Health tracking apps

[JeffSub]

Hi.

I'm new here (first post!) and I'm here because I want to ask some questions.

I'm in my late 30s and I've recently started going to the gym with a personal trainer because it's time to get fit. I'm getting married next year and my fiance and I plan on having children pretty soon. We decided to go to the gym to improve our fitness and health and it's partly because we've discussed being healthy for our kids in the future (and not dying young and so on. A bit morbid I know, but we're pretty practical people).

I've done okay. I'm fitter, I've got my resting heart rate down from the high 80s to the high 60s in 4 months, and I've lost some weight (which is mostly fat - I've lost 7kg only but clearly put on some muscle).

So I decided I wanted to start tracking some things, like heart rate, weight, bmi, blood pressure and there are no apps that so just that. They are either for a specific sport/exercise (like running apps), too detailed without all the stuff I need (like JeFit) or calorie and weight trackers (like MyFitnessPal).

So - I decided to make an app for myself. It's for tracking basic stuff that I feel I need - hr, bp, weight and body measurements (waist, chest, etc).

I'm almost done and I realised (along with discussion with my personal trainer) that other people like me, may want such an app, so I'm probably going to put it on app stores.

Mumsnet is one place where I reckon there are people who feel the same as us - who want to stay healthy for their families. And I'm interested to know what people would want in such an app. I've already added hip size and bmi with a bmi calculator and a waist to hip ratio calculator based on discussions with my fiance, but what does Mumsnet think?

[OnePlanOnHouzz]

I use fitbit products (Zip and scales) and MFP for accurate calorie stuff - also have a polar HR Watch - have been looking for something more comprehensive too ! So something that can use those products and compile accurate stats would be useful ! Ie how much fat loss and muscle gained - ideal HR when exercising etc etc
Good luck with it all !

[WinterHasRuinedMyFace]

Good luck with your app. You could use a site called Tictrac (they have an app too), which allows you to add various trackers for anything you are interested in and will also pull in data from other services (e.g. Run keeper) you may already be using... Hth

[Mitchy1nge]

if the app used your resting heart rate to estimate vo2 max that would be helpful

and monitoring trends in body composition to level out fluctuations in body fat readings etc

and a pace/speed metric/imperial converter would be useful

do we get a free go of it in return for our help?

[JeffSub]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

I'll look into the fitbit products and see what I can make of it.

I had a look at Tictrac and it's still in beta. It looks nice though. It's far more comprehensive than my app, which is just health tracking. And mine will be on both Android and iOS (Tictrac is only iOS).

The app already has the choice of metric/imperial units an you can convert the data by changing the units.

I'll have to look into vo2 max calculations to see if that can be included.

I plan to have body fat readings (calculated by measuring skin folds with 4 point calliper measurements) in the next version.

Free go of it? Yeah, I could supply promo codes for the App and Play Stores. Why not?!

If you have an Android phone you could beta test it if you like. I can't do this for iOS unfortunately. Not without a lot of hassle anyway.

[Mitchy1nge]

sorry I meant a thing that converts metric or imperial pace or speed into imperial or metric pace (or the other way)

have just realised that being shit at maths actually matters if you have to run on a treadmill or indeed outside without a garmin and you are used to working in a minutes per mile pace but only have km/h to go on for example

this might be a bit of a rare problem to have

[JeffSub]

Ah, I see.

No, unfortunately this is just for tracking your body stats not your pace or the size of weights you can lift.

I'm sure there are imperial to metric converters out there though.

[Mitchy1nge]

in that case if it could take daily readings of body weight and average them like TrendWeight or Haopy Scale that would be great, really really great

[JeffSub]

Well I could do a trend line on the weight graph I suppose, but the plan at the moment was to do trend over 1,3,6 and 12 months only, with once daily readings

If you haven't got enough records for the full period you'll still get the graph but it'll be incomplete. So if you have 2 weeks of records the line will only fill half the screen on the 1 month view, if you have 2 months of records the line will fill 2/3 of the screen on the 3 month view, and so on.