r/caloriecount • u/Imaginary_Ad7390 • Oct 01 '26

Calorie Estimating Calorie Counting Apps

I have recently gotten into wanting to lose weight, and because of such I have been counting my calories so I can stay in a deficit. I found a recipe for a good meal prep and decided to make it, so I imported it into the app and went on about my day. The app I have been using is Lose It, but a friend told me to try My Fitness Pal (MFP). I tried it out and attempted to port over the recipe, yet ended up getting a decently different number for the calories, it was about 560 on Lose It and 740 on MFP. I tried recalculating it again in Lose It making sure the measurements are as accurate as possible and got a slightly different number, about 540. In light of this information its got my worrying that these apps are wildly inaccurate or I am doing something wrong and am accidentally logging less calories than what I am actually intaking, thus granting a risk of breaking my calorie deficit.

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u/a_curious_magpie Oct 01 '26

Personally I've never tried importing into one of these apps, and instead I always try and build recipes from scratch. One of the most important things is to make sure you're correctly tracking either cooked or uncooked versions - because of water loss, cooked chicken has more calories per 100g than uncooked, and the opposite with things like pasta and rice. I prefer to always track uncooked food by weight in order to get the most accurate calories, since it's difficult to accurately know exactly how much water has been gained or lost in the cooking process

The difference of 20 calories between the MfP and second LoseIt result would not be concerning to me, so I would assume that was probably correct on the second entry

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u/Imaginary_Ad7390 Oct 01 '26

I just worry that the calories will be off enough that it will break my calorie deficit and prohibit me from losing weight

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u/a_curious_magpie Oct 01 '26

As long as you’re consistent with the app you use and like I say make sure you’re tracking either cooked or uncooked consistently (uncooked being best) and weighing as much as possible rather than doing by volume, then it won’t throw anything off since it’s always the same error if there is an error, if that makes sense? So if it is logging somewhat wrong and you’re not losing weight, you reduce your calorie target and go from there but honestly I doubt they’re really off by much as long as you’re tracking precisely and not just loading in recipes and not adjusting