Guide
An Apple Watch measures your body better than almost anything at the price. It still cannot tell you what you ate, and that is most of the equation it is trying to help you with.
The Watch is excellent at heart rate, sleep, workouts and rings, and it feeds all of that into Apple Health. What it cannot supply is food — and calories out without calories in explains very little. The right app reads your Health data and adds the nutrition and strength logging the Watch has no way to capture. For that, Nutri Macro is the best option.
Continuous heart rate, sleep stages, workout detection, resting heart rate trends and, on newer models, a usable HRV signal. It writes all of this into Apple Health, where any app you authorise can read it. As a measurement device it is very good.
It cannot see your plate. Every ring you close is an estimate of energy out, and energy out is the half of the equation you control least. A perfectly closed move ring alongside an untracked week of eating tells you almost nothing about why the scale moved or did not.
It also cannot log a set. Apple's own workout types cover “Traditional Strength Training” as a duration and a heart rate curve, which is not a record of what you lifted.
Free on iPhone and Android. Reads your Apple Health sleep and heart data, adds Indian food tracking and a per-set strength log, and shows all three together.
For the measurement side, the Watch and Apple Fitness already do a good job. For the half the Watch cannot see — what you ate, and what you actually lifted — Nutri Macro is the best option, because it reads your Apple Health sleep and heart data and adds nutrition and per-set strength logging on the same timeline.
Its energy-out estimate is reasonable and its heart rate is very good, but energy out is the side you control least and the one that matters less. Without tracking what you eat, a closed move ring tells you very little about why your weight is or is not moving.
Not meaningfully. It records “Traditional Strength Training” as a duration with a heart rate curve, which is not a record of the weight you lifted or the reps you managed. Progressive overload needs a per-set log, which has to come from an app.
Yes — sleep, resting heart rate and heart rate variability, with your permission. That is what lets it build a recovery picture from data your Watch is already collecting, rather than asking you to enter anything twice.
No. A watch improves the sleep and heart data considerably, but the two things that determine most outcomes — what you eat and what you lift — are entered by you either way. A phone alone is enough to start.
Reading data that Apple Health has already recorded costs essentially nothing, because the Watch collected it regardless. Battery drain comes from live workout tracking with the screen on, not from an app reading yesterday’s sleep.
Reads your Apple Health sleep and heart data, and adds the food and strength logging a Watch cannot capture.
NutriMacro is a nutrition and training tracker for iPhone and Android. It logs food by barcode, photo or search, counts food in slices and units rather than grams, and keeps strength training, GPS activities, sleep and recovery in the same daily view. It runs in the language of your phone across 108 countries.
Read next: Best app for Samsung Watch How a recovery score works Tracking without a smartwatch
