As I start 2014 I am exactly 23 pounds away from my goal weight. It was 20, but I gained 3 over Christmas, which isn’t actually all that bad considering I didn’t even move from house for over a week and ate all the Christmas treats!

So I’ve started seriously tracking my eating again, over at My Fitness Pal (MFP) (Tee2072 if you want to friend me) and using Pinterest (also Tee2072, come say hi!) along with my Facebook page (Eat Less Move More Gain Control).

But while I’d love people to come ‘play’ with me, what I really wanted to write about was something on MFP that bugs the shit out of me.

So part of MFP is, of course, tracking your food. It has been proven, over and over again, that a food diary is an excellent tool for helping you lose weight, even if you’re not tracking a set amount of calories. Just seeing what you’re eating can help you control what you eat.

However, with MFP, after you’re done logging for the day, it calculates how much you ate and tells you something like ‘If you ate like this every day, you’ll weigh 5 pounds by next Christmas’. However, again, if you haven’t eaten at least your base calories, those ‘given’ to you before you exercise, you also get a message saying something like ‘You don’t appear to be eating enough. You may not lose anything ever.’ However, for the third time, you also get a message automatically posted to your ‘News Feed’ that says ‘Tee finished her food and exercise diary for the day and was under her calorie goal.’

Um, what?

So, is it good or bad to not eat enough? Their program ‘yells’ at you and yet places that on your wall for your friends to like and comment on.

Am I the only one who is going O.o about this? Surely it’s a totally mixed message?

I have contacted MFP about this on their message boards but have been ignored. I will be linking to this blog post over there and emailing them as well about it as I really do think it’s a not just a mixed message but a dangerous mixed method.

It is bad to not eat enough. Starvation Mode does exist. Oh it’s not as simple as ‘don’t eat enough, starve’ but it’s not good for your body in any case.

And really? Isn’t that the point?

To do something that’s good for your body?