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How to Use MyFitnessPal to Track Your Diet

Tap through the steps in order to learn the basics.

  1. Set your goal

    In the MyFitnessPal app, choose a goal of losing, maintaining, or gaining weight, and the app will calculate a daily calorie target based on it.

  2. Log what you eat

    Search for a food by name or scan its barcode to log each meal and snack as you go.

  3. Check your remaining calories

    The app shows, right on the main screen, how many calories you have left for the day out of your daily budget.

  4. Log your exercise

    Logging a workout calculates the calories burned and adds them back to your remaining daily allowance.

  5. Why it helps

    Seeing the actual calories and nutrients in what you eat, rather than guessing, makes it much easier to manage your eating habits systematically instead of relying on a vague sense of 'eating less.'

A food diary that does the math for you

MyFitnessPal's large food database and barcode scanner cut out most of the manual calculation that used to make food logging tedious, which is a big part of why it has stayed popular for tracking diet over the long term.

Consistency matters more than perfection

Logging every single day with perfect accuracy is less important than logging consistently enough to spot patterns -- like snacking triggers or portion creep -- over a few weeks.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is MyFitnessPal free to use?

It offers a free tier with core logging features, plus an optional paid subscription with extra tools like deeper nutrient breakdowns. The free version is enough for most people just getting started.

What if a food I ate isn't in the database?

You can usually add a custom food entry with your own nutrition details, or log the closest similar match from the database as an estimate.