APP REVIEW:
S HEALTH
With the
purchase of a new Samsung phone and some minor health issues for all three family
members we decided to give this free app a try to see if it could help us work
through getting better organized with our efforts to live a healthier
lifestyle.
The app has
many segments and you can use or not use as you want. It allows you to track/monitor the many
categories from water, food and caffeine intake to activity levels to restful
sleep and more.
Let’s start
with your profile. In this section you
enter your name, sex, height, current weight and indicate your activity level. I recommend doing this first so the app can
calculate other items for you as you move from section to section in setting it
up.
To do so you
go to the top of the main screen click on the prompts for the profile (the more
button) and fill in the simple choices. You can also add a photo at one point
if you would care to. The photo will
show up next to your name.
Each section
is just as easy to set. You can set
personal goals for items like eating healthier, getting more exercise, getting
more rest, controlling your caffeine intake etc. I suggest exploring each segment thoroughly
along the way as you are setting it up.
Pay particular attention to the “more” and info buttons, because by
clicking on these you will find how you can set up each segment with more
detail and trigger automatic calculations for you.
An example
of this is the body mass index or bmi. I had ZERO idea on how to calculate
this, but by filling in the various blanks the app calculated it for me
automatically. Let’s just say that
number needs to go way down.
When I set
my current weight, age, height and weight goal it calculated my daily calorie
intake to either maintain that weight (not happening) or what I should eat maximum
daily to lose weight. Both are shown on
a chart that helps you see how you are progressing.
By clicking
on the trends or track button in each segment you can compare how you are doing
in previous days. By setting your
location it automatically rolls over every section at midnight each night, so
you are always current.
Tracking
your calories and more important your nutrient intake is VERY simple because
they include not only your basic apple, milk calorie recording, but by brand
and restaurant name. So if you eat a
chicken taco salad from Taco Bueno you can actually type in that term and it
will bring up your choices of eating it with or without the tortilla bowl. You click your choice and it brings up the
calorie count for you. This is very
helpful when trying to decide what to eat.
If you have
already consumed it you can simply click it then add your next item, and repeat
until you have your whole meal consumed then you click next.
On the next
screen you get the option of changing the serving size. I tend to eat only half of any meal consumed
away from home, I can adjust the number of servings by .5 increments easily
either up or down. You know sometimes you have to have just one more cookie.
You can also
set what time you ate the meal/snack.
This could be helpful if you are trying to adjust when you want eat the
higher calorie items during the first part of the day.
One drawback
I have found with this section is it says “per serving size” and some items do
NOT have what a serving size is. An
example would be my cereal breakfast did not have how much cereal was a serving
size, so I had to check the cereal box to see how much it was, then adjust the
consumed amount accordingly.
Most items
will tell you what they consider a serving size on the first screen where you
enter it.
Once you
have your meal/snack (spaces for three meals and three snacks a day) entered it
will show that meal or snack total as well as your daily total.
If you have set
a “eat healthier goal” it not only keeps the total but will show you how you
are doing toward your goal. Clicking on that chart will bring up not only the
weight and calorie but all your nutrient intake for the day showing you what
you have consumed, what you should consume daily by your height and
weight, and age. It is
also color coded for low, average, and high levels of each nutrient. This is very helpful if you are trying to
control various items like sodium.
Want to
increase your activity level? There are
segments for daily steps (my favorite to check constantly), walking at a quick
pace, or even running—not this old fat woman.
Each one
tells you how you are doing, how many calories you have burned, and how far you
have gone. For all this to work you may
need to allow it to gps your location.
The walking
and running segments also will play music, should you desire, from your play
list through your phone.
One caveat
about this section. Like I said the
steps is a very important part for me, but it wasn’t working properly on my
phone. It was on both men’s, but of
course not mine. I became VERY
frustrated about this and set out on a web search on how to fix it. I found a simple fix that required
uninstallation and re-installing the updates.
It took dh less than five minutes to do the steps and it works perfectly
now. Absolutely loved seeing that my
shopping at Wal-Mart for good for me foods actually burned a lot of calories
and included over 3,000 steps.
Speaking of
that, when you do good, you get rewards.
Little congratulatory statements and trophies will suddenly appear on
your phone. Who doesn’t need an ‘atta
girl/boy every now and again.
If you have
more than one goal set you will have to scroll either right or left to see your
goal charts for each goal. Not a big
deal, but it did take me a couple of minutes to figure this out.
As an added
bonus there are periodic tips on helping you achieve your goals. Some of these are very helpful.
All in all I
highly suggest if you have this free app on your phone you explore and use
it. If your phone doesn’t have it, I
found that you can download it from the Google Play Store.
Because of
the few minor failings like the lack of serving size and having to uninstall
and re-install I give this app a b+