Gentler Streak Fitness Tracker ١٢+

I practice intuitive eating and HAES, which means that I explicitly focus on how movement helps my body rather than on calorie burn etc. This is great, but it also means I gave up my usual super motivating factors to exercise, such as closing my Apple Watch rings. For about a year, I struggled to find a new way to motivate myself that felt in alignment with my values.

Enter gentler streak! This app has been a game changer in helping to motivate me while still listening to what my body needs. It’s really helpful to see fitness mapped out on a line and get a visual reminder that rest, and not overworking yourself, are important! I also really appreciate the recent updates with the suggested workouts (takes the thought of it which my neurodivergent brain loves!) and the option to remove the food equivalents for calorie burn.

My only suggestions would be to have an option to remove calorie counts completely and to “hide” certain articles as they can be somewhat triggering and counterintuitive to someone trying to develop a healthier relationship with their body and movement. All and all though this app is really wonderful with no comparison on the market. I’m excited to see where else the app goes.

Gabrielle, hello! First, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on 🧡. Super glad it manages to motivate you and makes it simpler to decide on the workout of the day. Second, sorry to hear about some articles/calories being triggering. Atm, we have our hands full with some great upgrades (that will all contribute to an even more in-tune-with-yourself experience), but if your issue keeps popping up, we will return to this and try to find a way that would work for all (without compromising the whole experience). 🙏

UPDATE: We still aren’t getting anything to show our steps as activity in this app. That’s a critical issue here. We shouldn’t have to log our daily steps as workouts to record the activity. I’ve tried doing this to have a more accurate picture of wellbeing and actually have the app saying I’m overreaching when it’s not that hard to walk throughout the day, taking breaks in between. Developers need to find a way to work this into the algorithm for the app. As it stands it seems that while other apps ignore the need for customization based on individual abilities/needs this app ignores the need to have basic data at its core. We need to meet somewhere in the middle here ASAP.
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I like the app but there are area it needs work; 1) The new Wellbeing tab and syncing with Health is good, but why doesn’t it show our steps? and why aren’t our streaks reflecting our walking throughout the day? This needs attention ‼️ 2) I’ve had to edit sleep in other apps as it over estimated my time sleeping. But then this app shows “Insufficient data” under the Wellbeing tab.🤨 The day is there? I just corrected it so that the record is accurate. This shouldn’t be a problem. 3) One of the reasons I’ve liked this app is the ability to do things at our own pace. I don’t like the “reminders” about exercising or losing a streak. A streak shouldn’t rely solely on workouts but also steps. See point 1.

Hello,

thank you for taking the time and leaving a review. We are indeed a work in progress. 😊

1.
a) Steps may become a part of Wellbeing if we find a sensible way to include them.
b) Your heart rate is the base for the TRIMP formula, which lies at the core of our algorithm. When you don't track your workout, we get very scarce feedback on it; therefore, we cannot estimate the toll it took on your body. The same goes for steps that appear as exercise minutes (if you use Apple Watch). We take it into account, but since heart rate data is not dense, we can't tell the strain it had on your body, therefore the effect on Activity Path is most probably not as great as it would be with full data. The Apple Watch reads your heart rate continuously every couple of seconds when tracking a workout, giving us great data to work with. When you are not tracking, your watch reads your heart rate every 2 to 5 minutes, getting up to 20 readings per hour at best.

2. This was a bug that was removed with the next version. If the problem still persists, please send over an email to support@gentlerstories.com and we will have a look into it.

3. Reply in the 1st point covers this. I agree this would be optimal, but it would not be backed with data, which then makes it messy. You could insert walking activity by hand, and do an equivalent of distance, and estimate your efforts with RPE. However, this is not optimal and we would suggest tracking as many workouts as possible, and with that getting quality data in, so we can guide you best as we can.

Original review - I really want to love this app, but I feel like there needs to be some work done when it comes to the weight that each exercise holds. For example, I’ve been doing daily walks. Nothing crazy, just half an hour of light walking on my walking pad, and the app is consistently telling me that I’m doing too much and overreaching. I feel like a short walk a day is the bare minimum, so it’s odd that I’m being told I need to stop moving entirely to get back to a healthy zone.

Edit - now that I have been using this app for a couple of months, I can confirm that it balances out after about two weeks of use. Now that my streak has gotten used to my usual levels of activity, it’s perfect! I really like how it suggests different types of workouts and takes into account things like my sleep quality and where I’m at in my hormonal cycle. This is a great app for anyone looking to take care of their body without falling into the perfection-obsessed culture that you typically find with health apps.

Hi! Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts about Gentler Streak. The formula we use for the baseline is an industry-standard based on a TSB model. Most relevant is the information from the past 60 days. The more heart rate data we have, the more accurate your Activity Path is. If you see overreaching status a lot, even though you don't do anything out of the ordinary, there are a couple of reasons why that could be so: you are new to tracking activities or have just started using Apple Watch (providing us less than 60 days of info), you are coming back from an injury, illness, or break (longer than 14 days), your active life happens in bursts, and those bursts are usually intense, followed by days of inactivity, you are new to being regularly active and are still building your fitness base. If any of the above fits the shoe, expect the app to stabilise within 10-14 days. Until then, keep living as you are used to, stay active, do what feels good to your body and ignore the messages for the time being. Once we have enough data, we can start guiding you. If non of that applies to you, please drop by support@gentlerapps.com and I'll be happy to take a look and help you fix the issue. Thanks, Vid