Ask HN: Any calory-tracking app without the need for an account? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Any calory-tracking app without the need for an account?

3 pointslinkdd8 comments

Hello there.

I need to lose some weight because I'm beginning to have back problems due to the lack of exercise and extra weight I have.

For this, I'd like to start tracking my calory intake. I tried the top 50 apps on the Android Play store.

Every. Single. One of them require a 15min long quizz, and an account to some website (probably to spam you with tons of ads). Why? I just need to keep track of an integer...

Do any of you know about a bullsh*t-free app, or have any tips? Or should I write this app myself? :P

Also, any tip on losing weight beyond the obvious "eat healthier, exercise" are welcome :)

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Not sure about an app, I keep a Jupyter notebook for meal planning and double checking calorie intake, with info from https://www.nutracheck.co.uk/CaloriesIn/Product/Search?desc=... (use the search bar there, it's accessible without an account).

For general fat loss advice, I find Renaissance Periodization helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsNeZjjOOl4&list=PLyqKj7LwU2.... There's also https://www.hornstrength.com/radicallysimplefatloss.

You may want to combine fat loss with strength training for better results. My favorite information source on this is Starting Strength: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNhFKPjedRnQ_qs4ID5gl..., also see https://startingstrength.com/about. If you live in the US, Munich, Brussels or some parts of Asia, you could find one of their gyms at https://coaching.startingstrength.com/.

Thanks for the links, I'll check them out.

The Jupyter Notebook idea is actually quite nice, I might do that as well.

I have an app called OpenFoodFacts that allow me to scan the barcode of the food I buy to check for many things, including the kcal amount.

For the gyms, this is not my cup of tea. I'm a bit of an hermit and like the comfort of my home, so the exercising will have to be done at home. But I'm sure they have plenty of tips for that, I will look more into it. Thank you :)

It’s paid, and you need to sign up but it’s a non spammy non ad driven app I can recommend https://macrofactorapp.com

You log what you eat and your weight. It then self adjusts your macro targets based on weekly progress. It has the usual free trial period to test.

If you want ideas for meals, self plug https://www.macrosolver.com/.

It’s a small personal webapp I built for myself specifically but host publicly, no frills, no signup, no ads. You put a bunch of ingredients in and your target macros and it tells you how much of each ingredient to eat to hit your macros.

It works best with whole foods where the foods list contains a carb source, a fat source and protein source then any extra ingredients. You will likely need to play with the min/max qtys after initial suggestions to get something reasonable. I use it for creating recipes that hit my macros with stuff I have in the cupboards and found it useful, I’ve created a few I wouldn’t think of normally.

No tips, just the obvious. Strength training and moderate cardio I.e walking more helps with fat loss over endless hours of cardio. Smart watch such as Apple or Garmin can encourage you to be more active and track activity trends.

It's not the flashiest thing, but I lost a bunch of weight (over 50 lbs) using a spreadsheet. The way I did it, I had one sheet with the macronutrients (including calories) and serving sizes of food I encountered, or recipes I made. This sheet got very large by the end. When I ate something, I'd copy out the row and paste it into a daily sheet that totaled everything up.

The downside is that it's not easy to add new foods, since I'd have to manually input everything. I almost consider this a feature, because sometimes I'd skip snacking because I didn't want to deal with adding it to the spreadsheet.

Tested a lot of apps but im sorry I have no account free single integer app recommendation. BUT I think lifesum is worth the account, the help scanning, tracking, history and so on is great to help keeping yourself on track.

The account thing is really a no go for me. My inbox is already full enough as it is :P

For scanning, I use OpenFoodFacts, it's a collaborative/opensource project: https://github.com/openfoodfacts

https://www.nutritionvalue.org allows you to search and check nutrition data without creating an account.

There is Food-tracker and Waistline on F-droid. I don't like counting calories, so that is not a recommendation, as I haven't used them.

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