Sync Apple Health with your diet, without the clutter

Apple Health syncing with your diet brings together what you eat, how much you weigh, and how much you move. Once you turn it on in EatSee, meals (calories and macronutrients) and weight are sent to the Health app, while you can see steps from Health in EatSee alongside your goal and weekly chart. To keep things organized, just follow one rule: use one app per data category.

Health on your iPhone can be a great command center—or a drawer where everything gets duplicated. Here’s how to set it up so it’s the former.

What are the benefits of connecting Apple Health to your food tracking?

Food, weight, and activity tell you much more together than they do separately. When they’re all in one place, it’s easier to spot patterns, such as:

• your weight dropping faster in weeks when you take more steps,
• your average weight rising slightly after weekends with less activity and larger servings,
• hitting your protein goal more easily on days when you plan your meals.

You also won’t need to copy data between apps. Weight entered in EatSee is sent to Health, where other apps can read it if you allow them to.

For these insights to be useful, you need to log meals fairly regularly. For tips on how to do that without the stress, read our guide on how to count calories.

What data does EatSee share with Apple Health?

Your iPhone counts steps in Health, and if you have an Apple Watch, your watch does too. So you don’t need any extra equipment to see them in EatSee alongside your goal, weekly chart, and fun facts, like how many marathons you’ve walked.

How to turn on Apple Health syncing

1. Turn on Apple Health syncing in EatSee.
2. Select categories in the Health prompt—your iPhone will show a list of data the app wants to save and read. You can enable all categories or just the ones you choose.
3. Confirm and add a test meal.
4. Check the Health app to see whether the meal’s calories appear in your nutrition data.

You can change permissions at any time: on your iPhone, go to Privacy & Security → Health in Settings and select EatSee. You can also do this in the Health app by tapping your profile picture and opening the privacy section.

Use one data source per category to avoid duplicates

The most common Apple Health issue is duplicate data. This can happen if:

• you log meals in two apps that both send calories to Health—suddenly, Health says you’re eating twice as much,
• a smart scale saves your weight, and you also enter it manually in another app—leaving you with two measurements a day in your history.

So set a simple rule: use one app to log meals and one source for weight. Health handles steps on its own: when you use an iPhone and a watch, it decides which source to prioritize and doesn’t count the same steps twice.

Calories from your watch aren’t extra food

Health also shows active energy, or the calories you burn through movement. It’s tempting to treat it like a credit: “400 kcal burned, so I can have pizza.”

But watches and phones estimate calories burned with a wide margin of error. And your EatSee calorie goal already accounts for the activity in your profile—if you also eat back everything your watch shows, you’re counting your activity twice.

It’s better to treat steps and activity as a guide: more movement during the week usually means faster progress with weight loss. Your weight trend over 2-3 weeks is the best way to tell whether your goal is right. Learn more in our guide on how to set a calorie goal.

Syncing not working? Check these things

• Health permissions—go to Settings → Privacy & Security → Health → EatSee and check that the categories you need are enabled.
• Data direction—saving and reading require separate permissions. Steps require permission to read data, while meals and weight require permission to save it.
• Step source—in Health, check whether steps are being recorded and which device is the source.
• Date and time—a meal added with a different date will show up on a different day.
• Updates—if you haven’t updated in a while, update EatSee and your operating system.

Privacy: who can see your data?

Your Health data belongs to you. Each app only gets access to the categories you select, with separate permissions for saving and reading data. You can revoke permission at any time—data saved earlier will remain in Health until you delete it.

Apple encrypts health data on an iPhone protected by a passcode. It’s a good idea to set up a passcode and Face ID or Touch ID—this is essential if you store health data on your phone.

Have an Android phone? Read our guide to connecting Health Connect to the app.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not replace advice from a doctor or dietitian. Written by the EatSee editorial team. Editorial policy.