My personal experience with Fitness Apps

Fitness Apps The 4th of July holiday has passed and the guilt from indulging in those high calorie foods has officially sunken in. I am currently disgusted with myself, but knowing that it could be worse, I digress. For an entire week (June 28- July 5) I have been monitoring my weight and physical activity through mobile apps called “My Fitness Pal” and “My Diet Coach.” These apps were chosen because they seemed to focus on my needs as a consumer and seemed to be more accurate than most. “My Fitness Pal” is an interactive calorie counter that calculates your calories each day. Based on my weight and current weight loss goal, I was allowed a daily calorie count of 1,710. If I exercised on a particular day, technically that number went up because I would have burned calories. This app has been featured in NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today just to name a few.

 “My Fitness Pal” is free and is easy to use. One strength of this app is that it counts your exercise into you daily calorie amount therefore you are able to eat more if you exercise. One weakness is that it may not recognize food that cook. You would have to input each specific ingredient in order to get the total calories. I think that is the only improvement that this app needs. I do believe that It could be used for long-term health behavior change. It has definitely helped me.

 “My Diet Coach” is a visual weight tracker that will motivate, track, and help resist food cravings and more. Over the course of the week, I noticed that this app really offered a lot of great features. One of the most interesting features is the “Food craving panic button.” This is a button you press when you feel the urge to break your current “diet.” It provides suggestions and other alternatives to eating unhealthy foods. A weakness of this app is that it gives you a visual avatar that is supposedly a representation of what you look like. Unfortunately for those who aren’t as self-confident, this could tear them down. I would suggest removing the avatar and just using numbers. People are motivated by loss in weight no matter the delivery. I definitely think this app can be used for a more quick behavior change rather than long term. I don’t think this app will benefit anyone who just wants to maintain their weight.

 I really enjoyed using these apps for a week and I will continue to use “My Fitness Pal”. This assignment really put things into perspective for me and I am grateful for that. I would recommend these apps to anyone wanting to lose weight.