It’s clunky. It wastes my time. Too many extra clicks for things that used to be 1-click wonders. I’m in SaaS and whoever approved this update didn’t have customers in mind. I will be looking for a new app unfortunately.”
“[MyFitnessPal] ★ 1/5 (v26.35.0) — I deleted the app a while back because it wasn’t helpful to me. My boyfriend convinced me to add it again yesterday so I went through and added 2 days of calories, paired it with my health app for fitness information, and put in an accurate weight (I’d been keeping track on different apps). When I woke up this morning all of the data was erased and it only had information from before I deleted it. So obviously, I’m deleting it again. Happy for the people who lik”
“I want to create a habit tracker that looks like the heatmap from github, how can I do that? How can I do with and without plugins? submitted by /u/Doid1n_B0l4din [link] [comments]”
“I'm 6'4" and have always had a hard time gaining weight, so tracking my nutrition actually matters to me. But every calorie app I tried buried food logging under workout plans, step counters, and social feeds I never wanted. I just wanted to log what I ate. So I decided to build my own app, even though I had never shipped anything on iOS before. I used both Claude Code and Codex to build it. Claude Code was way better for me. I could hand it a feature and basically let it work on it”
“+1. I have a whoop I wear religiously, can I leverage that for obsidian in any way?”
“the "what should I eat" problem is so real and so underrated as a startup angle. most fitness apps assume you already know what to cook, they just track it after the fact. solving the decision paralysis part is genuinely useful, especially for people new to a country or just starting out.”
“Been using an app (name not mentioned because of ad rules if curious I'd share in comment) that models how daily food intake translates into projected fat gain/loss on a 3D anatomical view — as it shows for example "Nutella biscuits, whole pack, no activity" scenario projected over 12 months (+462,168 kcal cumulative). Kind of a stark way to see compounding effects. Curious if anyone's tried similar visual/predictive tracking tools? How effective this kind of Healthtech could b”
“I’ve noticed the same pattern for years with myself, my family, and a lot of people trying to lose weight or eat healthier. Making a plan usually isn’t the hard part. We know what we want to eat, buy the right food, and start motivated. The hard part is sticking to it. Cravings hit, we grab something we didn’t plan to eat, cheat on a meal, and slowly fall back into our old habits. That made me realize that maybe the problem isn’t always knowing what to eat . Sometimes we just need help staying a”
“[MyFitnessPal] ★★★ 3/5 (v26.34.0) — Love using this app for macro tracking and the look of the newest food log is much better than before. However I did like it better when you could organize the order of the foods in each meal section.”
“Awesome ! I’m the same. Sometimes the numbers stress me out but it’s still nice to see what I’m eating lol. Thank you 🙏🏾”
“ooo the Just Log option is speaking to me, sometimes I just want to note that I ate a sad desk salad without doing math about it. signed up, ready to poke holes in things”
“Thanks a lot for taking the time to try it and write this up — this is really helpful. Both points make a lot of sense. The meal logging flow probably assumes too much familiarity with macros, so I’ll take a closer look at making that first experience clearer without adding more friction. I also agree about the program logic. Rep ranges and rest periods shouldn’t feel like they came out of a black box, so I’m going to pay closer attention to how Ollim explains why those choices were made based o”
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chorefit-track-chore-calories/id6753065929
“Huel shakes. Not a good long term thing, but on days I struggle to eat, especially for meds, ill take one of those. Drinking the calories is easier for me than eating them, and you dont have to prep it or chug it, just open it and start sipping. I know theyre technically meal replacements, I generally dont use them for that, but they've got all the stuff youd need and plenty of calories to pass as a meal.”
“This sounds way more useful than yet another free-for-all tracker, I'll give it a spin after work”
“this is actually how the macrofactor app works, it's a solid approach. nice to see another take on it, especially one with a quick two-week turnaround. i'll give the beta a shot, keen to see how the ui feels compared to what's already out there”
“Calorie dense foods you only need a relatively small portion of to get 300 calories: - nuts and nut butters - cheese - avocados - meat - oily fish like smoked salmon - granola or oats - seeds What is the main issue with food? Do you need bland calories? Have texture issues? Feel full quickly? You could try mass gainer weight shakes. Normal protein shakes are aimed at weight loss and only have about 150 calories per shake, but muscle builder ones have up to 1000 calories. You will find some that”
“Apple slices and peanut butter Greek yogurt with some nuts on top, or dried fruit”
“Taking you up on this. KnowsYou, a health journal where the whole interface is a conversation: you say what you ate, or send a photo or a voice note, and it logs the nutrition. Same for workouts, supplements and lab reports. Corrections happen by replying, not by editing forms. Android or plain browser, free while in beta: https://knowsyou.ai/install Where I expect it to break for you: the food estimates from photos, quantities especially. And the onboarding, since I built it around my own habit”
“Background: I was on GLP-1s for a while. I lost the weight but I lost it badly, barely eating and clearly losing muscle. When I decided to do it properly, gym plus labs plus actual nutrition, the hard part was not the diet. It was keeping all of it in one place. Every app owned one piece and none of them talked to each other. So I built the one I wanted. The whole interface is a conversation: you say "two eggs and toast" and it logs it, or you send a photo, a voice note, or scan a barc”
“[MyFitnessPal] ★★★ 3/5 (v26.34.0) — I love the tracking of micros and calories. It’s easy to add custom foods and plan a head. The frustrating part is constantly being kicked out and having to log back in and it resets all my goals. It’s very inconvenient when I’m low on time and try to log my food but not able to properly and forget to go back later. I feel like it throws off my day. When it works right it’s great but I don’t have 30 min every hour to play in the settings and set my configurati”
“Really cool idea and something I would love to try if you were able to connect it to Tesco Ireland! One thing for you to consider - my wife is vegetarian, while I'm not. So we always have meat substitutes in our meal plans. It'd be cool if you could include that option :) Also how does the app select a price for an item? I mean, if you search for salmon on Tesco, you get multiple different options. Does it take an average? Either way, if you're looking for testers, and are able to co”
“After GLP-1s I decided to do it properly: gym, labs, better nutrition, supplements where I am deficient, and a small deficit instead of starving. The hard part turned out to be keeping all of it organised. I kept forgetting which supplement, how much and when, and I had no real idea how much protein I was actually eating. So I built the thing I needed: Just say it. "two eggs and toast" in a sentence, or a photo, a voice note, or a barcode scan Fix it by replying. "it was more like”
“After reading that we need about 30gr. of fibers in our diet daily i made a very simple but yet useful tracker. Of course it doesn't find the fibers of a food automatically by taking photos or searching in the library the food you ate but thats may be a plus for some people like me that prefer the fastest way. There were lots of others apps with signups and lots of tools on them but minimalism is what i wanted about it. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.webcraft.fibertracker”
“So my girlfriend and I hit the gym pretty regularly and we’re both tracking calories/macros. The problem was every time we found a recipe on TikTok or Instagram we wanted to make, we’d have to screenshot it or copy the link, then manually figure out the calories and macros ourselves then log it. After a while, we tried a couple recipe apps that could calculate the calories/macros but it was still a pain to then go and track that in another app. Every calorie tracker we tried was either bad (and”
“Hello everyone. This is a long one for what might seem a small potatoes topic, so thanks to anyone who takes the time of day. As a neurodivergent person, I can get a bit lost in the weeds and details, and overcomplicate things. One of the things I’m trying to work on is improving my speed at estimating Kcal, protein (grams) and fluid (ml) intake, but find that it can take me quite a while because I get tunnel vision and worry I’m not getting it right. For example, say someone has an intake of 2x”
Ohhhhh, meal planning is my least fav, so this is great!
“Thanks so much for joining and for the kind words! Yeah, the calorie search was actually the part I put the most work into - wanted it to cover real everyday food (convenience store items, home-cooked staples, etc.) rather than just generic entries. Really appreciate you trying it out for the full two weeks! Let me know if you run into any bugs or rough edges along the way.”
“Joined the group and opted in, will keep it installed for the two weeks. The calorie search pulling from a 300+ list is a nice touch, most of the smaller tracker apps skip that entirely.”
“Making your own setup is almost always better than trying to wrestle someone else's template into submission For the recipe-to-meal tracker issue, you might try a third relation that links the meal tracker to the recipe database, then pull ingredients through with a rollup that references the recipe's ingredient relation. Gets a little meta but it works if you don't mind the extra step”
“Hey everyone, Ola here, Norwegian guy living in Australia. 🦘 A while back, my wife and I had to visit a pediatric dietitian because one of our kids was having constant, unexplained stomach issues and skin flares. The dietitian gave us the standard advice: "Keep a strict paper food and symptom journal for the next month." If you’ve ever tried to manage a chaotic child while accurately logging every snack, bowel movement, and skin flare on a piece of paper, you know it’s super annoying.”
“I kept trying to eat less junk food, then starting over after one hard moment. The apps I tried made the goal feel like a perfect endpoint: every snack meant I was farther away. That “gap” mindset creates guilt—and guilt makes it easier to quit. NibbleWin starts from the opposite idea: Gain. A craving is a chance to pause, not a verdict. Eating less, hesitating for three seconds, choosing differently, or simply recording what happened all count as progress. You see those gains grow in a small ga”
“extending to 14 days doesn't solve this, it just moves the wall and hands over two more weeks of the part everyone else also has. two things worth trying instead. most people who install a calorie tracker have been weighing themselves already, and that history is sitting in apple health. import it at onboarding and the physique layer has its 14 records on day one for a decent share of your users. the wall only exists for people starting from zero. for those, stop trying to demo the output an”
“[MyFitnessPal] ★★★ 3/5 (v26.33.0) — 2 years ago I love this app it was easy to read I love the circle bar saying how many calories I burn and how many I have taken in. But recently when I got on this app this was last year new features I am like ok I will learn it. Then it updated again the next day completely new features like I don’t recognize the app anymore. Just recently i used it I am like ok I understand now I can read this I know what to key in. Then this next update throw me off again I”
“[MyFitnessPal] ★ 1/5 (v26.33.0) — Show the number of calories CONSUMED, NOT the number of calories REMAINING!!!!!!! Clearly you have no idea how people actually use this app. Once again, more useless "for the sake of change" alterations to the UI for no discernible reason that are really annoying. You are "iterating" just to give your engineers something to do, we all see it everywhere. Every "security" update does not require a revamp to the logging schema.”
“the whole idea is one thing: you photograph your plate and it gives you calories, macros and a micronutrient breakdown. no searching, no scrolling past forty near identical database entries, no guessing whether your "medium" chicken breast matches their "medium". it also does barcodes, voice and text ("chicken shawarma and a large coke"), and restaurant menus. that last one photographs the menu and tells you what's in the dishes before you order rather than afte”
“[MyFitnessPal] ★ 1/5 (v26.33.0) — I have been on this app for 18 years and normally I would be raving about it. However, at least 3/4 of the foods that are found on the app fail to log. As we result, it is likely you are under counting calories, unless you are extremely vigilant and assume appropriate failure.”
“Hi HN. Trying to get into calorie tracking. Only tried MyFitnessPal. Looking to strike a balance between being concious about what I eat and tracking with a reasonable degree of accuracy and flexibility (e.g. eating out).Interested in hearing what other people’s experiences with calorie tracking have been like and lessons”
“Every calorie tracker I've tried dies at the same step. I even subscribed to cal ai for a period of time and I still struggled with the following: Remembering. Photo apps made logging fast and much less friction than weighing or calculating food stats but you still have to think "I should log this" before you eat and thats where most people (including me) forget or simply decide its too much effort. So we went after the remembering. The band watches wrist motion, figures out you”
“absolutely. presets get saved automatically without you having to save them yourself! you can edit at any time and when you edit a common meal (common to you!) it references that change you made next time it analyzes and sticks with your edits! this is a super late reply but since you commented this the model has surpasses the accuracy i assumed it would be at! still lots of kinks to work through and false negatives to eliminate but so far so good. thanks for pausing to comment”
“Anyone know of one? Patients have asked for this so they can track just one nutrient or macro and not see calories, but I don’t know of one. submitted by /u/KnownLocal579 [link] [comments]”
“By just sending a voice message you can save your meal if you eat it often, otherwise you can mention the ingredients roughly in a voice msg. It is way better than looking it manually in the food database”
“I posted Forge here about six weeks ago. The original idea was pretty simple: I was tired of searching through food databases every time I wanted to log a normal meal. I wanted to type what I ate and be done. Then people started testing it and found some embarrassing problems. Two IPAs once came back at 834 calories. “Green tea” failed completely. Adding a number before a restaurant item could cause the app to lose the verified nutrition and start estimating. Modified restaurant orders sometimes”
“I fast 16:8 and I've cycled through several fasting apps over two years. What pushed me out each time wasn't a paywalled timer — most of the big ones do give you that free. It was the ads in a health app, and pricing that turns out to be quiz-dependent rather than fixed. One of the largest says on its own site that the price varies with what you choose during signup; another lists ten different price points across four tiers. So I built Halfday with one price and no quiz. The timer, the”