Thanks guys.

I look at the FitnessPal.

I used MyFitnessPal to track my calories. Helped me to lose around 3 stone in weight in total. Combined it with calorie reduction (1200kcals a day) and intermittent fasting (500 kcals a day). As above, very US-centric - I had no real concept of how large a "cup" was until I bought some measuring cups.

I have a FitBit Zip (the basic one) which I've recently starting using with MyFitnessPal as they integrate quite nicely. The FitBit counts my steps and logs my exercise and MyFitnessPal logs my food and calories.

Best thing I've bought recently: Mon-Fri at Featherdown Farms near Rhossili Bay for June. Canvas lodge, wood burner, no electricity.

We were given the fitbits last year for our work fit challenge thingy. The ones we got were ok but my colleague uses the more expensive one.

They recommended the watch thing that's about £199 on thew TV yesterday. It does work very well with the app on the smart phones.

You pays your money and make your choice, as they sometimes say.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/6/10724270/fitbit-lawsuit-charge-hr-surge-incomplete-heart-rate-tracking

My other half has given up on the Fitbit as a waste of time, as it is so inaccurate.

I'm now giving it a try for a few days, if it really is that inaccurate, I'll be sending it back to Amazon within the 14 day return period...

I find the Zip fairly accurate. It's a clip on type though you wear on your waist rather than a watch type. I've always wondered if the watch type ones are prone to picking up other movements and logging them as steps?

What to Buy and Why, currently on iPlayer? (atheletes examine them)

I looked tried MyFitnessPal, but it seemed pretty useless. If you are only eating pre-packaged, finished food, it seems fine. But if you eat fresh food, it didn't seem to cope very well. I ended up having to enter calories for most things, given that I wanted to use the app, because I hadn't a clue how many calories a dish has, not really helpful. I might as well just use the Fitbit app.

As to the Fitbit and app, I burned through around 4,700 calories yesterday and I only walked the dog mornings and evenings. I did manage to get my 10,000 steps done - although the last 150 were me waving my arm as I watched TV to get to my goal, so I can see why my wife calls it a cheat device.

Steps seem very optimistic, but as a sign of activity, I can accept the figure. I just think the term steps is misleading.

Stairs - it only seemed to register about 50% of my stair climbs yesterday. At lunchtime I counted back the number of times I went up and down stairs and came out at 13, the Fitbit had registered 7 of them. I then went back up to the ground floor from the cellar and it still didn't register a new flight of stairs (around 20 steps).

In total it registered 22 stairs and 145 active minutes, which with shopping, walking the dog etc. is probably about right.

There is a recipes section in MFP. You can enter all the ingredients and quantities and number of portions/servings and it'll tell you calories per serving which you can use for tracking. There's also a my foods section for stuff you eat regularly.
May involve a bit of initial configuration. Obviously may not be as good in non-English speaking countries. I found it was similar to the old Microsoft Health and Fitness app for calorie logging.

It helps more if you're using pre-prepared meals (and it was how I found out that Goodfellas pizza had two portions and totalled over 1000kcals). As above, for own recipes that I commonly made, I'd enter the ingredients into a recipe list and it would work calories, protein, carbs and fat per portion. It's not going to be perfect but it's there to help as a tool.

I use it too and there's a simple system for entering sets of ingredients as meals which you can then add to a day's diary with a single click/tap. The results of that are always going to be approximate because e.g. an onion will never weigh exactly the same but I suspect the totals on bought foods are approximate anyway..

OK, technically, I didn't buy this. It was bought for me by my wife as a birthday present today. A stereo viewer and a stack of cards. Some are the majority of a collection that make up a story, others a miscellany of images from South Africa, what could be the Boer War, and Japan.

Fantastic.

Awesome, not often you get a gift that's genuinely to your own taste IME.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B012NOF7VC/?tag=curiua0b-21

Ordered another one to build the stunt plane.