Migrating from MyFitnessPal

If you're coming from MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, LoseIt, or another macro tracker, most of the muscle memory transfers. A few things work differently — covered below.

What you can bring over

You can import:

• Recent foods — most users care about a couple dozen common foods. Add them as custom foods once and they'll appear in your Recents from then on.
• Saved meals — Saved meals work like MFP's recipes / meals. Recreate the ones you actually use.
• Weight history — backdated entries supported. From MFP: export → CSV of weights → enter manually. (Direct CSV import isn't built yet.)

What doesn't migrate, and why:

• MFP's full food database — covered by USDA + Open Food Facts inside the app. You don't need to import.
• MFP's macro history — restart the macro log fresh. The trend you care about starts when you start logging consistently. Two weeks in, you'll have a useful baseline.
• Step counts / wearable data — not currently imported.

What's different

If you're used to MFP, expect these differences:

1. Rolling 7-day budget instead of a daily cap

MFP gives you "calories left today." Protokol Lab gives you a 7-day window. Off days don't break the math — see Rolling 7-day budget.

In practice: you won't see a hard "1,200 left today" number. You'll see a delta against the week, with today's available calculated as the week's remainder minus what you've eaten so far.

2. Honest streaks, not gamified ones

MFP's streak counter rewards perfect logging. Skip a day and the counter resets. Many users churn out at this point.

Protokol Lab uses tracked vs untracked days. A skipped day drops out of the math instead of zeroing it. There's no "streak counter" you can break by going on vacation.

3. Photo-of-plate logging via AI

MFP doesn't have a photo flow. Protokol Lab's photo-of-plate flow uses the AI assistant — premium feature.

4. Real PK curves for compounds

If you were using MFP for GLP-1 dose tracking (which it isn't built for), you'll find a real difference here. The dashboard plots active amount over time, not just dose dots — see How half-life curves work.

5. Pattern insights instead of just charts

MFP shows you the chart. Protokol Lab also tells you what's in it: "Nausea rises ~2 days before Tirzepatide" or "Carbs and weight track together with r=0.42 over 35 days." See Pattern insights.

6. No social / community surface

MFP has friends and feeds. Protokol Lab doesn't. Your data is yours; there's no sharing to other users.

7. Macros default differently

MFP defaults to 50/30/20 carbs/fat/protein for everyone. Protokol Lab suggests targets based on your goal weight, current weight, and rate-of-loss preference. You can override during onboarding or anytime in Profile → Targets.

Practical migration plan

A week-long plan:

Day 1: Sign up, finish onboarding. Don't worry about importing. Just log today's meals, weight, and dose.

Day 2–3: As you log meals, add the ~20 foods you eat most often as custom foods or favorites. After this, your Recents covers ~80% of meals.

Day 4: Pick your most-used MFP meals (recipes) and recreate them as Saved meals.

Day 5–7: You're effectively migrated. Start ignoring MFP. Backdate your weight history if you want a longer trend line.

Week 2: Patterns start showing up on the dashboard. Compare what the rolling budget says vs MFP's daily count — you'll see why the math is more useful.

Getting your MFP data out (for export, not import)

If you want a copy before deleting MFP:

1. MFP web → Settings → Privacy → Request my data.
2. They email a download link within ~24 hours.

The export is an HTML zip. Useful as a personal archive; not directly importable here.

Common reactions

"Why don't you import MFP exports directly?" Two reasons: (1) the food entries reference MFP's internal food IDs that don't map cleanly to USDA / OFF, and (2) most users actually log differently here once they see the rolling budget — re-importing months of MFP-style logs into a different system creates a noisy baseline. Starting fresh with a 2-week ramp produces cleaner trends.

"I have years of weight data." That's worth bringing. Backdate weight entries — the date picker accepts any past date. The trend line will compute correctly across the imported history.

"I'm worried about losing my MFP food library." You won't miss it. USDA has more reliable data for branded foods, and Open Food Facts covers international long-tail items. Your custom foods + saved meals will rebuild quickly from the foods you actually eat.

Next

• Your first week — day-by-day plan.
• Custom foods — the migration mechanism.
• Saved meals — for repeated combos.