Absolute Fitness is absolutely not worth the money

by Fred Krueger August 2, 2008 App Score: 1.0/5

User Reviews

Absolute Fitness
Developer: Aqua Eagle LLC
Price: $4.99 Download on the App Store

If you are one of the 100 million americans trying to lose weight, you might consider "absolute fitness", a calorie counter / activity tracker application for iphone for $14.99. Bad idea.

Unlike advanced web services such as www.caloriecount.about.com (from the about.com website now owned by the NY Times), "Absolute Fitness" contains a very rudimentary database of foods, making it next to impossible to record your daily calorie intake. Simple foods like "sushi" are simply "not found". Similarily, unless your calorie burning activities are limited to walking and running, don't expect to find them here. To add insult to injury, the user interface is bad at best, and at times extremely confusing.

We're still looking for a good app in this category. If you find one please let us know.

Image Gallery: Absolute Fitness

Healthcare & Fitness

Adrian Braun

I can't disagree with your review more. Not only is there a large database of both activities and foods, but you can add your own at any time. Items like "sushi" could vary greatly so you would be better off figuring out the nutritional info in the components, adding them up and then saving them as a custom food item.

In addition, this is a $15 app, has no reoccurring fees and has been updated a number of times since it was launched. The database of both foods and activities is expanded, there's an improved (and awesome) search feature, they've added online backups of your data and while the interface hasn't changed, it was intuitive and easy to use from the start.
Roy

This review sucks. I love this app. Since it is on my phone and with me whenever I eat and exercise, it is easily the most useful fitness tool known to man.
Brad

This is a good starter app for a dieter but its lack of companion web site or desktop app has forced me to use DailyBurn. The food entry is a bit tedious and it seems to be a bit generous with it's calories burned for workouts.
Emily

I'm in love this app for my Palm Pre. While some of 'my' foods aren't listed, I'm getting faster at entering every day as I create and reuse my favorites. It's always with me to enter, and encourages exercise since it shows my net calories.

I pack my lunch for the next day, then lay in bed and enter in everything that I know I'm going to eat ahead of time. That saves me time and lets me rethink some of my food choices based on total calories *before* I eat them.

I'm also paying more attention to cholestol and sodium which I never did before since the interface is so easy. I've even lost 4 of my 20 pounds already. Pretty happy with a buck a pound so far.
Jessie

I join the others - I Love this app. It makes it so easy for me to track everything IN ONE PLACE! My sleeo notes are important as I am in the middle of a medical sleep/nutrition study and this app accounts for even that. I couldn't ask for more - which is rare with the limited # of Palm Pre apps out there.
Emily

I've been using this app for 5 months straight now and have entered my food and exercise intake every single day. (Regarding how slow and tedious the interface was and all the foods not found...my boyfriend watched me zip everything in one night then commented "Wow, that was fast." Which it was. I'm still with the program and have now lost 21 pounds and met my original goal as a result of the awareness of what I was eating. There is room for improvement for foods not found, but I just enter them or enter something similar once and you're set.
john

Why would "sushi" be listed? you might as well complain that they also don't list "sandwich"
Amy Ramos

I have to agree. I typed Oatmeal (looking for steel cut) and all it came back with processed foods.
For someone who knows how to eat right and exercise, the $2.50 I paid is not worth it. I want my money back.
Sam

While I agree that the database is next to useless, I rarely if ever use those foods. Just stick the nutritional information into the custom items list and create your own meals from there. Works a treat as a food diary, nutrient counter and "progress" tracker.
Michael Hartley

Your review is off. The database is nowhere near as good as the online tools - but you know what it takes a small amount of time to enter foods, create custom meals and exercises and use over and over again. Using this app for 3 months I have dropped 8kg (78.5 - 70.5. Key point for me is trapping what you eat and what you burn the database of the exercises is spot on. Sure the App could be better but the result is impressive