There are a lot of health tracker apps on the market.
They range from paid to free, with varying qualities in between.
There are even health tracker devices that work with these apps.
For anyone who wants to start making a positive lifestyle change, these choices can be alarming.
That is why, when recommending a newbie who is just beginning their fitness journey, even if it is a casual one, I always tell them to start with Google Fit.
Google Fit, a free health tracker app, is extremely user-friendly, even for senior citizens.
Upon downloading to a mobile device, it does several basic things very well.
The most accessible tracker
The core aspect of Google Fit is that it is a physical movement tracker.
Once installed on the phone, it will automatically track your daily steps.
This can range from regular walking to even bicycling.
Along with the step tracking, the app has something it calls “Heart Points,” which is the exertion your physical activity has on your heart.
The higher the number for both, the better your health will be in the long run.
Google Fit will continuously keep track of these two statistics, and users will be able to look at their progress daily, weekly, and monthly.
A custom daily milestone can also be kept so that users know whether they have hit their step (or heart) goal for the day.
Got-Ten would recommend setting 10,000 steps as your daily goal.
The number originates from Japan, as they were the first to break down the science behind how humans should be moving that much in a day.
Added extras Back to Google Fit, a user’s step count and heart points will be directed into the app’s calculation for three other things: calorie expenditure, distance walked, and how long the user has been moving in a day.
These are also calculated based on what the user has set as their weight and height in the app’s profile section.
The app also has a journal that automatically logs when the user moves and a separate section to log body measurements, vitals, nutrition, and sleep.
The nutrition log is detailed, but I would not recommend using Google Fit for it.
This is because, unlike nutrition apps like MyFitnessPal, Google Fit’s nutrition is entirely manual.
You have to put in every detail, like protein, carbs, fat, etc., manually, whereas for MyFitnessPal, you can either manually put the numbers in or just search for the food item, and the app will pull the data from its database and servers.
Google Fit is best used as a step tracker and nothing more.
Everything else on the app is just superficial bells and whistles.
Minute downsides
That said, Google Fit is not the perfect step tracker.
There are some slight problems with it. One of them is the issue of data synchronization across multiple devices.
Let me explain. If you have two mobile devices, you can install Google Fit on both, and it will share the data between both because one Google account is being used.
The problem is that most of the time, the data is not identical, and sometimes it may even fail to sync.
Here is a real example. Both my phones have Google Fit, and in the gym, I use my second, beaten-up phone.
In between workout sets, I tend to pace around the gym like a crazy person to increase my daily step count.
This second phone will accurately log the step count, but when I sync my main phone’s Google Fit to the latter’s Google Fit, the step count increase is usually much, much lower.
On some days, the data refuses to sync. Another problem with Google Fit is that it does not know what the user is doing while actively logging their movement, and it logs everything as a step.
If the user is someone who shakes their legs, whether they are sitting down or standing up with their mobile device in their pants, Google Fit will sometimes think the user is being chased by a bear, and it will log the shaking as thousands of steps.
The upside to this is that users can just manually delete the erroneous data, but it is annoying.
