RR: Eating Disorder Management

Not gonna lie, this needs some TLC on the design part, but the app itself is amazing. It's not only the meal logging, there's also a robust emotion log, auto-tagging meals based on their pictures (it only got my meal wrong once and it was a new recipe so that was no surprise), lots of customizable questions on each log like "did you use marijuana", custom notifications (!!!) when reminding you to log meals (like it could say "Plan NYE dinner" but actually be the breakfast log reminder if you wanted), support for like six meals a day, and there's a pair program thing that sounds pretty cool but I haven't been able to use yet, maybe no one else is trying to get matched. Oh yeah, there's also medication reminders and a scrapbook of inspirational quotes and images! Lots of other things too but my phone isn't that great at juggling apps so I can't switch screens and check. There's this thing where you connect to your clinicians or support group? I don't have either so I don't know how it works, what I do know is that the app is 100% free for us (not for your clinician/group), so really, just download it and test it out. There's also the coping skill part but that's clearly for people who've done therapy because I have no idea how to use it or when.

I have used this app for a few years now and off. I am recovering from an eating disorder so that is what I use it for. When I take courses like nutrition that want me to log food, I just tell my professor that I am recovering from an eating disorder and need to use my app to log food and they have been willing to accommodate and understanding that I can not be focused on nutrition labels. Basically, I opt for a social focus on food. It encourages mindfulness and for me to tap into my feeling in the moment. The settings are personalizable which I like and it allows your dietitian to personalize them. My only complaint is that the coping skills are repetitive. There really isn’t much variation in them. I wish they gave assignments you could do or something like that. Or a link to expand on “building a willingness to feel” with an explanation behind why and how it works (I didn’t dock a star because it’s just wishful thinking— you can do CBT, DBT, or ACT groups for those skills). It would also be really cool if there was alternating places where it says “thought diary” for rather “list 3 reasons to recover”, “list 3 affirmations”, “list 3 passions not related to ED”, etc. The reminder that there is a person inside of me without my ED is so essential. Removing the ED creates a hole and the only way I have found to fill it is that self exploration.

I don’t have an eating disorder, but have gained a lot of weight related to mental health issues. Sometimes I eat to avoid or just to self soothe. I’m not sure if their nourishly app might be a better fit, but this app works for me. I use another app to count calories, but when I’m feeling lazy or overwhelmed, I tend to stick to this log more often. I love the daily backgrounds and the motivational rewards at the end of each log. I wasn’t using the coping methods and goal setting functions until recently, because I didn’t want to complicate the already seamless functions. But, after I added a bunch of the preset clinical tools, it just seemed to work automatically. You can personalize your food log so that it doesn’t show certain eating disorder questions, if they’re not relevant, and you can set your own goals and coping tools based on your own triggers. Assigning my mood at each food log had been very useful for me as a mood journal in general, to be more mindful, since doing it along with meals makes me log more often than I normally would. It’s a great combination to keep track of food and mood together. And as stated, the focus on mental health in this app has been very useful to me. I recommend it for anyone that wants to focus on these two aspects of life in one place.