Lifesum vs. MyFitnessPal: Which One Should You Choose?

Both Lifesum and MyFitnessPal are food-tracking apps that help users take control of their eating habits and follow a healthier and more balanced diet. Both contain a food diary to help users look at their nutritional intake, along with a calorie counter.

In this Lifesum vs. MyFitnessPal review, we’re going to take a look at both apps to see how they work, how they could benefit you, and whether they are worth the money. Take a look now to learn more about both health and fitness apps.

Summary

For a brief overview of both of these health products, we have summarized their key benefits, pros, and cons below. Take a look to learn more.

Lifesum

The Lifesum app focuses on supporting users to lose weight through individualized diet plans. Users can add their daily nutritional information to the food diary to see their calorie intake. They can also use the app to build better habits and create meal plans to follow a healthier and more balanced life.

MyFitnessPal

MyFitnessPal offers users a calorie counter, food database, and food diary to help them track their food intake and monitor their weight loss progress. The calorie-counting app is very popular and helps the user to track exercise as well as calories.

Lifesum vs. MyFitnessPal Comparison

Lifesum and MyFitnessPal are both designed to help users lose weight and eat a more healthy and balanced diet. But, where Lifesum offers its users plans for meals to kick-start their health journey and personalized diets for their goals, MyFitnessPal offers a space for tracking calories and making note of each meal eaten.

What Is Lifesum?

Lifesum is a nutritional app that supports users in making lifestyle changes to improve their health. It creates specific meal plans using personalized diets to help users who want to lose, maintain, or gain weight. Diets include everything from vegan eating to the ketogenic diet.

Lifesum has space to track progress, including body measurements, water intake, and eaten meals, as well as habit tracking. The app has many meals for you to choose from and offers nutritional info for all of them.

Lifesum falls short in the exercise section. While the app aims to help users lead healthier lives, it does not offer any workouts to follow. If you want an app that helps you eat better and provides workouts, you could take a look at the Perfect Body app instead, which offers personalized dieting and training programs to help users lose weight. 

What Is MyFitnessPal?

MyFitnessPal is an app used mostly to count calories. It provides users with an effective calorie counter and lets them input custom meals and physical activity to see how many calories they consume and burn each day.

The app uses people’s goals for weight loss to personalize the calorie counter and ensure that users are eating at a calorie deficit that will help them lose weight. A calorie deficit means that the calories burned by your body each day outweigh the ones you have consumed, and it is the only way to reduce weight.

MyFitnessPal offers planning space for meals, too, which can help users organize their meals in advance to ensure they’re eating well. The app also contains workouts and integrates with a number of other apps, including fitness watches.

Main Features of Lifesum vs. MyFitnessPal

While Lifesum offers health tips, meals, recipes, and personalized diets, MyFitnessPal is, first and foremost, a calorie counter. MyFitnessPal allows for much more flexibility as you can create your own meals and input them into the app. However, Lifesum personalizes each diet plan to the user’s needs.

Lifesum features

The key features of Lifesum include a personalized diet plan, a habit tracker, and nutritional info that helps users understand the food they’re consuming and how it will affect their health.

MyFitnessPal features

The main features of MyFitnessPal include a calorie counter and other progress-tracking features. The app also creates individualized calorie limits for each user and offers a whole host of workouts to try.

Lifesum vs. MyFitnessPal Pros

Below, we have summarized the pros of each of the apps to help you decide which is the better one for you.

Lifesum pros

Lifesum has many pros, including its vast database of food, personalized diet plans, and recipe plans. Take a look below, where we go into detail about each of them.

#1 Huge food database

Lifesum has a database of food that rivals other apps of its kind. One of the best things about it is that users can submit their own food, too, meaning that if you cannot find the food you’re looking for, you can simply add it.

Having a large database means that users can easily input their food and keep track of what they’re eating.

#2 Personalized diet

Personalized diet plans have been found to be an incredibly useful method of weight management. Knowing how many calories you consume is just the beginning, and with the diet plans that Lifesum offers, users can find a diet that works best for them and their health.

Lifesum covers many diets, including keto, paleo, and many more, making it great for a range of users.

#3 Meal plan

The recipes and meals that Lifesum creates for each user are designed to kick-start their journey to a healthier lifestyle. Giving users recipes to follow makes their diet much easier to stick to and is useful for users who find it difficult to think of meals to eat.

Lifesum has hundreds of meals, making it really easy for users to find something they like. However, if you want an app that offers tons of meal choices as well as affordable recipes with easy-to-swap ingredients, the Perfect Body app may be a better choice for you!

MyFitnessPal pros

MyFitnessPal is an incredibly popular calorie counter, and it has a few advantages that make it so popular with people trying to lose weight. Find out more about them below.

#1 Great community

MyFitnessPal offers users a great community. Community support has been shown to be incredibly useful for people trying to diet. Having others around you who help to keep you motivated, answer questions, and help you with problems can mean that users are more likely to stay on track.

Many nutrition apps offer this great feature to support users in their journey.

#2 Extended exercise database

MyFitnessPal, unlike Lifesum, does help users to get more physically active. It offers users tons of different workouts to try to improve their daily exercise and get their heart rate pumping. Each exercise gets tracked and fed into the calorie counter, allowing users to track their calorie deficit each day.

Exercise is an incredibly important aspect of health. It is recommended that you get 150 minutes of physical activity each week. You could try adding cardio, like cycling or swimming, to your weekly schedule to burn more calories and meet these recommendations.

#3 Flexibility

Where Lifesum and MyFitnessPal differ is in their flexibility. While Lifesum creates specific plans for each user, MyFitnessPal allows users to eat whatever meals they like and input the data into their app.

MyFitnessPal has an extensive database of food, which allows users to find the food they have eaten and add it to their food diary. They can also scan the barcode to ensure they have the right product.

Additionally, MyFitnessPal can be used alongside any diet, as you’re not prescribed a diet to stick to. This means that if you wanted to combine two diets, like keto and fasting, you could use MyFitnessPal.

Lifesum vs. MyFitnessPal Cons

As with any nutrition app, both Lifesum and MyFitnessPal have drawbacks. We’ve gone over them below to help you pick the best calorie counter app for your dieting journey.

Lifesum cons

Lifesum has some cons that may make users think twice about downloading it. These are summarized briefly below.

#1 No desktop version

Lifesum does not have a desktop version, meaning it is only accessible on mobile devices. For this reason, some people may struggle to see their diet plans and may find the app difficult to use. A desktop version would make the app more accessible to more people.

#2 Premium version is paid

Lifesum premium is a paid version of the app. Lifesum premium allows you to access all of their content and the premium features of the app, which contain more than the free plan offers. However, a monthly subscription may not be accessible to everyone.

MyFitnessPal cons

MyFitnessPal also has some cons, which may make some people consider other popular diet apps instead. These are as follows.

#1 No offline version

To use MyFitnessPal, you must always have a Wi-Fi or cellular connection. This means that if you’re in a place with limited connectivity or have no data left on your phone, you may find it difficult even to access the home screen.

As MyFitnessPal is designed to support weight loss, it would be best if you could use it at all times, so not having an offline version makes it more difficult to recommend MyFitnessPal.

#2 Misreporting

Due to the sheer volume of users, MyFitnessPal often has misreported calories and other info in its database. Though the database is huge, many users can input their own data, meaning there is a higher risk of misreported information, which can make the calorie counter inaccurate.

Lifesum vs. MyFitnessPal Cost

Both Lifesum and MyFitnessPal offer users a free version, but both offer a premium version, too. To find out more about the cost of both, take a look below.

What is the price of Lifesum?

Per month, Lifesum costs $4.17. However, you can instead pay $45 per year. The Lifesum free version offers only the basic features, but users will get access to all features with a subscription.

What is the price of MyFitnessPal?

MyFitnessPal costs $9.99 per month for the premium features, or users can pay $49.99 per year. Most users opt for the free calorie counter, as the free app has many useful features.

Which Is Better: Lifesum or MyFitnessPal?

MyFitnessPal should be your app of choice if you want an effective calorie counter that allows for flexibility and an easy way to track your food. While Lifesum offers a structured approach to dieting, it could be too restrictive for some users.

MyFitnessPal allows users to create the best plan for their needs and weight loss goals. It also incorporates workout and training regimes, which is why we recommend MyFitnessPal over Lifesum.

FAQs

Comparison Table

How We Tested

When we review the best weight loss apps for our readers, we rate each of them in 4 categories: quality, effectiveness, price, and brand reputation. Below, we have summarized the meaning of each.

Quality

When it comes to apps designed to improve your health, it is essential that they’re of good quality. For calorie-counting apps, it should be easy to track calories, it should contain a large food database, and the app should not glitch. If the app is not of good quality, it will not benefit you.

Effectiveness

The effectiveness of health apps is determined by their ability to help you lose weight, maintain a better diet, and track your habits. If you’re paying for an app to improve your health, you want it to be effective, which is why we rate all of our apps in this section.

The Perfect Body app is one of the most effective apps we have found for health and fitness. It offers users meal plans, tracking features, and easy-to-follow workouts.

Price

The price of an app should make it accessible and affordable. We believe good health is a right for everyone, so the app cost is incredibly important to us. If an app is more expensive, it needs to offer more value to users to be worth the price.

Brand reputation

Though good brands don’t always create good products, it is much more likely that they will. And a product from a brand with a good reputation is easier to trust than a product from an unknown one. We tend to review well-known and popular products in the industry to help our users find the best product for them.

Conclusion

Lifesum and MyFitnessPal are good nutrition apps that can help you reduce your weight and maintain a healthier lifestyle. However, we would recommend the Perfect Body app for the best results!

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