Workflow app for your weight

Does anyone use the workflow app to add your weight to Apple health? My question is do you add your weight everyday or once a week? Cause I didn’t realize it then adjusts your goals on the Apple Watch.

I do. Only once a week though. Any more often than that would drive me nuts.

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I do daily. It’s a habit I have now and helps me regulate what I eat through the day. I’m not too worried about it changing my goals since my weight loss is slow. (But steady!)

I don’t use Workflow but a $2.99 iOS app called Weight Diary. After downloading a half-dozen different apps I decided on this one for its design. I’ve been using it for over two years now, and I still prefer it to newer apps that have come out (I still scope out the competition from time to time). Shares info with Apple Health, which then passes it along to apps which are allowed weight data.

I use a Withings (now Nokia) digital scale to automatically write my weight to the Health app. I generally weigh myself daily. No manual intervention (Other than stepping on the scale) needed!

I use the workflow app on a semi-regular basis. (At least weekly, but sometimes daily.)

I like that it just stores the data in Apple Health. The visuals that AH gives me is sufficient for me.

I don’t have a Watch, so I can’t comment on how that works.

I use Workflow to manually record my weight in Health on a weekly basis. To make the process more efficient I get it to retrieve the previous weight reading and present that as the default for the input so that I only need to adjust it if my weight has changed.

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I use the Workflow one to track my weight, this then syncs with Apple Health which then syncs with Happy Scale.

@bowline So it seems to be able to interface to Withings (Nokia) WiFi scale. I plan to buy this but seeing a lot of bad review on the scale. Not the hardware itself but it seems that Nokia has done a new app for the scale that pretty much everyone does not like. Are you entering manually or have a WiFi scale interfacing to the app?

I enter manually. At home I use a years-old, previous Wirecutter pick for non-smart scale. My girlfriend has a smart scale at her place but again, I just enter manually. It’s no biggie to enter manually - app shows the previously entered number and then it’s just a short twist of the thumb to scroll to the new number. In fact, my iPhone is smart enough to bubble up the app in the morning as an app choice when I pull down for search.

The only reason I’d consider getting a smart scale is if it could reliably and accurately give body-fat percentage readings, but as Wirecutter notes, “though readings from a platform scale are not terribly accurate, they can be useful for tracking trends”. So maybe I’d consider getting a smart scale if my current one died, but there’s not a huge reason for me to do so.

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Thanks for reply. Well at this time I have no scale as my previous IKEA one bite the dust so I think I will opt for a smart scale. Yes you are right absolute accuracy is not that important and trends are better so measurements should be taken at the relative same time and conditions. i.e. before eating meals

My experience is that scales are useless for day-to-day tracking, because my own weight can fluctuate as much as five pounds on any given morning depending on what I ate the day before (and what passed through) and the amount of water-retaining salty food I’d had. If I eat half dozen olives one day I’m guaranteed to have ‘gained’ 2 pounds the next day, only to lose it again the day after that.

They’re fine for trends, and consistency is more important than accuracy. For example, one day when I weighed in at 165.2 pounds on my scale, my girlfriend’s smart scale a short after that said I was 163.8. Which one was right? Doesn’t really matter, what matters is the consistency in measuring from day to day.

Body-fat percentage readings in smart scales are the same, but much worse at accuracy. If they are consistent they’ll be moderately useful, but there’s really no saying if they are unless you compare it to a profession tool, and even then it’s only actually useful to athletes in training. So get whatever scale you want but focus on those reviewed for accuracy and especially consistency.

This is exactly why I’m not quite sold on smart scales. Trends over time is key. I use Happy Scale to track my weight and it incorporates changes over time instead of the sudden spikes and drops.

And tbh I’m not really sold on Smart Home stuff in general. I watch with interest as people set up locks and security cameras and lights and ACs, but so far I haven’t found a real need for any of it. Yet. (Ask again in a couple of years.)

Anyway, I’m happy using my (5-year?) old $30 Wirecutter-recommended EatSmart scale, and the iOS app I discussed above. (Which, by the way, comes as a free lite version as well.) Without knowing my exact weight (yet finding it jibes with my doctor’s scale when I visit) it’s useful to see trends. I’ve seen that if I eat too many salty olives the night before I retain water, and I can easily gain 2-5 pounds the day after a big meal, but then it drops back after 1-2 days. It took a while to learn to ignore the surprising swings and rhythms of daily weight and simply pay attention to the week, month, and (especially) 3-month graphed histories.

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