Fitness app

Afitness appis anapplicationthat can be downloaded on anymobile deviceand used anywhere to get fit. Fitness apps are designed to help with exercise, other types of physical training, nutrition and diet, and other ways to get fit.

As of 2015, the number of health-related apps released oniPhone(iOS) andAndroidhad reached more than 165,000.^[1]Apps can perform various functions such as allowing users to set fitness goals, tracking caloric intake, gathering workout ideas, and sharing progress on social media to facilitate healthy behavior change. They can be used as a platform to promote healthy behavior change with personalized workouts, fitness advice and nutrition plans. Fitness apps can work in conjunction with wearable devices to synchronize their health data to third-party devices for easier accessibility. Through using gamification elements and creating competition among friends and family, fitness apps can help incentive users to be more motivated. Running and workout apps allow users to run or work out to music in the form ofDJ mixesthat can be personalized based on the user's steps per minute, heart rate or ideal cadence thus boosting and enhancing performance during exercise.

Recent advancements have seen fitness apps^[2]evolve to utilize artificial intelligence to provide even more personalized fitness guidance. Utilizing symbolic AI, some apps now interpret physical activity and sedentary behavior guidelines from organizations like the WHO and ACSM to offer tailored exercise recommendations, enhancing the precision of fitness plans.^[3]

Calorie Counter

Acalorie counteris asoftware applicationor device that can be used to record and evaluate a person's daily diet in terms of nutritional values such ascalories,macronutrientsandmicronutrients.^[4]^[5]Body weightand physical activity may also be monitored.^[4]Their use is intended to helpreduce body weight.^[4]^[6]^[7]

Development

Manual "calorie counting" is based on nutritional calorie tables in book form^[8]^[9]and on thenutritional informationon product packaging. With the advent of smartphones, "calorie counter"appshave simplified the process. The smartphone camera captures thebarcodeof a product and the nutritional information is provided from a database.

Features

The user records every food eaten, including the quantity, in order to determine their total calories and nutrient intake and compare them with their target. They can enter their current body weight into the app every few days and later draw conclusions about the effectiveness of theirdiet.To record calorie consumption, the apps can connect to the interfaces of third-partyfitness trackers,access the phone's activitysensoror record activity manually.^[4]

Privacy

Most calorie counter applications require auser account.Meal and body weight entries are stored on aserverof the provider, personalized profiles are created with sensitive data that are at risk of unauthorized access.^[10]Applications without registration are more secure in this respect, but have no server-based databackup.

Available evidence

ACochrane meta-analysis(2024) of 18 studies with a total of 2700 people showed that there was little or no change in participants' weight after two years. Effects on well-being and quality of life are low or non-existent. The apps performed just as well as personalcoaching,"no app" or "usual care". However, the evidence is still very weak and a large number of studies have been announced or are ongoing.^[11]

References

^"More than 165,000 mobile health apps now available - iMedicalApps".iMedicalApps.2015-09-17.Retrieved2017-12-10.
^"10 Best Fitness Apps Of 2024".Forbes Health.2023-02-13.Retrieved2024-01-08.
^Allocca, Carlo; Jilali, Samia; Ail, Rohit; Lee, Jaehun; Kim, Byungho; Antonini, Alessio; Motta, Enrico; Schellong, Julia; Stieler, Lisa; Haleem, Muhammad Salman; Georga, Eleni; Pecchia, Leandro; Gaeta, Eugenio; Fico, Giuseppe (January 2022)."Toward a Symbolic AI Approach to the WHO/ACSM Physical Activity & Sedentary Behavior Guidelines".Applied Sciences.12(4): 1776.doi:10.3390/app12041776.ISSN 2076-3417.
^^a ^b ^c ^dMilliard, Sharlin (2019)."Designing Calorie Counter Smartphone Applications for Effective Weight Loss"(PDF).University of Central Florida.Retrieved2024-05-27.
^Eikey, Elizabeth V.; Booth, Kayla M.; Chen, Yunan; Zheng, Kai (2018-12-05)."The Use of General Health Apps Among Users with Specific Conditions: Why College Women with Disordered Eating Adopt Food Diary Apps".Amia... Annual Symposium Proceedings. Amia Symposium:1243–1252.PMC6371267.PMID 30815166.
^Harvey, Jean; Krukowski, Rebecca; Priest, Jeff; West, Delia (March 2019)."Log Often, Lose More: Electronic Dietary Self-Monitoring for Weight Loss".Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.).27(3): 380–384.doi:10.1002/oby.22382.PMC6647027.PMID 30801989.
^Hahn, Samantha L.; Kaciroti, Niko; Eisenberg, Daniel; Weeks, Heidi M.; Bauer, Katherine W.; Sonneville, Kendrin R. (December 2021)."Introducing Dietary Self-Monitoring to Undergraduate Women via a Calorie Counting App Has No Effect on Mental Health or Health Behaviors: Results From a Randomized Controlled Trial".Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.121(12): 2377–2388.doi:10.1016/j.jand.2021.06.311.PMC9109125.PMID 34427188.
^Beilenson, Suzanne.The Pocket Calorie Counter.Peter Pauper Press, Inc.ISBN 978-1-4413-0519-0.
^Heslin, Jo-Ann; Nolan, Karen J. (2009-12-29).The Calorie Counter, 5th Edition.Simon and Schuster.ISBN 978-1-4165-6667-0.
^"Hackers steal data of 150 million MyFitnessPal app users".The Guardian.2018-03-30.ISSN 0261-3077.Retrieved2024-06-25.
^Metzendorf, M. I.; Wieland, L. S.; Richter, B. (2024)."Smartphone apps for people with overweight or obesity".The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.2024(2): CD013591.doi:10.1002/14651858.CD013591.pub2.PMC10877670.PMID 38375882.Retrieved2024-06-25.

External links

The fitness of apps: a theory-based examination of mobile fitness app usage over 5 monthsMhealth. 2nd March, 2017. PMCID:PMC5344171, PMID 28293619.

Category:Software Category:Health Category:Fitness apps Category:Nutrition Category:Weight loss

This mobile software article is astub.You can help Wikipedia byexpanding it.

[1] "More than 165,000 mobile health apps now available - iMedicalApps".iMedicalApps.2015-09-17.Retrieved2017-12-10.

[2] "10 Best Fitness Apps Of 2024".Forbes Health.2023-02-13.Retrieved2024-01-08.

[3] Allocca, Carlo; Jilali, Samia; Ail, Rohit; Lee, Jaehun; Kim, Byungho; Antonini, Alessio; Motta, Enrico; Schellong, Julia; Stieler, Lisa; Haleem, Muhammad Salman; Georga, Eleni; Pecchia, Leandro; Gaeta, Eugenio; Fico, Giuseppe (January 2022)."Toward a Symbolic AI Approach to the WHO/ACSM Physical Activity & Sedentary Behavior Guidelines".Applied Sciences.12(4): 1776.doi:10.3390/app12041776.ISSN 2076-3417.

[:0-4] Milliard, Sharlin (2019)."Designing Calorie Counter Smartphone Applications for Effective Weight Loss"(PDF).University of Central Florida.Retrieved2024-05-27.

[5] Eikey, Elizabeth V.; Booth, Kayla M.; Chen, Yunan; Zheng, Kai (2018-12-05)."The Use of General Health Apps Among Users with Specific Conditions: Why College Women with Disordered Eating Adopt Food Diary Apps".Amia... Annual Symposium Proceedings. Amia Symposium:1243–1252.PMC6371267.PMID 30815166.

[6] Harvey, Jean; Krukowski, Rebecca; Priest, Jeff; West, Delia (March 2019)."Log Often, Lose More: Electronic Dietary Self-Monitoring for Weight Loss".Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.).27(3): 380–384.doi:10.1002/oby.22382.PMC6647027.PMID 30801989.

[7] Hahn, Samantha L.; Kaciroti, Niko; Eisenberg, Daniel; Weeks, Heidi M.; Bauer, Katherine W.; Sonneville, Kendrin R. (December 2021)."Introducing Dietary Self-Monitoring to Undergraduate Women via a Calorie Counting App Has No Effect on Mental Health or Health Behaviors: Results From a Randomized Controlled Trial".Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.121(12): 2377–2388.doi:10.1016/j.jand.2021.06.311.PMC9109125.PMID 34427188.

[8] Beilenson, Suzanne.The Pocket Calorie Counter.Peter Pauper Press, Inc.ISBN 978-1-4413-0519-0.

[9] Heslin, Jo-Ann; Nolan, Karen J. (2009-12-29).The Calorie Counter, 5th Edition.Simon and Schuster.ISBN 978-1-4165-6667-0.

[10] "Hackers steal data of 150 million MyFitnessPal app users".The Guardian.2018-03-30.ISSN 0261-3077.Retrieved2024-06-25.

[11] Metzendorf, M. I.; Wieland, L. S.; Richter, B. (2024)."Smartphone apps for people with overweight or obesity".The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.2024(2): CD013591.doi:10.1002/14651858.CD013591.pub2.PMC10877670.PMID 38375882.Retrieved2024-06-25.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]