Ate Food Journal + Photo Diary for Android

I don’t usually pay for subscription apps, but I’m glad that I decided to take a chance on Ate. I went through some struggles with disordered eating many years ago, and have since been unable to safely use a food tracking app. After a few days of using one of these apps in the interest of “eating healthy,” I would start to obsess and restrict. For years, my only option has been to try eating intuitively with no external log of what I eat, which is better than the alternative but has kept me from feeling my best/connecting positively with food. Typical food tracking apps reward obsessing over every calorie, pound, and instance of “bad” eating. By contrast, Ate is a total game-changer. There’s no judgment or punishment associated with an off-path meal, so you’re able to track progress towards a healthier diet pattern without losing the ability to enjoy a meal that doesn’t fit perfectly into that pattern. The journal entries are more about the circumstances and feelings associated with a meal than with the meal’s ingredients—no counting almonds or weighing slices of bread! Ate encourages the user to focus not on the results of caloric restriction but on the intrinsic value of building a healthy habit. Using this app doesn’t make me want to eat less—it makes me want to eat beautiful meals in a more relaxed and joyful way. The experience of using Ate is intuitive, and the design is cheerful without being overly cutesy. To everyone involved with developing this app: thank you! It’s been a joy to use so far, and I’m sure I will be a long-term subscriber.

I use the app to record all the things I do each day to stay on track. It helps me correlate my choices to the scale.

I HATE tracking numbers while trying to lose weight. That is why I decided to try this app. It helps me to SEE exactly how good or bad my eating is going OVERALL. I have found that often times I do not think I am eating as bad as I am - until i SEE what I have eaten throughout the day. It also helps me to look and say to myself, "Look how good you are doing! You don't want to mess it up now!" LOL. So for those reasons, it helps me.

Yes, I saw that there was a 7 day trial but not having a free option with an optional upgrade turned me right off from this and deleted the app. It looks nice in the pictures and the reviews make it seem great but I never even used it because I was prompted to choose a subscription before I could even do the trial. A good idea is to have a free version of the app as it apparently used to be with some features or some such that would be the upgraded subscription version.

The Ate app has changed my life. As someone recovering from an eating disorder I needed to have a tool that was gentle and did not trigger old behaviors. The Ate app was a quick and easy way for me to really see what I was eating. I was able to look back and see that I was eating a lot of fruits and vegetables and not just stuffing my face full of potato chips.