I started my after-40 fitness journey on October 10th, 2023 and for the first month of training, I didn't keep track of my macronutrients intake (carbohydrates, fat, protein) and didn't count calories either. I just made sure to eat enough protein and more vegetables and salads instead of bread and pasta and focused more on healthy food. I've been eating whole foods most of the time my entire life, I'm not a big fan of sweets, soda, or junk food, so my diet was easy to adjust to follow my fitness goal of losing fat and building muscle simultaneously. One of the "bad habits" I had before starting to work out was to eat a lot of pasta, about 200-300 grams (that's around half of a box) at one meal, usually at dinner with meat and red sauce with some parmesan on top of it followed by a glass or two of red wine. This isn't healthy... too many carbs, fat, and calories for just one meal. But without calculating precisely calories and macros, with a food tracking app, you might not be aware of it.
Adjusting my diet and working out 3-4 times a week, already produced some results within the first month. I lost about one kilo (2,20 lbs), so seeing some results motivated me to get even more disciplined with my new fitness journey. Back in the day, in my twenties (almost 30 years ago) when I started to do strength training, I would remember everything I ate throughout the day, and in the evening I used to write everything down in a notebook calculating protein intake and total calories. This helped me to learn how to adjust my diet to eat enough protein and calories for muscle gain. I was about 20 years old and had around 12% body fat without counting fats and carbs and following the old-school food tracking and training methods. Now, at nearly 50 things are different, my metabolism is different. I have to pay more attention to what's on my plate.
Therefore, one month after I started working out again (with a 17-year hiatus), I took a progress picture and that was the moment I realized I needed to get more accurate with my food tracking and diet adjustments. I asked folks over 40 who are sharing their fitness journey on fitness groups on social media what they use to calculate food macros and calories and many recommended the MyNetDiary app. I googled it and learned that it has the largest verified food database - over 1.6 million items and 108 nutrients - with a rating of 4.8 out of 5 and over 5 million downloads on Google Play, so I downloaded the free version. I liked it! It's easy to use and has proven useful for my fitness goals.
After a while testing the free version, I tried the paid version with a one-month subscription, and I liked it even more than the free version. Now, I'm using a 12-month subscription for the full version. The difference between the free version and the paid version of the MyNetDiary app is that with the paid one you get access to all 108 nutrients that the app can track. That helps me to see if I get enough essential vitamins and minerals like vitamin D, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, magnesium, zinc, calcium, and many other important micronutrients from the food I eat, by reviewing at the end of the day the full report that the app creates for me.
Another beautiful feature is that you can learn about each micro and macronutrient by clicking "read article" on its detailed page. You can also sign in to your account on mynetdiary.com where you can easily access all the app's features from a computer.
The MyNetDiary app has dozens of useful features and I can't mention all of them now, but I will count the main features that have been very helpful for me so far:
1. After inputting your personal information such as height, current weight, age, and targeted weight by a specific date, the app will calculate your daily calorie budget, protein, fat, and carbs needs. It will provide you with the number of calories you need to consume every day to achieve your goal. With the premium version, the app can automatically adjust the calorie budget according to what you've consumed the previous day and daily weigh-ins. Also, you can log your physical activity every day and let the app calculate how many more calories you need to eat on that day if your goal is to gain weight.
2. All 100 plus nutrients monitored with the app have detailed information, showing their importance for a healthy diet, explaining what they do for your body, how much you should consume, the recommended daily amount and target, and so on. You can even set your target (let's say you work with a dietitian who recommends you have certain amounts of some nutrients, you can edit in the app and set whatever target you want).
This is what my macro and micronutrients looked like on the first day of an all-inclusive vacation. Once you use the app for a while, it gets easy to know roughly how much of each food you have on your plate making it easy to track macros even when you're on vacation. I ate more than usual but I didn't put on extra fat. Here is the story of how I managed to do that.
3. The app can also help keep track of your weight and fitness progress by logging in your body weight and progress photos daily. As I'm trying to lose fat and get more muscle simultaneously, this feature is helpful for me because I can watch closely if I'm on the right track.
4. Having the possibility to review the amount of nutrients you get from food every day is also a feature that helps a lot. It gave me a good idea about what can be easily obtained from my diet and what I should consider supplementing sometimes to maximize my muscle gains. For example, unless you eat salmon daily, getting enough Omega 3 and vitamin D from food is nearly impossible. Or, unless you eat a lot of green leaves, whole wheat bread, oats, and pumpkin seeds, it gets pretty difficult to get enough magnesium every day. So is with calcium, unless you consume lots of yogurt or cheese, most likely you will not reach your daily target. I try to get at least 90% of all the nutrients I need from food and use some supplements only to cover the rest. Seeing exactly the amounts of nutrients I eat with the MyNetDiary app is a huge plus in this case. Also, monitoring trans fats, saturated fats, dietary fiber, cholesterol, and sodium intake is an important part of having a well-balanced healthy diet. The app does that for me. All I have to do is to make sure I log in, as precise as possible, what I eat every day.
As you can see in the image below, being on vacation with an all-you-can-eat buffet got me out of line with saturated fat (too much cheese on that day), trans fat (because of the cedar cheese and cake I had), and those two glasses of wine at dinner pushed it beyond the maximum recommended doses. I drink wine only on social occasions, and all dietitians say we shouldn't consume alcohol at all, but the app has a maximum daily recommended target for alcohol too just in case you want to keep track of it.
5. The app is flexible. If you want to set up your macronutrients to reach your fitness goal, you can edit the presets and put in how many calories you want to target from fat, protein, and carbs. When you aim to build muscle, you may want to set, for example, your calorie budget with a ratio of 40% protein, 40% carbs, and 20% fat (a classic macro ratio used by many old-school bodybuilders). You can do that if you have the paid version of the app.
