Health and appiness: are desi fitness apps better for us than the western ones? Here's a round-up

Do we really need an app to remind us, thrice a day, to drink water? Or nudge us to get off our bottoms and walk? But then, do we really need avocado on toast. Or pineapple on pizza? No, to all. Yet, it’s 2018 and here we are.

Despite the naysayers, fitness apps are here to stay: MyFitnessPal and Endomondo carved a comfortable niche for themselves, catering to fitness enthusiasts abroad and home. They help us track our meals, and give us the macro breakdown for each, even throwing in handy recipes and tips on their blogs.

However, as with everything imported from the West, Indian users soon began to feel a little left out. Tips on how to create zucchini noodles and pea pesto don’t really come in handy when your staple is rice or roti. “Your basic nutrition requirements don’t change, but how you choose to get them may differ, depending on the foods available locally, or cultural dietary preferences,” says Rahul Gopal, co-founder of The Formula, a nutrition and strength clinic in Chennai.

Another factor was the lack of a community that connects with the environment you live in. Will home-grown apps with dieticians and fitness pros from India, be better-suited to customise a solution for our needs? We do a round-up of the country’s top lifestyle health apps to find out.

Fitso’s motive was “to make premium trainers accessible to everyone, so anyone sitting in his home in India could have proper guidance,” says Rahool Sureka, co-founder. “We wanted to create a holistic app that put together all the cornerstones of fitness in one place. Something that could track how many calories are going into the body, as well as how many you are burning,” says Rahool. Nutrition is where the home-grown apps have an advantage. While logging meals, you can choose from a database of staple daily meals, according to the region you live in. “Our users actually help in updating the database, as we keep a track of food items most frequently logged.”

Our takeaway:

While the coaches are available only for users that pay, Fitso keeps the home screen pleasingly efficient, with bright colours, and lists your activities of the day. You can track workouts, calorie count, water and steps taken, as well as a run or ride. What’s fun is the workout chart the algorithm comes up with, once you tell it your BMI, target weight and the type of workout (running, cycling, or home workout) you prefer. You can also participate in personal or global challenges. Premium starts from ₹999 pm.

Right off the bat, HealthifyMe asks you about any medical conditions you have, and then allows you to select a plan — for a certain price — based on that. Furthermore, it can also track, say in case of thyroid, your T3, T4 and TSH levels. “At some point, after we see enough engagement from a user, we add them to in-app groups that connect them with like-minded people with similar conditions,” says founder Tushar Vashisht. This app also uses Google Fit to track your steps.

“Our strength lies in the diversity of our coaches. We have nearly 300 of them, from different cities such as Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi, Pune and more. Depending on where you live, what language you speak, and what medical condition you have, we connect you with the best possible trainer,” says Tushar.

While logging your meal, there is no option to save a version of your own dish, forcing you to choose from the pre-existing database. “Look, calorie counting is a science of approximation. But we try our best to make the counting as precise as possible. Say you have had dal makhani, you can specify whether it was with butter or without, whether it was made at home or in a restaurant, what kind of oil was used and so on,” says Tushar. “More importantly, our database is not updated by user entries, but by our own nutritionists who look at how the dish is made in different regions and make the best possible estimate of the average calories.”

Our takeaway:

It’s nice to be a part of a community, and HealthifyMe offers that. However, it does not offer any workout routines without the guidance of a fitness coach, which you can have access to only if you go Premium. The app’s in-house AI assistant Ria can help you with the basics, however, though it is not specific enough to be very effective. Premium starts from ₹999 pm.

Obino began with founder Ritu Srivastava’s attempts to lose weight post pregnancy. “I wanted other new moms to join me in this, but I found that this misconception that postnatal weight is good was too deep-set in our culture.” She then changed track to making a regular weight-loss app.

“I have found that there are two levels to losing weight: first, to have the necessary information at your disposal, and second — the bigger one — to have the required motivation. I have tried to combine the two in my app,” she says. “In its basic format, it’s a calorie counter, that gives analysis, and tracks your journey. But for extra motivation and guidance, you can choose to train with a personal coach, who also has a clinical background.”

Our takeaway:

Once you navigate past the cluttered home screen, you will see that though the app doesn’t create a workout chart for you in its free version, it does have detailed exercise descriptions and videos to guide you. Apart from the existing database of meals, you can create custom dishes that you have regularly for greater accuracy. Premium starts from ₹1599 pm.