The calorie tracking app. MyPlate was the second casualty in the fight for a spot on the Miss SugarCookie home screen. It was decidedly better than the first one that was cut (LoseIt), but not as good as the two that are left (MyNetDiary and MyFitnessPal). There were a couple of minor deficiencies, but the main reason was that you had to manually add all your own exercises, with descriptions and calorie estimates. I also think the analytics were not that great and when using the bar code scanner or manually searching for foods, some things were not found.

When I first started using these apps, I did it to track calories and not my exercise, so initially that seemed like it would not be a big deal. Then a few days in I recognized that when they factor how much you can or should be eating, it is partially based on your activity levels. So I started entering my exercise so I could see what impact that had on my allotted calories and essentially how many I had left in the day. So then it became a bigger deal. Plus with a lot of the other variables being so similar, I had to make some decision.

The one thing I think they did do better than all the other apps was the home screen display. It was a very easy to read set of stats for the day and included a chart that broke down the ratio of carbs versus proteins versus fats, which is one of the things I wanted to get from the apps.

Perhaps when I’m all done with this little experiment I will put together a grid of criteria and how each app did in that category. It might be good for posterity. Anyway, I wanted to get a full seven days in to see what the data analytics looked like and I can do that now, so that will likely be very key in my decision. Bring your “A” game.. it’s down to the final two.