Lean With Plants vs MyFitnessPal and Calorie Counting Apps

A tracker measures what you eat. A coach changes it. Here is when each one is the right call.

By Chelsea Mae · September 20, 2026 · 8 min read

MyFitnessPal is a food tracker, not a weight loss program. It gives you a calorie target, an enormous food database and a barcode scanner, and then it waits for you to type things in. Lean With Plants is a 12-week one-on-one plant-based weight loss coaching program for women, founded by Chelsea Mae Cullen, where you never count a calorie or type food into a tracker. You snap photos of your food, and a dedicated coach looks at your plate and walks you through changing its composition so the calories take care of themselves. A tracker measures the problem. A coach changes it. Which one you need depends entirely on whether measuring has ever been enough for you.

What calorie counting apps are genuinely good at

We are not anti-app, and it would be dishonest to pretend MyFitnessPal has no value. It has plenty.

• Education. Most people have no idea how many calories are in a tablespoon of olive oil, a handful of cashews or a restaurant salad. Two weeks of honest logging is a real eye-opener, and for some women it is the first time the numbers ever made sense.
• Scale and convenience. The database is vast, the barcode scanner works, and it syncs with most wearables.
• A free tier that actually works. You can get real use out of MyFitnessPal without paying anything, which is more than most weight loss tools can say.
• Diet agnostic. It does not care whether you eat meat, whether you are vegan, or whether you are doing something specific for a medical reason. It just counts.
• Precision when you need it. If you have a genuine reason to hit exact targets, a tracker is the right tool.

Lose It, Cronometer and Carb Manager all occupy similar ground with different strengths. Cronometer in particular is strong on micronutrients, which matters to some people.

So the criticism is not that trackers do not work. It is that they are a measuring instrument, and a measuring instrument is not a plan.

Where tracking breaks down

Three things tend to go wrong, and none of them are about your willpower.

1. The logging stops. Not dramatically. It just quietly stops, usually during a hard week, and then restarting feels like admitting something. The mechanism depended on an input you are no longer providing, so the results stop with it.

2. The database is crowd-sourced. Many entries are user-submitted, which means portion sizes and calorie values vary in quality. For packaged food it is usually fine. For a homemade curry or a restaurant plate, you are estimating, and the estimate can drift a long way from reality without you noticing.

3. The number tells you what, not why. An app can tell you that you went over. It cannot tell you that you went over because you skipped lunch, because you were standing in a kitchen at 9pm after a day you did not choose, or because the "healthy" dressing on your salad was carrying 300 calories. That last one is the story of almost every woman who finds us. We wrote about that specific trap in healthy vegan food and oil keeping you stuck and about the 9pm hour in why it falls apart at 9pm.

How Lean With Plants works instead

Lean With Plants is a 12-week coaching program for women, built on three pillars:

1. Nutrition through calorie density. How many calories are packed into a pound of food. Oil is roughly 4,000 calories per pound. Non-starchy vegetables are roughly 100 calories per pound. That is about a 40x difference, and once your plate is built around the low end, you can eat a genuinely large volume of food, feel full, and still lose weight without tracking a single thing. Start with calorie density explained and how to lose weight without counting calories.
2. Fitness and movement, scaled to your real body and schedule.
3. Accountability and habits, through the STACK Method: small behaviors stacked until the routine holds without effort.

You work one-on-one with a dedicated coach who checks in and messages you daily in the LWP app. You snap photos of your food instead of logging every bite, and she looks at your plate and coaches you through the week. There is also a weekly community group coaching call and a Q&A every two weeks. We have coached over 3,000 women, the average client loses around 18 pounds in 12 weeks, and most are in their forties, fifties and sixties.

Side by side

The part that is not about calories

There is a second reason a lot of the women we work with are done with tracking, and it is worth saying carefully.

For some women, years of logging turns into a permanent measuring relationship with food. Every meal is a calculation. Going over becomes a moral event. Then comes the swing: restrict all day, lose the plot at night, start again Monday. If that pattern is familiar, more precision is not the fix. We wrote about the loop itself in how to break the binge then restrict cycle.

This is not a claim that calorie counting causes that pattern, and plenty of people track for years with no issue at all. It is only to say that if you already know the tracking makes your relationship with food worse, that is a real and legitimate reason to want a different approach, not a sign you are being difficult.

Rena was 62 and dealing with post-menopause weight gain. She had told herself she could never quit sugar. She lost 24 pounds in 12 weeks with us and went from binge eating to binge-free. No calorie counting was involved in that.

Who each one is best for

A calorie counting app is the right tool if you:

• Genuinely do not know what is in your food yet, and want the education
• Like data, like precision, and find the numbers motivating rather than draining
• Have a specific reason to hit exact intake or macronutrient targets
• Want something free, immediate, and with no commitment
• Are disciplined about logging and have proven to yourself that you will keep it up
• Want to keep eating exactly the way you eat now

Lean With Plants is the right choice if you:

• Have downloaded a tracker more than twice and stopped using it more than twice
• Are plant-based or vegan, eating what looks like a perfect diet, and not losing weight
• Want to eat until you are full rather than until you hit a number
• Need someone to notice when you go quiet
• Are in your forties, fifties or sixties and your body stopped responding to what used to work
• Already know what to do and are not doing it

"But I lose weight when I track properly"

Most women who apply to us have. That is not in dispute.

The question is not whether tracking works while you track. It is what you are relying on, and whether that thing is available every day for the rest of your life. Logging is a behavior with an ongoing cost. A plate you know how to build is a skill with a one-time cost.

Sam lost close to 70 pounds with us. She already knew the information, and she had tracked before. What she did not have was anybody expecting her on a Tuesday, which is a different problem entirely. That is what accountability actually solves, and it is the argument we lay out in Lean With Plants vs doing it on your own.

Frequently asked questions

Does Lean With Plants make you count calories? No. There is no counting, no weighing and no typing food into a tracker. You snap photos of your food so your coach can see your plate. The entire nutrition approach is built on calorie density, which means the composition of the plate does the work that counting would otherwise do. You can read the mechanism in the LWP method.

Can I keep using MyFitnessPal while I do the program? You can, and some clients do for the first week or two out of habit. Your coach will not fight you on it. Most people stop on their own once they realize the number is landing where it needs to without being watched.

Is MyFitnessPal accurate? For packaged foods with a scannable barcode, generally yes. For user-submitted entries, homemade meals and restaurant food, it is an estimate, and the quality varies because much of the database is crowd-sourced. Treat it as a good approximation rather than a precise measurement.

Is a free app not a better deal than a paid coaching program? On price alone, obviously. The relevant comparison is not app versus program, it is what each one actually changes. If a free tracker has already solved this for you, keep using it and save your money. If you have tried that repeatedly and it has not held, the free option has already been priced by the years it cost you.

How much does Lean With Plants cost? We do not publish a number. Nobody running a high-touch, one-on-one coaching program does, because if people saw a number first, most would never have the conversation that shows them whether it solves their problem. It is not cheap, and it is also not the crazy number most people imagine. We partner with Klarna and Affirm for payment plans, and the real number, the one specific to you, your situation and what you need, is talked about on your call. The reasoning is in how much Lean With Plants costs.

What if I like tracking? Then keep tracking. Seriously. If the number genuinely helps you and you have kept it up for years, an app plus a decent plan may be all you need. Coaching is for the women for whom that has not been true.

What to do next

If you have never tracked and you have no idea what is in your food, download a free app and log honestly for two weeks. You will learn something, and it costs you nothing.

If you have already done that, several times, and the results kept leaving with the logging habit, more measuring is not the missing piece. The coaching program is built for the implementation gap, not the information gap.

Apply here and book a free strategy call. Someone from the LWP team will look at what you have tried and tell you honestly whether this is the right next step.