Yesterday, my Fitbit app finally turned into Google Health. Overnight, healthy routines I’d built up by logging my food and tracking my daily calorie burn over nearly a decade were upended. I hope the new Google Health app will quickly restore what was lost. In the meantime, I’ve been looking at alternatives that can work with my Fitbit wearable and thought I’d share in case others are wondering the same (and from the support forum, others are indeed looking)
How I’ve used Fitbit
Before looking at the alternatives below, I wanted to share more about how Fitbit has been literally life changing for me. Back in the fall of 2018, I weighed in around 188 pounds — well above where a man who is 5′ 8″ should be. Over the years, the weight had slowly piled on. Who can say why? Certainly not that late night bowl of cereal I’d have. Or all the snacking throughout the day!
I’d largely ignored going over 170 when that happened years before this. Nearing 190 was a wake-up call. I turned to Fitbit. I’d used it occasionally with the old Fitbit One to track my steps. I’d also tried the Fitbit Flex and food logging as part of a multi-device test I did in 2013. It was time to try again.
I explored the goal weight part of the app. It guided me through how many calories I’d need to limit myself to each day. I purchased a Fitbit Charge 3, so that I’d get an all-day reading of how many calories I burned. (I’ve since progressed through the Charge 4, 5 and currently use a 6. I might go to the Fitbit Air, though I do find display on the Charge 6 useful for at-an-glance check-in; I also sure wish multiple devices were supported, so I could swap out).
I became an avid food logger. Anything I ate, I’d log it. At first, I aimed for perfection, including weighing all my food. That helped, but over time I learned to make the best estimates I could — especially because Fitbit’s menu items database itself wasn’t perfect. What was more important is I became more aware of what I was consuming and deciding to skip. Gone were those late night snacks. In were things like celery and salsa with my lunch, in place of tortilla chips and salsa.
(By the way, if you’d like more guidance about sensible food logging, I highly recommend Sofe Ring’s Instagram. All the things I’d been doing, she explains in great visual presentations.)
Just by watching what I was eating, along with some of my usual exercise, in four months I dropped nearly 20 pounds and got back to around 170. When I began running a lot the following year (an unexpected new exercise, one that’s addictive, I dropped further to a low of 163. I’ve come up since then, floating around 168-173.
My goal is to get back to the 165 range. Fitbit has remained a key part of maintaining where I’m at and recovering a bit more weight loss — at least until yesterday’s update broke key things.
What Google Health broke in Fitbit
Here’s what Fitbit used to do for me that was essential, which is now lost in Google Health, things I hope are addressed rapidly.
Food results don’t show portion size or units
With Fitbit, you could look up a food item and quickly tell the both the estimated calories for it and the particular portion size and/or units consumed (cups, grams, pounds, etc). With Google Health, it’s an impossible task.
For me, this is a usability deal-breaker for Google Health or any replacement app. It’s a time waste if you can’t tell from the search results what both the calories and portion size are. Consider the side-by-side, Fitbit on the left, Google Health on the right:
With FitBit, you could see things like “1 cubic-inch, 68 calories” or “1 cup, 528 calories.” With Google Health, it’s just “68” or “528” or some other unexplained number. As it turns out, the numbers are calories. You only learn this after adding an item. That’s also when you can finally discover what the portion size is for the entry, such as cubic-inch or cups.
You can’t change food units
With FitBit, you could change portion sizes to a different unit. For instance, if a food item had calories listed in cups, usually you could shift to grams or ounces or another unit. Now you can’t.
Deleting a food log item is painful
Make a mistake with your food logging? With FitBit, you were shown all your food items logged for a day and easily could swipe to delete. With Google Heath, you have to open up the particular Meal group (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Snack) then click on the particular logged food item, then delete. Three steps to replace one.
You can’t delete imported weights
Do you have a wifi or other connected scale that sends your weight or other metrics to FitBit? I do, and it’s worked great for years. But with Google Health, the ability to delete erroneous readings is gone. That’s correct. You currently cannot delete any automatic recordings, only manual entries.
That’s a particular problem for me, as I have to move my scale each morning to use it. The first reading is always off. With FitBit, it was easy to delete — I’d just swipe it away.
With Google Health, there’s no swiping to delete weight entries of any type, and if you click into the details of one, there’s no delete option for the automatic entries.
My workaround? Disconnecting my scale from Google Health, which is a serious downgrade.
UPDATE (June 1, 2026): Another workaround is to send your weight to Apple Health (on iOS), then let it go from there to Google Health. If you then delete a weight recording in Apple Health, it does delete in Google Health.
You have to log weight and body fat separately
With Fitbit, if you needed to manually enter a weight, you could provide both weight and body fat at the same time. With Google Health, you have to do each separately.
In-app confirmations are obstuctive
If you log or delete something, Google Health pushes annoying confirmations within the app that cover the bottom of the iOS screen, sometimes blocking other buttons you need to use, like this:
You can’t swipe or close these confirmations. They sometimes disappear after a long period, but more often I find they remain until I swipe-close the app itself.
One Snack To Rule Them All
Fitbit had main meal types of Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner and between these snacks called Morning, Afternoon and Evening. Now there’s only one single Snack category. If you like seeing things you’ve eaten chronologically, that Snack category messes things up.
Yes, you can now indicate an actual time you ate something, which might make up for this. But it seems an unnecessary loss and one that doesn’t reflect how people might snack.
Weight goal guidance is gone
When I first started with Fitbit to lose weight, it asked me for a weight goal then gave me various options to reach that weight over various periods, such as two months, three months, six months or something like that. It was intuitive, helpful and established my calorie limit per day.
That’s gone from Google Health. I’ve looked and looked, and it doesn’t seem to exist. Digging into the app, under Health > Goals, there’s a “Calories target” goal within the Nutrition area that’s come from Google Health apparently making its own decision based on my age and what it thinks I should consume. It’s not taking into account a lower level I need for weight loss, as Fitbit did. In fact, the Fitbit goal I’d set and been working toward is lost. There is a big “Set goal” button at the bottom, but that doesn’t take you to any type of guidance option on what to set.
Meanwhile, there’s a completely separate “Weight” goal that I can set in the Health section. This lacks any of the aforementioned guidance. It’s pick your own weight, no goal to reach it over a period of time or anything. Oh, and you can only have your weight in units that end in zero or five. For example, you could have a weight goal of 160 or 165 but no 162 for you.
Custom foods are gone
Fitbit used to show your food items organized into Frequent, Recent and Custom lists. You’ll still see Frequent by default when you go to log an item; Recent now appears if you begin to search for something. But Custom is gone — along with any custom foods you’d created.
For example, I typically have homemade chocolate chip pancakes once a week as a morning treat. Way back when I was trying to be perfect with my calorie estimates, I added all the ingredients individually: eggs, flour, etc. That went into my custom pancake item, so I’d push it once, and all these individual items were added.
That’s all gone. Poof! That and some other things that were important, that I’d added over the years, all gone. Individual ingredients are now part of my frequent list.
Bringing back custom items would be useful, as would allowing us to perhaps make a favorites list independent of the frequent and recent list.
Main focus on calorie burn is gone
With Fitbit, my main focus in the app display was always about the calories I’d burned and the amount of calorie deficit I’d generated. For example, I’d typically be trying to burn 500 to 750 calories more than I’d consumed. I had an easy display that let me know how it was going each day.
I can’t show the most recent example before the Google Health change, but here’s how it looked from an old screenshot I had in 2022:
I could see my total burn (2,796 calories). I could see my calories consumed (2,995). I could see how much I was under or over my consumption goal taking my burn into account. (On this day, I’d missed it — I was 914 calories over — bummer — but I was pretty close to net even for the day, and the day probably wasn’t even over).
Three key stats. Over the past few years, it got a bit harder to see these in Fitbit, but it was still generally good. With Google Health, that’s gone. There’s no “Large” focus item for calories, only for steps and cardio.
The good news is the data is at least available in the small widgets. You can see calories burned in one, then calories consumed in another with a “above/below” figure that takes into account what you set as your consumption goal offset against your active burn.
Assessing the alternatives
I sincerely hope Google Health fixes many of the things above. I do not want to shift to alternatives. I loved my all-in-one solution.
I know what I’m raising isn’t important to everyone. I also like many of the changes in the app. But those things are key to me, and I think looking at forum posts, I’m not alone in that.
As for alternatives, the apps below all will:
- Import your Fitbit burn (one of my key requirements), though it might be a premium paid feature with some
- Menu items in search results show calories, portion sizes and/or units, except for Cronometer
- You can generally change units for logged food entries
- They provide weight goal guidance
Beyond those things, here’s how I’ve found each of them in terms of Fitbit integration.(NOTE: I’ve updated my list below on June 1 based on a week of testing — I might update further when I have more time).
Lose It
Lose It is what I decided to go with as my Google Health alternative. Or really, companion. I’m using it for my food logging to flow Google Health. I’m also getting used to how it displays my goal in terms of exercise and food consumption.
Lose It seems to pull in Fitbit burn OK and even has a “Fitbit Calories” widget to show this. The widget seems to show a daily calorie burn estimate based on your Fitbit activity, with an over/under figure. If you go over, that seems to turn into a “Calorie Bonus” amount (more about this below). If you want the exact current Fitbit burn, you can tap on the widget to drill in. Also, you have to have a premium subscription to sync your activity.
The app also seems to provide a helpful under/over estimate of my consumption that takes into account my calorie burn, similar to MyFitnessPal (see further below):
That “bonus” amount I mentioned above will appear (apparently) as “Exercise” if you go over your estimated base calorie burn, as reported by Fitbit. More details in this help page.
I ended up settling on it because I love how easy and intuitive the food logging is. I might write more about this later.
MyNetDiary
MyNetDiary was my runner-up choice. In fact, I might still keep using it if it works OK as a paid subscription. I love how well it reports Fitbit “exercise” as a separate value:
I might write more on this later, but you can click on that Exercise item and see exactly how many calories Fitbit is reporting, how many calories MyNetDiary estimated you should have burned and clearly understand how any “exercise” credit as the difference was calculated.
If the food logging was better, it would have been my top choice. But Lose It has an edge in this for me.
MyFitnessPal
MyFitnessPal seems to pull in Fitbit burn OK but doesn’t show the raw number.
For example, as I write this, it shows my “Fitbit calorie adjustment” in the Exercise section of the Today screen as 719 calories. My actual burn today so far is 1,623 calories. MyFitnessPal has an estimate of how much burn it expects me to have. It sees what I’ve done on Fitbit, and it is crediting me with those extra calories
It seems to provide a helpful under/over estimate of my consumption that takes into account my calorie burn. For example, I can see my calories consumed against the overall goal and how many calories I have left in the day:
Important note: make sure you go to your MyFitnessPal “Diary Settings” on desktop (this is only available on desktop) and select “Enable Negative Adjustments” for this to work right (see this help page for more)
Also important, if you want your burn to offset your consumption, you need to pay for the premium version and turn on “Adjust my daily calorie goal.” IE: you burn 400 calories more than expected as logged by your Fitbit. MyFitnessPal sees this from your Fitbit activity and then increases the calories you can consume (and if you don’t consume those all, bonus calorie deficit for you!).
Cronometer
I’d love to love Cronometer. I love the energy summary dashboard, showing consumed, expenditure and remaining. It does use your Fitbit data. But when looking up food, it doesn’t show calories in the search results, only units. That makes selecting an item too much guesswork. Cronometer seems aware of this issue, but given a year has passed since it came up in this Reddit thread, it’s not likely a priority.
Wrapping up
As I said, I might update this as I keep using some of these apps over the coming week. But ideally, Google Health will improve so that the best alternative to Fitbit will be … Google Health.