Premium Happy Scale App Giveaway (my favorite weight-tracking app!)

I have a lot to catch up on as far as posts, so I'm going to try to work my way through them this week. I was going to do the post about the handmade crafting small businesses (see this post for the info if you sell handmade items!) but I decided to give that one more day and today I'll post a giveaway :)

(I'm not receiving any compensation for this post; I just genuinely love this app and since it was on my Favorite Things list, I thought a giveaway would be fun! Much thanks to Russ, who created and developed the app--more about him later.)

When I wrote my post about My Favorite Things, I included on it the Happy Scale app that I use to track my weight. I LOVE the app--the graphs are awesome and super informative without being overwhelming, I love that you can see predictions of what your weight will be on certain dates or when your weight will hit a certain number based on the rate that you choose (such as your current rate of weight loss or a predictions of x number of pounds per week, etc).

The main purpose of it, though, is to utilize a math algorithm to figure out your trending weight (the app does it so you don't have to!). So if you were to weigh yourself most mornings and log it, the algorithm looks at trends over certain periods of times to predict your *actual* weight ("moving average") on that morning. So if I eat really high-sodium Chinese food one night and my weight jumps up four pounds overnight, the Happy Scale app shows your moving average weight to predict what your weight actually is (apart from the water retention from the Chinese food that will likely be gone by tomorrow anyway).

It's very hard to explain, but it's especially helpful for people who have a hard time getting on the scale and letting the number influence your day. If you follow your weight trends (moving averages), you can see that eating 150 extra calories the night before didn't *actually* make you gain two pounds the next day.

As a total numbers nerd, my favorite things about the app are the charts and data that are broken down. For those of you that hate graphs and charts, they're actually really simple to follow--I have a hard time reading a lot of the running graphs on my favorite running app, but these ones on Happy Scale are very easy to understand.

So here are some of my favorite features:

This graph shows all of my logged weights from as early as February 2001(!) to the current. I obviously didn't have the app back then (smart photos didn't even exist) but one day, when I was particularly hypomanic, I backlogged everything I could find about my weight. (I will explain the red and green sections in a moment)

You can also view charts from the past year, 90 days, 30 days, or 7 days...

Graph for the past year

Graph for the past 90 days

You may be wondering what the red and green means. This is one of the coolest features! You can set this to be a comparison of the past 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, last year, or all time. You can change the colors it uses, but I have mine set to Last Year. So the top of the green area shows where my weight was last year at that same time--and the green means my weight is lower now. The red area means my weight is that much higher than the previous year at that time.

So, as you can see for my 90-day graph above, my weight is quite a bit lower than it was last year at this time.

When I first open the app, I enter my current weight for the day (note: my Wednesday Weigh-Ins vary slightly from what I post here; when I take my weigh-in photos, I am obviously holding my phone, which adds a little weight (0.4, usually). What I post on the app is my weight when I am NOT holding my phone.) 

Here is the logbook that shows each weigh-in. Like I said, the moving average and loss/week are based on an algorithm that takes big-picture trends into account. (My "start date" for all of my current stuff is from when I started losing weight in May of this year. I still have all of the data from before, but the algorithm only takes the dates from May forward into account for now.) Sometimes, I will scroll through the logbook to see, "Hmm, when is the last time I was in the 140's?" or something like that. Right now, I'm very excited to get into the 140's again.

This is the screen that you see when you open the app:

The recent stats at the top show my moving average (this is more like my "true weight" based on the trends algorithm, although I hadn't logged my weight in nine days leading up to yesterday--a super stressful week--so it's not very accurate at the moment). It shows my 10-day low weight and my latest entry.

You can set mini goals to show your progress along the way--I have mine set up for five-pound increments, so it shows the progress of that:

It shows the weight trends--how much you've lost in 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, and all time. I have mine set to compare my "moving averages" rather than my 10-day low weight. The moving averages show the bigger picture.

Then, it shows predictions (there are several options that you can set up for this). If I want to see my predictions based on whatever I commit to losing each week, I can tap on "commitment" (I have mine set on 2.00 pounds, but that never happens, haha!). My current rate (I believe that's over a 10-day period?) and then my overall rate from the time I chose to have this weight loss summary start (which was in late May, when I started counting calories).

The app saves all of your data, but if you want a "start over" date, you can just have it start tracking from whenever you'd like--I chose the date in May because I felt like it was a new beginning. But I can always change it back later.

And then there are weight graphs, which is are super fun to look at. Since my history is so long, I can't get it in a screenshot (or even 10 screenshots!) but you can scroll right or left throughout the months and/or years to see the charts. These two are from 2009 and 2010 when I lost 125 pounds. The blue line is where my weight was. The green is the difference from the year prior. Pretty cool, right?

Another favorite feature is the reports. You can choose weekly, monthly, or yearly. (I *think* you need the premium version to see the monthly and yearly ones.) Here is an example of each:

You can scroll through to show any week, month, or year that you want! Notice that the week I chose was #1,084--that's how many weeks worth of weights I've logged! Haha.

I really can't stress enough how much I love this app--whether I want it to be or not, weight loss/gain/maintenance is a big part of my life. So this is my favorite way to track it all.

The version that I have is actually the premium version. I started with the free version in 2016 (there wasn't an upgraded version at the time) and after I wrote about it on my blog, the app developer, Russ, was so kind to give me a lifetime membership in 2018 when he started promoting the premium version. He also gave me five codes to use for a giveaway, which I did!

I don't normally think about app developers, but Russ is SO kind and very open to questions/thoughts/ideas/suggestions. He has also lost over 100 pounds himself while using the app, and he's made the app his passion (as well as his job--I had no idea how much work goes into creating and maintaining an app).

(Note: Some of the features I've shown here may be premium features; because mine is premium, I can't see exactly what the free version is like.)

Anyway, the super generous guy that he is, he gave me not one, but FIVE codes to give away for a 1-year subscriptions to the premium version of Happy Scale! (The ONLY drawback right now to Happy Scale is that it is just for iOS users--so you'll need an iOS device to use the app. I know Russ would love to someday develop an Android version!)

To enter for a giveaway for a 1-year subscription to Happy Scale, just fill out the form below (the info is for my eyes only, just so I can notify you if you win). I will select five winners using Random.org one week from today: December 16th, 2021 at 10:00 PM ET. If I don't hear back from you (via email) within 48 hours of my posting the winners, then I'll move on to someone else. One entry per person, please.

I will email you if you win. But if you don't and you're still interested in the app, the prices are super reasonable compared to a lot of subscription apps out there: it's only $1.99 for a month, $11.99 for a year, or $39.99 for a lifetime. You can find where to download it here.