Tracker apps have been around for a while now – from apps that help you track your daily steps, apps that track how much water you’ve drunk, apps to log your physical activity, your calories, your weight, your sleep… you name it there’s probably an app out there to track it for you. Now I’ll be honest, I’ve got a bit of a love hate relationship with tracker apps – I’ve used plenty of them in the past, but as someone who can get a bit hooked on the numbers, it’s not always the healthy option for me. So when I was contacted about trying out the Oatsy nutrition tracking app, I was a little apprehensive. It would have been easy to say no, but I’ll tell you why I didn’t, and there are 2 very good reasons:
- It’s free (ummmm hello, everyone loves a freebie)
- It’s a nutrition app (sounds weird I know, but I really like that it’s not centred around just weight loss, which so many other apps like this are)
So it’s got me intrigued to say the least. Intrigued enough to give it a go for a week and see if it reveals a few home truths and to also see if it can sort out some of my very bad lockdown habits.
What Is the Oatsy Nutrition Tracker App?
As I said, this is a nutrition tracker and so the focus is much more on tracking the type of food you’re eating and helping you learn how much carbs, protein, fat etc. you should be eating for your specific goal. The app allows you to log your daily food from a choice of over 950,000 food products, as well as keeping track of any exercise you do.
Each day is broken down into breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks and all you need to do is go into each one and input your food. After each day you will be given a fit score out of 100 by the Oatsy FitScore assistant. This basically tells you how well you’ve done, both in terms of the food choices you’ve made as well as any exercise you’ve done that day, but will also advise if you need more exercise or if you’re low in a particular food area, for example carbs.
There is also a recipe bank for you to get some meal inspo from and a whole section on food ranking to help you discover which foods are good for particular goals, for example weight loss, body building, digestion, diabetes, high blood pressure and detox.
Where Can I Get It?
The Oatsy nutrition tracker app is available to download for free from the Google Play store and the Apple store. If you download it through Apple you are also able to log your daily steps via Apple health.
How Do I Use It?
Despite having as many features as some of the apps you have to pay for, it is surprisingly easy to use and took me no more than 10 minutes to navigate through everything and get to grips with it.
Once you’ve downloaded the app to whatever device you’re going to be using it on, simply enter some basic details – gender, date of birth, weight, height – and then decide whether you want to lose weight, gain weight, or maintain your current weight. I know I’ve said this already, but I really like that the focus isn’t just on weight loss, because actually there are heaps of people out there who struggle to gain weight and could do with help, and there are equally lots of people who are totally fine with the weight they are but perhaps don’t feel they are eating the right kind of foods for optimum health.
After you’ve input your info you can then choose which diet plan you’d like to follow. Again there is flexibility, because yes there are some diets on there that that may be slightly controversial (keto, 5:2 fasting, and 16/8 fasting I’m looking at you), but there is also the balanced diet option and a custom diet plan option, so there really is something for everyone. And if you’re not really sure what each of these diets are and what they involve, you can click on them to find out more and read some useful tips to help you stay on plan.
It’s really important to note that there is also a page that asks you to say whether to have conditions such as diabetes or high or low blood pressure etc., as clearly this has an impact and will be taken into account when revealing your daily stats.
What Will It Help Me With?
The Oatsy nutrition tracker app is predominantly a means of being able to keep track of your health in terms of nutrition and to some extent your fitness. What it can help you with depends somewhat on the goal you’re aiming for. If you stick to the amount of daily calories the app works out you need then yes you can lose weight, gain weight and also maintain weight. But it is more than that, in that it breaks your diet down into specifics, thus showing you areas you need to improve on, or areas you’re already doing OK in. I certainly have no clue how many carbs or how much fat or protein I consume in a day, but this app works it out for you. And yes arguably if you were that way inclined you could spend ages scrutinizing food packaging or looking up nutritional content of certain foods online and then recording all this kind of info yourself, but quite frankly who can be bothered!?! The Oatsy nutrition tracking app does all the hard work for you, so that all you need to think about is sticking to it.
My Honest Opinion Of The Oatsy Nutrition Tracking App
I’ve used weight loss apps and fitness tracker apps in the past and to be honest I’m not overly keen on keeping track of things these days simply because I feel it can become a little bit obsessive. However, I also appreciate that some people need this to get them back on track and having used it for a week it did remind me just how many calories are in a couple of biscuits versus an apple, so it did encourage me to make better food choices. Obviously, I know that biscuits aren’t a great snack choice, but what with everything else we’ve got going on right now it’s easy to be a little bit in denial about the food we eat. The tracker doesn’t let you get away with it, and I don’t know about you, but sometimes I need telling!
One function I would like, that it doesn’t currently have, is a notification setting that sends out a reminder at the end of the day to input your food. Personally, I need a little bit more accountability than it currently offers, and a reminder would be enough to stop me from cheating, which lets be honest is often what can happen a few days into a new diet plan.
It is a great tool to have if you’re struggling a bit with your nutrition at the moment and I know I keep going on about it but I am honestly blown away that this app is free. The focus is very much on slow, sustainable weight changes to take you on a nutritional journey to better health and to make long term lifestyle changes.
*collaborative post
