2009-11-15-Health-Monitoring

I've been trying to lose weight over the last few months and as such have had reason to review several tools for tracking diet and exercise on the iPhone. The first one I took a look at (because it is free) was Lose It. Unfortunately, I couldn't get past the first screen as it's all US Customary units (no option for metric at all and lots of complaints in the feedback that seem to be being ignored) so that just loses straight out.

The next three are:

• Lean Me (Pro)
• My Net Diary
• Map My Fitness

General Features

Feature	Lean Me	My Net Diary	Map My Fitness
Uses metric in the background	Yes	Unknown, if it does it doesn't show.	No. Prepare for inaccuracies (e.g. kg mass entries are turned into pounds and rounded to the nearest whole pound).
Track exercise	Yes	Yes	Yes
Track food intake	Yes	Yes	No
Charting	Percent body fat Weight	Weight BMR BMI Blood Pressure Resting Pulse Rate Hip Size Waist Size Sleep Nutrients Weight vs various energy types (food, activities, carbohydrates)	None
Social networking	No	Twitter	Facebook
Date formats	Uses iPhone profile	MDY DMY (only 2 digit years)	YMD MDY DMY
24 hour clock	N/A	Yes	Yes
Select week start (Sun/Mon)	No	Yes	Yes
Change day start (after midnight consumption is allocated to the day before)	Yes	No	No
Calendar view and selection	No	Yes	Yes
Free trial	No	No	Yes
Web interface	No	Yes	Yes
Track sleep	Yes	Yes	No
Track blood pressure	Yes	Yes	No
Track heart rate	Yes	Yes	No
Move items between days	Yes - bulk or item by item	No - requires re-entry	Yes - item by item basis
Cost (USD)	$15	$9/month $24/3 months $42/6 months $60/year	Free $6/month - bronze $12/month - silver $20/month - gold

Food Features

Feature	Lean Me	My Net Diary
Intake expressed in kilojoules	Allows for kJ in input	No
Total expressed in kilojoules	No	No
Allow for input in non base units	Yes	Yes
Print remaining energy intake as badge on icon	Yes	No
Group foods that are commonly eaten together (create recipes)	No	Yes
Scale back target energy intake linearly	Yes	No, requires scaling back individual parts by hand
Basic metabolism (BMR) calculation	Harris-Benedict Katch-McArdle (uses lean percent body mass so is more accurate)	Estimated Energy Requirements from Food and Nutrition Board (Harris-Benedict)

Exercise Features

Feature	Lean Me	My Net Diary	Map My Fitness
Energy usage expressed in kilojoules	No	Yes, but converted to kCal	Yes
Mapping	No	No	Yes
GPS tracking of exercise path	No	No	Yes
Custom exercise	Time and kCal	MET kcal/lb/hr kCal/unit	Enter custom descriptions instead of using the drop down
Gear replacement tracking	No	No	Yes
Total kilometers traveled	No	No	Yes

Issues

• Lean Me
  • The interface for changing data is difficult to use (you need to touch a small spot on the line you want to change and that can be difficult).
  • The interface adjustments to allow for entering units that aren't the base constantly get in the way (e.g. allowing entering US fl oz).
  • Many liquids only have options for entering data in either US liquid measures or grams. This makes it rather annoying to enter values for a 350 ml bottle.
  • The default for entering a new item has both 100 g and 1 oz. Getting rid of the oz measurement is painful due to the aforementioned issue.
  • The splash screen is annoying and slow.
  • Logs are sent in a rather annoying format and it's difficult to manipulate the data.
• My Net Diary
  • Odd issues with date formats that are browser dependent (e.g. YYYY-MM-DD doesn't work consistently in Safari).
  • Limited support for entering information in kilojoules.
  • The demo is only available in US Customary measurements and they seem to be unwilling to allow for using metric in the demo.
  • Data is stored on their servers and you can't get the raw data out again (although they have better tools for manipulation).
• Map My Fitness
  • Rounds data in odd ways (e.g. if you have a 7.6 km route planned, it'll be logged properly via the web interface but logged as 8.0 km via the iPhone interface and it'll round kilograms to the nearest pound).
  • Data is stored on their servers and can't be retrieved easily.
• All
  • They use a US based generic set of descriptions for many things so you get speeds and distances in mph even if you're configured for metric. This leads to such oddities as selecting a pace of cycling based on 15-20 mph and then telling it you've travelled 20 km.
  • If you eat anything more interesting than fast food and staples/pre-packaged meals (My Net Diary has UK supermarket pre-packaged meals as well as those from the US, but it's still fairly lean) you're going to spend a lot of time either guessing or in the recipe planner (for those tools with that feature). For instance, scrapple is an option but tom kha gai is not. This is particularly frustrating if, like me, you live in a very multi-cultural area (in my case, the SF Bay Area).

Overall

My Net Diary was far and away the best overall. It's got a number of annoyances (including their support being confused about why one would want to use the WHO recommended kilojoules instead of kCal) but the user interface is a lot better and it's got a wider selection of foods. Unfortunately, all the text on the site is riddled with US Customary measurements. My Net Diary also provides a lot of extra useful information on their site that's useful for both keeping track of and losing weight. However, there's also cost to be considered and there's something to be said for the one off cost of Lean Me and the ability to enter data when you're not connected to the Internet. Map My Fitness is only useful if you need something that can map your routes, otherwise I recommend avoiding it.