Pensum
How to switch calorie trackers without losing your history
Your diary days and weigh-ins can come with you to a new tracker. Most of the work is getting the export file out of the old app.
Each calorie tracker keeps its export in a different place, and two of them make you write to support for it. Once you have the file, a tracker that reads it can carry on from your old diary. Pensum imports from eight apps: MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, MacroFactor, Lifesum, OpenNutriTracker, FatSecret, YAZIO and FDDB. In Pensum you open Settings, tap Import data, choose the app you're coming from and pick the file as it arrived, whether that's a ZIP, an .xlsx or a few CSVs. There's nothing to unzip and no account to create.
How to import MyFitnessPal data into another app
In MyFitnessPal the export is under Settings, then Data Export, and it arrives by email as a ZIP. MyFitnessPal makes the export a Premium feature. If you've never subscribed, its 7-day trial includes it. Pick the ZIP in Pensum as it is.
The ZIP holds three CSV files: meal-level nutrition, progress with your weight and measurements, and exercise. MyFitnessPal's export has no food-by-food breakdown, so what arrives is one total per meal per day, plus your weigh-ins in kilograms or pounds, whichever your account used. Exports in German and other languages import too. In Pensum, CSV export is free, and so are barcode scanning and macro targets in grams, which MyFitnessPal also keeps behind Premium. Pensum vs MyFitnessPal has the full list.
How to export from Cronometer, MacroFactor and other trackers
Cronometer's export is on its website. Sign in at cronometer.com, open your account's Export Data page and export Servings, plus Biometrics for your weigh-ins. Pick the CSV files together. Every serving arrives food by food, in the meal group you logged it in.
MacroFactor's export sits under Data Management in the More tab and comes as one .xlsx file. Choose the export that includes your food log if you want every food to come over. MacroFactor has no free tier, so export while your subscription is still active. Each food arrives with its calories and macros, sorted into meals by the time you logged it, along with the 18 micronutrients Pensum tracks wherever MacroFactor has them and your scale weigh-ins. The smoothed trend weight stays behind on purpose. Pensum vs MacroFactor covers the rest of that switch.
Lifesum's website export covers only the last 7 days. For your full history, write to Lifesum support from the app or from the email address on your account, and they send a ZIP. Food items arrive in their meals without a time of day, since Lifesum's export doesn't record one.
YAZIO has no export button. Ask YAZIO support for a copy of your data. Under the GDPR they have to send it in a machine-readable format, and it comes as a set of CSV files. Pick them all at once: Pensum reads the diary from consumed.csv, product_lookup.csv and recipe_lookup.csv, and your weigh-ins from bodyvalue.csv.
FDDB's app has a CSV export, and Pensum needs its diary and userhistory files, or the ZIP they came in. The diary export on the fddb.info website is a different file with only fat, carbs and protein, so use the one from the app. FDDB has no meals, and each item lands in a meal by the time you logged it.
FatSecret exports from the Food Diary: scroll down, tap the export icon and choose the detailed report as a CSV. Each export covers the period you set, so for a longer history export several periods and pick them together. Days that overlap are read once. FatSecret's report has no weigh-ins.
OpenNutriTracker's export is in Settings under Export / Import App Data. Choose JSON if you want your weigh-ins, because the CSV export leaves them out.
What survives an import
Each imported line keeps its name, calories and macros, in the meal it was logged in. Weigh-ins come over from every app whose export includes them. Grams and serving sizes stay behind, since old exports don't record them reliably, and imported lines stay out of your food search.
Your trends and the expenditure estimate run on daily intake and weigh-ins, and both come over wherever the old app recorded them.
What to check in the import preview
Before a single row is written, Pensum shows how many days, entries and weigh-ins it found, and which days it will skip. Four things are worth a look:
- The day count. Compare it with how long you used the old app. A short count usually means a short export, such as Lifesum's 7-day website export or a single FatSecret period.
- Skipped days. A day that already has entries in Pensum is left alone, and two diaries are never merged into one day. The preview says how many days that affects.
- Weigh-ins. Where a date already has a weigh-in in Pensum, that one stays. If an earlier import brought in wrong weights, tick Replace existing weigh-ins to overwrite them.
- Half-logged days. Days under 500 or over 10,000 kcal are imported but kept out of your trends and the expenditure estimate, so a dinner you forgot to log years ago can't drag your numbers down.
Importing the same file twice adds nothing new, so running it again after a mistake is safe. If a file won't import, the import sheet offers to send me a report. The files and the error details are used only to fix the importer, and they're deleted within 90 days.
Why your history matters for adaptive expenditure
An adaptive TDEE measures your maintenance calories from what you ate and how your weight trend moved. On a fresh install it has nothing to measure yet, so it shows a formula estimate for the first weeks. Imported intake and weigh-ins feed the estimate the same way days logged in Pensum do, and every time the number is recomputed, Pensum replays up to a year of your diary. With an imported history the estimator runs on your real data from the first day.
MacroFactor's export makes this easy to check, because it includes the expenditure MacroFactor showed each day. On one user's export, Pensum, fed only the same weigh-ins and calories, came within 15 kcal a day of MacroFactor's number on average. Every equation and constant behind Pensum's number is on the expenditure page.
After the import
Imported lines are totals, so your everyday foods need setting up once in the new app. Scan the barcodes of the packaged foods you eat often and star them as favorites. After the first log, Log again and the remembered last portion make repeats quick. Imports are part of the free app, like the diary, barcode scanning and the measured expenditure, with no ads and no account. The import page lists every source and what comes over from each.