I realize that it is a bit of a cliché to be talking about weight loss in early January, but the reality is that this is the time of year when a lot of people focus on that. Fortunately, the iPhone can help. It is easy to record your weight every time you get on the scale by using the iPhone's built-in Health app. I find that the fastest and easiest way to get your weight into the Health app is to use a very simple Shortcut. The one I use has only two steps. First, the shortcut uses the Ask for Input command to ask the question "How much did you weigh?" and you respond by typing a number. Second, the shortcut saves that to the "Weight" section of the health app. That's it. I have a widget on my iPhone that launches this shortcut, and because I use the shortcut just about every morning, just about every morning my iPhone home screen automatically recommends that I run the shortcut, so it is easy to tap that home screen recommendation and then log my weight.
The Health app lets you view your weight for the last day, week, month, etc., and even shows you trends for the last few weeks But if you want a better way to look at your weight measurements, that is where the Happy Scale app comes in.
Although you can enter weights directly in the Happy Scale app and have that sync over to the Health app, I find it easier to use the shortcut noted above to get my measurements into the Health app. Happy Scale can then read those measurements to display and analyze them.
Note that the following images are taken from the Happy Scale website. The latest version of the app has a slightly improved look, but these images are pretty close—and no, I'm not going to take my own screenshots that display my own personal data in this post.
The first thing that I like about Happy Scale is the way that it graphs your weight change over time. There are several parts of the app that show your weight change in different ways. But what they all have in common is an emphasis on showing smoothed-out trends, not each specific weight. The app recognizes that your weight will always fluctuate up and down, and what matters is not to get hung up on any one specific number but to think about your trends over time.
The graphs look good on the iPhone, but the app also works on the iPad, where it is nice to have the extra space for your graphs.
When you look at statistics in Happy Scale, you can see specific numbers (like the latest entry), but the emphasis is on averages, such as your average low for the last 10 days. Note that you can control which specific statistics you see, and there are lots of options.
Another part of the app that I like is the Predictions. You can control these manually using the commitment option (you input how much you commit to lose each week), but I don't use that. Instead, I let the app make predictions based on my current rate and my overall rate. And if you provide a goal weight, the app will predict when you will meet your goal. I find that this is a helpful way to keep you focused on the future and to encourage you to keep up the good work.
The app also has a useful Logbook mode. In this mode, you can see your specific weights recorded on specific days (if you have multiple weight entries for a single day, it uses the lowest one), but even more useful, you can see things like your weekly rate, your 7-day averages, any notes that you (optionally) enter for specific days, how much you have lost or gained since you started trying to lose weight, and information telling you that your weight on a specific day was your lowest since X days / weeks / months / years ago. It can be very encouraging to see that a weigh-in is, for example, your lowest entry in three months or three years. And you can choose what is and is not displayed in the Logbook.
The app also lets you set milestones so that you can break up a big overall effort into small, more manageable chunks.
As you can probably tell so far, just about everything in this app is configurable. So you have lots of control over what you see, how it is presented to you, etc. The default settings are really good, but being able to tweak them to make them more relevant for you is even better. I'm using this app to lose weight, but you can also tell Happy Scale that your goal is to maintain weight or even gain weight, and it will help you with that as well.
If you own an Apple Watch and you keep track of your circles, then you already know how the gamification of your own personal statistics can be a powerful motivator. By displaying so much information in so many different ways about your weight loss journey, Happy Scale does a great job of encouraging you to stick with it. And by emphasizing overall trends and not the inevitable ups and downs from day to day, the app keeps you focused on the big picture.
You can try out the app for free, but the best parts of the app, such as predictions and syncing, require a subscription. Fortunately, you can subscribe for a month for only $1.99 to see what you think. I paid $11.99 for an annual subscription. You can also pay $39.99 for a lifetime unlock.
Happy Scale has been around for more than a decade, and the developer, Russ Shanahan, continues to add new features and improve the app regularly. As the developer noted in an interview by Yuvraj Singh, he used his own app to lose 100 pounds. I love this app because of its great user interface and impressive features, and the fact that it has been around for so long gives me more confidence that this is a good app to use.
If you want to use your iPhone to help manage your weight, Happy Scale is a fantastic app.
