If you want calorie counting to be of any value to you you're going to want to be accurate. Thankfully we're mostly creatures of habit. Source accurate numbers for everything you eat in a week and you're 90% covered for every other week. I recorded 30 items over two weeks and then added 15 more over 2.5 months. Don't sabotage your efforts with tools that don't work.
I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected
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Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected
#42These apps look gimmicky but they are growing like crazy. CalAI, for example, is making 35M+/yr. I’m hoping that some people really find value in these apps and that they are not just a pure marketing driven play.
> CalAI, for example, is making 35M+/yr. Source?
I happened to scroll through the founder’s interview on YouTube. You may take a look.
https://youtu.be/t0U3UREdjmo?si=14oeWqtL9oVszab5
Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected
#43Yeah cal AI is the worst of them all
Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected
#44The founder of parrotpal (another AI calorie tracking app, supporting both text and photos) points out that using photos is one of the least accurate ways for tracking food: https://www.instagram.com/parrot.pal/reel/DAB9NtfM250/ Users also seem to like using photos less than text for food tracking: https://www.instagram.com/p/DBoSeQzM3bQ/ The author of this article seems to be against the concept of calorie counting…
> seems to be against the concept of calorie counting as a whole too
What are peoples criticisms of calorie counting? Its the only thing that keeps my weight from creeping up. There are way to many calorie dense foods that can easily sneak in if im thoughtless. (I want my 20 year old life style back :( )
Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected
#45If you want calorie counting to be of any value to you you're going to want to be accurate. Thankfully we're mostly creatures of habit. Source accurate numbers for everything you eat in a week and you're 90% covered for every other week. I recorded 30 items over two weeks and then added 15 more over 2.5 months. Don't sabotage your efforts with tools that don't work.
This is my experience too. Not even 2 weeks, it was like a really tedious 3 or 4 days then I pretty much knew what to take out.
Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected
#46The founder of parrotpal (another AI calorie tracking app, supporting both text and photos) points out that using photos is one of the least accurate ways for tracking food: https://www.instagram.com/parrot.pal/reel/DAB9NtfM250/ Users also seem to like using photos less than text for food tracking: https://www.instagram.com/p/DBoSeQzM3bQ/ The author of this article seems to be against the concept of calorie counting…
> seems to be against the concept of calorie counting as a whole too What are peoples criticisms of calorie counting? Its the only thing that keeps my weight from creeping up. There are way to many calorie dense foods that can easily sneak in if im thoughtless. (I want my 20 year old life style back :( )
My unprofessional nutritional advice is: do what works for you! So if that’s calorie counting: great! No need to give it a second thought.
But if you are interested in critiques, a fair summary might be: calorie counting is at best extremely imprecise, both on how we measure the calories in food and how we estimate energy expenditure by activities. A little googling should lead to numerous discussions. I really enjoy the podcast maintenance phase, and even if you don’t want to listen to the episode they helpfully include tons of links: https://maintenancephase.buzzsprout.com/1411126/episodes/106...
Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
> seems to be against the concept of calorie counting as a whole too What are peoples criticisms of calorie counting? Its the only thing that keeps my weight from creeping up. There are way to many calorie dense foods that can easily sneak in if im thoughtless. (I want my 20 year old life style back :( )
My unprofessional nutritional advice is: do what works for you! So if that’s calorie counting: great! No need to give it a second thought. But if you are interested in critiques, a fair summary might be: calorie counting is at best extremely imprecise, both on how we measure the calories in food and how we estimate energy expenditure by activities. A little googling should lead to numerous discussions. I really enjoy…
Oh I guess, I try to go towards overestimating calories taken in and underestimate my calories spent.
It does work for me, but being vigilant about it is tedious so I'm open to hearing if people have better ways.
Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected
#48CalAI is just objectively a bad app even discounting its AI calorie estimator as an irrelevant gimmick:
* the UX is bad
* the stats are laughable
* charts worse than nothing (really, misleading to look at)
* lacking basic functionality such as “duplicate for today”
* can’t see or export the meal photo
* their “streak” attempt at gamification is so bad it literally cannot count
And yes, the AI there is atrociously bad. Not only can it not reliably detect calorie content (I don’t think anyone could on a basis of a photo in general case), but it so often mislabels food (like the example in article) it’s just a comedic relief. And there’s a “Fix” button which does nothing.
It’s like they never really tried hard. Combined with the general lack of quality, looks like a typical quick money grab riding the AI hype wave. I’m pretty confident the app could be vibe-coded in a week (and that’s generous). Maybe the backend is more complex? Don’t think so as there are no social features, it just stores data.
Paid for a year (Android app) to see how well they applied AI to the field, now continue to use it like a meal photo log with some (manually entered) metadata, otherwise Excel would be a nicer solution.
Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
> seems to be against the concept of calorie counting as a whole too What are peoples criticisms of calorie counting? Its the only thing that keeps my weight from creeping up. There are way to many calorie dense foods that can easily sneak in if im thoughtless. (I want my 20 year old life style back :( )
My unprofessional nutritional advice is: do what works for you! So if that’s calorie counting: great! No need to give it a second thought. But if you are interested in critiques, a fair summary might be: calorie counting is at best extremely imprecise, both on how we measure the calories in food and how we estimate energy expenditure by activities. A little googling should lead to numerous discussions. I really enjoy…
I also read that counting calories is so inaccurate that you may die of starvation or become obese, on the same diet. That is, if you exclusively ate what you measured, and all of it.
Counting calories presumably works (when it does) because it’s combined with more nutritious, regular meals, better awareness, etc. It’s also possible that the measurement errors even out over time, but I suspect the timescale is too long (if you’ve undereaten for two days you’ll end up eating something out of the diet).
Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
My unprofessional nutritional advice is: do what works for you! So if that’s calorie counting: great! No need to give it a second thought. But if you are interested in critiques, a fair summary might be: calorie counting is at best extremely imprecise, both on how we measure the calories in food and how we estimate energy expenditure by activities. A little googling should lead to numerous discussions. I really enjoy…
Oh I guess, I try to go towards overestimating calories taken in and underestimate my calories spent. It does work for me, but being vigilant about it is tedious so I'm open to hearing if people have better ways.
Take a look at these books:
- David Ludwig, Always Hungry?
- Mark Hyman, The Blood Sugar Solution
The first one is very accessible, the second one very posh. But the underlying approach is the same: no calorie counting, just good food in the right proportions.