Losing weight with the iPhone « The BEST Apple Hardware and Software Reviews

Written By Ben Gribbin January 4th, 2010

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It’s a new year. And, everybody seems to have an aspiration to become a better person or learn a new language. As the Editor of AppleReviews, I tend to spend a lot of time sat down. At a desk. Moving only my fingers to type, my arm a little when using the mouse. These conditions aren’t conducive to maintaining a healthy shape. So, with the new year rolling in, I thought, hey why not take up exercise. But not boring old exercise, no, I want to lose weight with the help of the iPhone. Unsurprisingly, there are many apps dedicated to helping you get into shape. There are apps that track your weight, apps to help you calculate how much energy your burning and apps that can convert weight from pounds to KG effortlessly.

So, let’s take a look at the 3 exercise apps I have, and review them individually.

Fitnio

Fitnio is an elegant lightweight app designed to track your running, walking or cycling and calculate calories you’ve burned over your route. Fitnio works over GPS built in the iPhone and from my cycling test a while back worked great. The beauty of the app is it can work out how far, how fast and how fat you are. Then the calorie calculation is highly accurate. Under settings you need to enter your current weight, height, gender and birth date. The app will then calculate your BMI.

If you sign up to Fitnio.com, you can then view previous sessions and view more detailed information about them, such as a mile by mile break down of speed and a graph that shows your elevation and speed. Nifty..

The online archive holds additional info and looks good! Registration is free.

On my test I was using the app on my bicycle. I had the phone placed in a rucksack behind me, out of sight. You can listen to tunes at the same time though if you’d like. Today I did a run, but couldn’t take my phone with me, however I would recommend purchasing a wrist holder for the iPhone if you were going to do this.

Here are some screenshots taken from the iTunes store, showing further features such as emergency calling as well as the interface in general.

Next up, we have Weightbot

Weightbot

Weightbot officially has the 2nd coolest interface in the iPhone app world. The 1st one is the next app. The app is designed to be somewhat like a robot, complete with techy sounds and animated sliders. This app looks really cool. Weightbot simply allows you to calculate your BMI (how fat you are) and keep track of your weight using a simple graph. It’s a great little app for keeping you motivated, as if your overweight (like me) then it will show you just how far you need to go for your ideal weight, based upon your height. Further research online allowed me to set to realistic target weight to aim for, this was based upon my gender, height, age and build. After all I am quite tall and fairly muscly so I’m not all fat and hot air I also weight lift daily, and needed to take that into account. Still, I’m happy with my progress and very happy with weightbot. It’s super cheap and super slick. A must for anyone trying to lose, or even maintain their weight.

Still overweight! This daily view gives a quick way to enter your weight and displays your current BMI. Red is bad. The number at the top is my weight in KG. What a difference a day and some running makes.

This is the intro screen, which slides into two halves, makes a super cool sounds and ‘opens’ up to the app like a giant Star Trek door! Awesome!

This is the graph view. It shows your goal, it shows your current weight and it shows daily progress. This makes the app in my opinion. It’s complete.

Convertbot

The final app isn’t really an exercise related app what so ever. It’s simply a unit converter, but I found it incredibly useful calculating my weight in KG, and my height from Feet and inches to Metres. It’s called Convertbot and it has the best interface on the appstore. Full stop. You should check this app out.

So, if you just want to lose a little weight, or like converting units, or tracing gps routes, then we have an app to suit you here today. Personally, I am using all 3 on a regular basis, Fitnio to track and calculate, Weightbot to record and Convertbot to turn the Imperial scales measurement into metric for weightbot. A great line-up, and these will for sure keep you motivated to lose weight and get fit.