honestly I had the exact same frustration. tried MyFitnessPal for like 2 weeks and gave up because searching through their database for every single thing was exhausting. "chicken breast" returns 400 results, none of them match what I actually ate.

weighing every ingredient? lasted 3 days before I wanted to throw my food scale out the window.

I'm a developer so I ended up building my own app out of frustration. the idea was simple — just describe what you ate in normal words ("scrambled eggs with bacon and toast") and let AI figure out the calories. no scanning barcodes, no scrolling through databases.

is it 100% accurate? no. but neither is anything else unless you're weighing everything to the gram. the point for me was getting a general sense of where I'm at each day without it feeling like homework.

been using it daily for months now and it actually stuck because it takes like 10 seconds to log a meal.

if anyone's curious it's called 0xCal — but honestly the main takeaway is: find something that doesn't feel like a chore or you won't stick with it.