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Anna Gragert/CNET
You're likely familiar with MyFitnessPal as an app that tracks your food intake, allowing you to log calories, weight, exercise, sleep and more. But the app's new features make it clear that it really does seem to want to be the type of fitness pal who's there for you during every step of your quest for healthy food, from planning to grocery shopping to eating.
In April, MyFitnessPal announced its in-app meal planner, a tool that creates a custom meal plan for ordering groceries directly from e-retailers like Instacart. As a wellness editor who writes about new health trends and technology, I was curious to see if this feature is worth the extra $8.34 per month (after a one-month free trial) for MyFitnessPal's Premium Plus membership.
Though the company gave me access and provided an Instacart gift card so I could test the feature, all opinions are my own.
How does MyFitnessPal's meal planner work?
I was impressed with how many different factors this meal planner uses to curate your meal plan. It asks you about your calorie target, macro targets (carbohydrate, protein and fat percentages or grams), dislikes, allergies, liked and disliked cuisines, and sides you would enjoy. To calculate your calorie target, you provide your sex, age, height, current weight, goal weight and activity level.
To narrow down your plan even more, the feature asks about which meals you need help planning, who's in your household and their diet, how often you plan to make food versus eat leftovers, recipe types you like, prep time you have available, your budget, how you like to split up your daily calories and your "approach" or diet plan.
You can specify calories, allergies, prep time, budget and more. Anna Gragert/CNET
For your diet approach, there are 10 you can choose from:
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