Senza: Keto & Fasting

I’m not new to keto or fasting (2 years) but I am new to tracking my macros and food. I have compared a lot of other apps and I love this one because it has almost everything I need for free. I love that I can track a long term fast and also my meals/macros in one app! This is a big deal. I was using a fasting app and also another macros app. This makes it SO much simpler, combining those features in one app. I like the layout and style, it’s simple and manageable for daily use except for a few features. I like having access to new recipes and also the ability to add my own from scratch. I’d like to have a more streamlined way to look up food macros without having to go into the food log and log it first, then delete because I’m not going to use it. Also, when browsing recipes it would nice to have just an ingredient list come up rather than the link; I want to simply know the ingredients before reading a whole blog post with pop up videos (every single one! Ugh!). And the window showing the web page Within the app (the window ends up being like 2 inches) renders the recipe unreadable is seriously irritating. If I want the link after I decide I want to check out more, then add the link open to an external browser. A meal planner feature (a week or month at a glance instead of having to click into individual days or scrolling forever) would be a welcome change as well; I do use another recipe keeping app with a meal planner for this task right now so I have to transfer all my recipes to this app. I also really really wish there was an iPad version! Doing all this planning on my phone is not simple. All this being said, this is a really stellar app. In-app support is quick and personal. Simply amazing. I sometimes wish I could reply and say thanks! I am so pleased by the current features that I’ve decided to keep it and not pay for premium versions of other apps (I would totally pay for a premium version of this!!!). Senza has really improved my individual way of fasting and dieting.

This app does somethings exceptionally well and then falls flat on detailed user items that make it frustrating to use. It can be painful to use for the first few days as you search to find hidden features while the app keeps pointing out the obvious ones. What this app does have going for it is that it has a huge database of foods and the ability to track macros. It also lets you scan barcodes for finding foods in the database. I’m interested in a food diary that lets me track macros and I don’t care about keto, so the keto feed is useless for me and filled with dairy heavy foods I can’t eat. Getting to my favorite recipes is a chore until the app recognizes your favorites and includes them in your search list. There are some small details missing from the app, like having a longer list of standardized measurements for each food’s servings (some items only use oz, some only use cups, and usually the measurement you want is not available). Most of the time it would be nice to enter in the overall macros for homemade meals instead of having to build a recipe for their database. I often find that I just choose something random that looks about right. Not very good for precision. Also, logging food goes bi-hourly, why can’t it be hourly? It’s also imprecise as a food diary. I wish the developers would spend more time with giving users more control of their interface and information, instead of just using them to build a large database of barcodes. Or borrowing - I mean featuring!! - their recipes that they spend waaayyyy to long building in the app.

I’m on the keto diet and I love this app for ease of input, and the interface, especially love that I can track/input fasts AND track my keto intakes. That being said, I really wish I had the option of tracking percentages. I’ve been doing keto for 3+ weeks now and I was doing great in week one, but I never know if I’m going to have gained or lost, from day to day. When all is said and done, this diet is about maintaining PERCENTAGES of intake, and while I *can* do the math to figure out where I stand, I already hate having to input every single thing I eat so the idea of having to figure out how much of my total was carbs/protein/fats at multiple points throughout the day is frustrating, and I never remember to do it. I look at my tally and can see I’m well under my budget for each category and feel like I’m doing good, then the next day I see I gained .4 lb and realize it’s because the 3 grams of green beans with dinner put me at 15% and I didn’t eat enough meat to counter. But I didn’t eat one single thing that was “a cheat”, I tracked every single gram of food, all my categories are in the green, I just didn’t do the math and let my percentages go askew, and it is REALLY, really frustrating.