MyFitnessPal App Review & Listener Concerns About Microdosing

Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of My Unhealthy Podcast, a show where we talk about the journey to adopt a healthier lifestyle by transforming our unhealthy habits. And I wanted to give a quick little update today. I am in the midst of conference season, so I am in and out of the home. 

I'm not able to follow everything to a T, but I just want to give you guys an update on how I'm doing because I think I did pretty good in this last week. Today, I also want to go back. I had promised you guys that I would start talking about some of the apps that I've been trying. 

I'm going to give you the pros and cons of each. I want to focus on one app today, the MyFitnessPal app that was mentioned a while back with Diana Feinstein and tell you whether I'm using that or not still. And I have an email from a listener that questions why I would even talk about the topic of microdosing.

So that's where we are today. So let me first go back. So today is Saturday, June 8th. 

And if you are keeping up with the shows in order, the last show was Understanding the Science Behind Microdosing. And that was my guest, Julie Hagen, also known as Julie Suvahn, which is her website. And that is the second part of a three-part interview that we're doing about microdosing. 

So be sure to go back and listen to that. In the meantime, I just returned from two conferences last Friday. I was at a conference in Tampa. 

It was a one-day event. And then I drove home on Saturday, left on Sunday to go to a conference that I returned from on Wednesday. So a big part of what I've been trying to do is to maintain weight and lose a couple of inches around the belly. 

I don't know if I gave a full explanation of where I was. So back in the fall when I was first doing this to lose weight for Christmas, I'd actually lost 10 pounds really, really quick. And then of course, during the holidays, I gained that all back really, really quick. 

So I went through a couple of months of trying to figure out what to do here. I gave you guys an idea of what I was doing with trying to transform into clean eating. And I did a show about that a couple of weeks ago, talking about moving to more, you know, not just organic, but actually looking at all of the additives and things in the foods and trying to get back to more of a all, I don't want to say natural because that's probably not the best description, but you know, anything that has additives, preservatives, high sugar, all those types of foods, I'll describe that in a little bit more detail in an upcoming episode because if I'm doing this all correctly, the apps that I'm using and the process that I'm doing will be successful. 

So I'm back down around eight pounds, but this time I feel much better about it. I'm not hungry during the day. I'm not cranky because I haven't eaten. 

I'm not having any of those sugar cravings or anything like that. But that's where I'm at. I'm in between conferences.

I'm going to be leaving again tomorrow and I will be back in town on Thursday. So these are all conferences where really they don't have the best foods. So I have to pick and choose what to eat. 

I have to dial back my portions. I have to avoid the sugary stuff they have, the sodas, drinking much more water while I'm there. I'm actually taking some teas with me. 

And instead of having the hotel coffee, I'm drinking tea. I'm doing that in the room and just trying to do some stuff. Now, the conference that I was at last week was actually in Orlando. 

So for those of you that know I'm in Fort Lauderdale, that's just a drive. I can take food with me. I can stop off at Publix even during the conference. 

So that's pretty easy. This next conference, I'm flying to Denver and I won't be renting your car. I'll just be taking an Uber and we'll be staying at the Gaylord Resorts in the Rockies. 

So I won't really have access to take food with me. I don't know if I'll be able to go out and get food from the local store. In fact, the Gaylord Rockies is really not close to any towns. 

It's basically from the airport and then it's another half hour to Denver. So I'll have to figure something out, but I'll give you an update on that later. So that's where we're at. 

That's where I'm at. Nothing really major to report except that when I came back from the two conferences, I had only gained half a pound. So for me, that's a win. 

Pretty, pretty nice. Now let's go ahead and talk about the MyFitnessPal. I know that I've talked about this a couple of times. 

It was the app that was recommended to me by a tech friend and if you don't know it, I'll put a link to it, MyFitnessPal. It is apparently one of the more popular apps and the basic purpose of it is to count calories and track fitness. Things that I really didn't want to do. 

So when I started using the app, one of the first things it asks you to do is to kind of put together a goal and it gives you an estimated number of calories. And what you're supposed to do is literally log your food. So you're going to put in breakfast, lunch, dinner, if you have a snack, you put that in. 

And I tried that for a few days and I said this is, this is not going to work for me. This might work for other people, but that's not what I wanted to do. I also was not going to be going to the gym and working out. 

So having the exercise tracker, even though it can log workouts and I guess one of the benefits is this food app actually syncs with a bunch of other fitness apps and wearable devices. Now I know that a ton of people are using the Apple Fitbit and all of those things. I do not. 

I don't wear a watch. I don't want a wearable. It's just not something that I'm going to do. 

So that's a big benefit of the app that I'm not going to get. I'm not logging workouts and I can't sync with my apps. One of the things that it does do really well, I guess, is the goal setting part of it. 

You can set your weight goals and get personalized calorie targets, which that I did get. So I had an idea of, okay, this is about how many calories I should eat. However, to get the expert guided meal plans, you had to pay for that. 

So that's one of the cons. And I guess the first major con is, as an app, the free portion is very, very limited. I mean, one of the things that I've been finding looking at other apps is the ability to scan food barcodes and get information on that.

You cannot do that with the MyFitnessPal. That is a premium feature. So that's a big red X against that or a big, you know, con for there. 

The other thing I kind of mentioned earlier, the fact that it is so calorie focused. And the little research that I have done has kind of led me to believe that only focusing on the calories is not enough. It's not the healthiest for some because you're depriving yourself, in a sense. 

And the other part that I have found out in recent weeks is that it does not account for things like the quality of the food that you're eating or something I've learned called the nutrient density of what you're eating. So you may be eating a low amount of calories, but if you're not getting any nutrients from it, you're really hurting your body more than helping the body. And I guess, in a sense, that's what could lead to this kind of obsessive disorder behavior that we see with people where they become so obsessed with counting calories that, you know, it leads them to, you know, under eat and develop some bad habits. 

Now, the whole purpose of this show, at least from my perspective, is to take away the unhealthy habits and turn them into healthier ones. So for people that have issues with counting calories and not being able to eat the right foods, this would not work. So all in all, I mean, the MyFitness app, MyFitnessPal app, is probably a good app if I were willing to pay for it, if I were willing to start exercising, going to a plan, that sort of thing. 

But on the surface, this app doesn't really look like it's going to work for me. I say that because I haven't used the app in probably two to three months. So it is something where I started to use it. 

I did log my food. I do have, you know, some daily meal plans that I would eat that I could go in and just simply select them and add them. But like I said, it's cumbersome in tracking. 

The app visually is stunning. I mean, it has a very good dashboard when you first log in. It's got some different categories that you can go to. 

It can actually add on some additional features. Again, you've got to pay for them, but it will help you, you know, eat right. And then monitor your sleep. 

It'll help with recipes. There is a community aspect to it. Again, I did not go into that in a detail because I wasn't going to use the app, but there's a lot of good things there.

It just doesn't seem that it will be the app for me. So I have three more apps that I have tried over the last month or so. I will go into those in future episodes because I want to be able to use them in depth enough to give you a full review of, you know, how I used it, what worked, what didn't work, and is it one that I'm going to use going forward. 

So there you have it, the MyFitnessPal app. Convenient for calorie counting, but in my mind, too calorie centric and probably doesn't suit a lot of health goals that I was looking to do. So that is the MyFitnessPal app. 

But there's a link for you to go try it out. And if you like it, let me know. And here is an email that I got. 

And first of all, I need to say thank you because the fact that someone sent me an email means that someone listened to the shows. And I appreciate that. I would love to continue hearing feedback. 

And if you have questions, let me know. If you have comments, let me know. Suggestions, or you're telling me, Marv, you're in the wrong direction, I welcome those comments. 

So here's the email. And I'm just going to kind of paraphrase it. I won't even say who it's from, but it says, Marv, thank you very much for doing your Unhealthy Podcast series. 

I enjoy hearing another person's perspective and journey. But for the love of God, I'm sorry, why would you of all people be talking about a topic like microdosing? And I'm going to stop right there because I think that's the gist of the question that needs to be answered. The other comments are a little more personal. 

But first of all, like I said, I want to say thank you for the question. And I want to go back and just simply talk about why I did cover this topic. So I understand that microdosing with psychedelics is controversial. 

And I know that because there are a lot of misperceptions about microdosing. I admit that I had them. And to some degree, microdosing is a very wide thing.

I'm talking with Julie Savone about it as it pertains to mushrooms. We're not talking about the other psychedelics like the LSD and other things that people microdose. So there has been some increasing research and interest around the potential therapeutic benefits.

And that was the mindset that Julie had, which is why I wanted to have her on the show. And she comes with a little bit of scientific perspective. So I felt that that was something that I wanted to do. 

It's an issue where the goal of this show and the goal for me is always to provide kind of a balanced look at everything. And again, there are things that work for some that don't work for others. There are a lot of popular things out there that are probably just as harmful or more in that respect. 

I mean, Julie and I talked about the fact of alcohol is something that, I mean, obviously it's legal, very widely accepted, but a lot of people have an unhealthy lifestyle around alcohol and then some of the other drugs and smoking and stuff like that. So microdosing, from what I am seeing now, is very beneficial to some people. So this is the show that I want to be open to all of those things.

But I will always try to speak to people that have first-hand experience. I'm not just going to talk to somebody who has an opinion about it or wants to lecture either me or my audience about what is good and what is not good. I'm not trying to be reckless with the show.

At the end of the day, I want people to be able to make their own informed decisions. And again, I personally don't microdose. I can say at least right now, I don't have any plans to microdose.

But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't consider it if you have some of the issues that Julie talked about. There are a lot of drugs out there that I have seen prescribed to people with depression that are just, it's almost making their lives more horrible. So if microdosing with mushrooms can be something that helps, even though it's controversial, even though it's legal in most states, I mean illegal in most states, it's becoming legal in others, I'm going to have an open mind about it. 

Now, still might be a little skeptical, but if there are benefits that could help, you know, friends of mine, I'm going to use this role to explore that and other interesting topics. Now, there will be some that I just won't consider. That, I mean, if we're truly doing something that is unlegal and harmful and reckless, that's not going to happen.

So again, I'm going to continue to bring, you know, whatever I think can help people go from unhealthy to healthy, that's what we're going to do. So I hope this explains that and that you'll listen to a show later on. So next week, I will have part three of Julie's episode on microdosing and I hope that you listen to that and get a much better informed decision.

That'll do it for now. Until next time, holla!