Favorite calorie counting app?

It's not an app, but I use a kids erasable tablet thing I picked up on clearance. I have used MyFitnessPal and Fat Secret in the past but this time around I realized that apps don't really provide much value (for me at least). I don't need to keep a history of my caloric intake and I certainly don't want that data feeding some insurance company or AI model. For my needs at least, the only thing that matters is if I hit my calorie goal or not, the rest is just noise.

Having the calorie values of most food in the app is nice, but searching is just as fast.

I also have gout and the best thing I ever did was to get on Allopurinol. I'm sorry I don't have an app recommendation but Allo is fucking magic. I haven't had a flare up since I started taking it 5 years ago.

make lots of skinny friends and hang out with them as much as possible. You'll naturally adopt their habits, lifestyle, and mindset, and the weight will come off without even trying.

That might not work as well as you think. I'm (I was?) one of those skinny people who would eat a lot more than others when with friends and eating out, but on my own, I'll hyperfocus and forget to eat entirely. It averages out to a pretty low Calorie intake. Neither of these are exactly good habits to pick up, and you're likely only going to see the big meals when we hang out together. The mindset is just doing whatever you feel like doing. That's the case for all of my skinny friends. I think it's the muscular friends that you want to follow since they're more intentional with everything.

Your source is about the healthfulness of lowering the glycemic load of one's diet, not the uselessness of calorie counters. In addition to counting calories, such apps can be used to count total carbohydrates, fiber, added sugars, protein, and electrolytes, all of which are extremely useful on a keto diet.

It's about controlling blood glucose, yes. If your keeping your insulin levels in normal physiologic ranges then counting calories is unnecessary - the body will self regulate through hunger, and excretion.

total carbohydrates, fiber, added sugars, protein, and electrolytes, all of which are extremely useful on a keto diet.

If your doing keto, sure you can keep track of those things if you want to, but it isn't necessary. It just complicates things, I've found better adherence with friends by giving them a CGM, since its passive and ways running.

I use Cronometer.

Myfitnesspal is a dumpster fire, I used fatsecret for a while but cronometer is much faster to input meals and repeats and recipes and doesn't have core features locked behind a paywall.

Plus cronometer supports Health Connect which integrates with other FOSS local-only projects like gadgetbridge.

I want to try a fully FOSS app like Waistline to be fully open source and not sell eating habits to advertisers and insurance companies, but they all lack Health Connect support with issues for them open for 2+ years with almost no response.

Edit: also just trying out the new FOSS NutriTrace app (not on play store or fdroid yet, just github) and it is quite good as far as features, it has almost all of the core features except its search is a bit rough still and you can only pull from locally saved foods while making recipes. But it also can be self hosted with a PWA, or synced with a server interface through an android or iOS app. Seems like it might be a bit vibe coded with some weird bugs and fast development, but it is pretty good so far.

Been using Macros for almost 3+ years. It's basically just a convenient excel sheet, but that's the beauty of it. It's simple and works.

I use text messages and send to a blocked number, such as 555-0100 (any area code) and that way I never need to worry about the app crashing or them paywalling useful features after becoming reliant on the "free" app.

It's extremely simple and you can add that person as a contact and give them a name such as "calories" or whatever you find useful. You can then pin that conversation to your text messages so it's always at the top of your texts.

Screenshot as an example: https://i.imgur.com/HpLM2yu.png

Best of all, it doesn't require a specialized app, which can be shut down or made unusable at anytime. You are at their mercy, which is their business model once they sell or start paywalling their most useful features.