What Is the Simple App and How Does It Work?
The Simple app is an intermittent fasting and weight loss app designed to help you understand your habits and teach you how to build healthier ones.
This app is great for novice and experienced fasters who want to eat healthy but don’t want to track calories. The simple design and features help you create a fasting schedule that works for you, which can be adjusted as needed.
“Two key features stand out to me as a practitioner. First, clients have an all-encompassing app where they can track their fitness and nutrition, as well as fasting timers. Secondly, Simple offers users the flexibility to change their fasting windows during the week to correlate with the natural fluctuations in their schedules and lives,” say Bergtholdt.
The app includes accountability, motivation, meal ideas, workout plans, and education around healthy eating, exercise, and eating psychology so you can learn the impact of mood and mental health on eating behaviors.
This psychological component is essential for a health app, as most people don’t eat just out of pure hunger.
Who Is the Simple App For?
There are a few qualities and situations where you may benefit the most from using the Simple app:
- You’re curious about fasting
- You’re an experienced faster who wants to stay on track
- You’re looking for an app that is easy to use
- You want to improve your diet but don’t want to track calories
- You want instant feedback on your meals, and support from a coach
- You want to improve your relationship with food
- You want one app for everything: tracking, meal and workout ideas, guidance
Of note, the app does say it’s customized for women. But many men say they’ve used it successfully, and the features appear to be applicable to both women and men.
How It Works
Once you download the Simple app, there are a few easy steps to prepare you to enjoy its benefits.
Step 1: Sign UpTo help the app identify your best plan and intermittent fasting schedule, you’ll start with a brief questionnaire asking about your:
- Biggest health goals
- Age
- Height and weight
- Current activity level
- Typical meal schedule
- Motivation
They also ask more specific questions on other areas you want to work on such as brain health and focus, gut health, stress management, or mindful eating.
Step 2: Customized Fasting PlanBased on your answers, a customized path is generated with an estimated timeline to reach your goal. “[The app] also provides a reasonable timeframe of when you’ll reach your goal,” Lisa Andrews, RD, the owner of Sound Bites Nutrition. It’s important to keep in mind that this timeline is just a projection based on average users, and individual results vary.
Step 3: Walk-ThroughOnce your plan is created, you’ll walk through the main goals and expectations of using the app in a three-step process:
- Become accountable. This step emphasizes the importance of a daily log for accountability and knowledge of the habits holding you back.
- Understand. This step educates on the power of accountability and keeping track of unhealthy diet and exercise patterns so you have a starting point.
- Learn. This step reminds you to utilize all the app's educational features and log in regularly for instant feedback.
Once you complete these three steps, you can start using the app.
Using the App
There are four icons at the bottom of the Simple app:
- Home: Your homepage to log food, hydration, movement, and weight. This page also shows your daily goals, fasting schedule, and weight journey.
- Coach: Connect to Coach Avo, the AI-powered feature where you can ask questions, search meal and snack ideas, and get instant feedback.
- Explore: The app’s educational hub, which includes workout plans, videos, recipes, and educational content.
- Progress: A bird’s-eye view of your progress so far. You can find previously logged meals, hydration, and workouts. You can also view your starting and current weight, and where you are in meeting your goals.
Customizing Settings
You can customize the app's settings including its appearance, notifications, and other fitness and health app integrations.
For notifications, all are defaulted to be on to remind you when it’s time to start and stop eating or to hydrate. It also has other reminders to weigh yourself and be notified of weight changes. You can turn any of these off or keep some activated, such as the fasting reminders, as you adjust to a new schedule.
You have the option to select your preferred measurement systems such as pounds or kilograms for weight, and feet or centimeters for height.
