How Good is the Atkins Diet App?

The Atkins Diet app was recently launched, available for your mobile device and featuring various tools to help you plan your meals and lose weight.  But how does it stack up to all of the competition out there?  Let's take a closer look.

What's Included

The main components include a Comprehensive Food Search that breaks down the nutritional information for any food, a Meal Tracker to get a total count of your carbohydrate intake, a Progress Tracker that keeps tabs on your weight loss and how close you are to reaching your goal, Activity tracker that monitors your daily steps as well as food lists and recipes.

The Atkins diet app is compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, as well as Android devices via Google Play.

Getting started is relatively easy.  The app is free so you just need to download it on your phone or mobile device.  Another option is to go to the website and get started there.

When you register, you get the free Quick Start Kit which includes the mobile app, a coupon towards Atkins products and all of the information you need to get going with the diet plan.

Currently there is a choice of two options, the Atkins 20 plan and the Atkins 40 plan.  The Atkins 20 is the original plan, and it caters to people who need to lose more than 40 lbs., have a waist size over 35 if you are female or 40 if you are male, are currently diabetic or pre-diabetic.

The Atkins 40 plan is newer, catering to those who need to lose less than 40 pounds, are pregnant or are breastfeeding. It gives you a wider array of food choices to select from.

The plans get their names from the amount of carbohydrates you are allowed in the induction phase.  The Atkins 20 allows 20 grams of net carbs per day...the Atkins 40 allows 40 grams of net carbs per day.

Once you choose your plan, you are all set to go.  You can start using all of the tools the Atkins diet app has to offer.

How Good is the Atkins app?

Although it can be very helpful in helping you count net carbs (total carbs minus fiber/sugar alcohol), unlike other counters that give you just total carbs, the Atkins diet app falls short in many aspects.

The problem is there are so many diet and fitness apps on the market today that it is difficult to compete, especially with the bigger ones like MyFitnessApp that are so well designed and user friendly.  Here are some of the most common complaints about the app.

The food scanner seems to be the most troublesome tool on the app.  Some users have complained that the scanner doesn't recognize the food items they are trying to scan in the store, especially if it is not a brand name item.

One interesting review noted that when you scan other low carb brands, i.e. non-Atkins, you get a total carb reading rather than a net carb reading.  We haven't experienced that but it is troublesome if that is the case.

Others have had problems entering information, retrieving passwords and issues with the sparse amount of foods built into the app.

All in all, it is safe to say that the Atkins diet app needs work.  Although some users have good things to say about it, most are dissatisfied and it currently has a one and a half stars out of 5 rating at the Itunes store...that's not so good!  :)

There was an update in 2016, but although some bugs were fixed, the main issues remain. Hopefully, they will improve the app further.  

We will continue to monitor this to see if the company is able to make the Atkins diet app all it's cracked up to be.