Even if you haven’t had much success with weight-loss apps before.
For the last several months, I have been using intermittent fasting to lose weight. As part of this ongoing effort, I have found the Zero App to be remarkably helpful in tracking my fasts and eating windows.
Intermittent fasting is not so much a diet as a change of lifestyle. I choose to fast for anywhere from sixteen to eighteen hours a day and then only eat during the remaining six to eight hours of the 24 hour cycle. Basically, I skip breakfast and then eat a late lunch and a not-super-late dinner.
I want to point out here that I am not affiliated with Zero or its parent company, Big Sky Health. I’m just a chick who has tried several weight loss apps and has found that Zero works best with intermittent fasting.
Fasting Options:
Zero is designed to support healthy fasting by tracking intermittent, circadian, and custom fasting options. On the app, each fast is presented with a brief description of the length of the fast and any other pertinent information.
Intermittent is used for fasts that are 16:8 (16 hour fasts, 8 hour eating windows), 18:6, 20:4, or a full 36 hour fast.
Circadian Rhythm fasts are roughly correlated to the amount of daylight each day, or 13 hours.
The Custom fast can be set for anywhere from 1–168 hours. I’m not sure who needs to fast for 168 hours, but if you’re not eating for a solid week, you’re a much stronger (unhealthier?) person than me. Bravo….?
History:
The screen opens with a quick graphic showing how many fasts you have completed, the average length of your fasts, the longest fasting streak you have ever completed, and your current weight.
When you scroll down, you will see your fasting progress for the last week.
As you can see with mine, my past weekend was a fasting disaster. I was full-on PMS stress-eating at the end of the week, plus we went to a Halloween party on Saturday night. So while I don’t like seeing those “Goal Not Met” bars on my graph, I find it to be a good motivator to do better this coming week.
There’s also the option of chronologically viewing your fasts, complete with how you felt each day. For me, I usually feel pretty good when I’m fasting. I go through a slightly hangry phase around the fourteenth hour, but drinking cold water gets me through it and I can usually push through to a 16:8 fast.
Streaks:
A nice thing about the Zero app is that it also tracks how many fasts in a row you have successfully completed. I’m a little annoyed with myself that I was *this* close to getting the 50 Streak badge, but then this past weekend’s PMS and Halloween debauchery knocked me off the wagon. However, I love to have a goal to work towards, so I’m quietly-and-nerdily excited about working my way back up to that 50 Streak again.
Weighing In:
For those of us who are using IF to help to lose weight, the weigh-in feature under History can be helpful. Quite a few folks prefer to only weigh themselves and record it every six weeks. My anxiety about body issues makes it hard for me to wait six weeks, so my weigh-ins are more frequent and sporadic.
It feels like I’ve been plateauing in the mid-140’s for awhile, so I don’t like to look at the Weight screen very often, to be honest. Looking at it reminds me that I need to have some hard conversations with myself about after-dinner snacking, drinking red wine, etc. Sigh.
Badges, Milestones, and Other Celebratory Foofah:
For those of us who loved those long-ago sticker charts, the Recent Badges screen is delightful. It presents Milestones for how many fasts you have completed as well as your longest Streaks. I just hit my 100 Fast Milestone which — foreal now — means absolutely nothing in my real life, but it’s a tiny victory I’m still savoring nonetheless.
There’s also this screen, featuring my Very First Badge of Honor Evah, which has me wondering if I’ll also earn a coveted Badge of Honor for Thanksgiving. I’m not gonna lie: I hope so. Doing intermittent fasting during the holidays is going to be a s-e-v-e-r-e challenge. Keep those meaningless badges coming, please!
Learn:
The Learn tab presents some great articles and videos related to Intermittent Fasting. (And some of the best ones are from Medium writers!)
When I clicked on “Does Coffee Break Your Fast?,” I appreciated that there was some real science presented in the article. My nerd life loves any sentence that starts with “One literature review demonstrated that….” The articles presented are usually meant to educate and inform, as opposed to cheerleading intermittent fasters towards making it through another fast.
The Learn tab isn’t updated very often, and I probably only look at it once a month or so.
The best part of all? Yep, it’s the timer:
My favorite part of this app is the Timer feature. Obviously, it’s used to keep track of how long you have been fasting, but it also shows you how long you have been in your eating window.
If you look towards the top of my screen, you’ll see that I am set to do a 16:8 Intermittent fast, which means that my goal is to fast for sixteen hours and then have my “eating window” be for eight hours.
When you’re finished with your fast and ready to eat, your app screen will show this:
Drawbacks? None. Caution? Yes.
Like anything else, doing intermittent fasting and using the Zero fasting app, falls under the category of “Ask your doctor before beginning use.”
For me, I needed to talk to my doctor about a medication that I usually took in the morning with food. I made sure to check with her that it would be fine to take the medication when I broke my fast in the late afternoon. There weren’t any warnings on Zero about checking with your doctor about which fasting option would be best for your particular health profile.
Regardless of how you approach your intermittent fasting lifestyle, I hope that you will consider trying out the Zero app. I have found it to be remarkably helpful.
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