Long story short, I put on some weight and although I managed to lose some last year with hiking and some dieting, I still have more to go. I was able to maintain the weight I lost last summer throughout the winter and will begin hiking again soon. In preperation I wanted to get back into intermittent fasting but wasn't a huge fan of the apps I was using. Especially considering they all were subscription based or were free with features locked behind a paywall.

So, I decided to make my own! here is a screenshot showing a general weight trend (this is not real data, just an example to show one of the features)

Initial App

My initial app was made using Capacitor JS and SvelteKit as I am more familiar with web development. It worked great but as I expanded on the app, I learned that the persistent storage could possibly be wiped due to how android deals with web apps wrapped in native WebViews. I wanted to ensure the users data would not randomly be cleaned up by some garbage collection. There are some sqlite plugins for capacitor, but they were pretty convoluted or cost money. I understand things take time and money and there is a reason why people charge money, but that isn't something I felt like doing.

Eventually due to the limitations in CapacitorJS I moved to Flutter. Having never worked with it, AI was a great utility here to convert what I already had into the new environment. As a visual learner it helped me get familiar with the structure and process of Flutter. It is quite a bit different than I am used to, and I am not a huge fan of some of the syntax, but that is just a personal preference due to the languages I probably started with.

Flutter

The app is now entirely moved over to Flutter apart from the website which still uses SvelteKit. There are a lot of benefits of using Flutter over a webview. For example, dealing with notifications and user permissions seems a lot easier and straight forward. Thanks to AI dealing with the complex widget hierarchies is significantly easier and general weird dart/flutter stuff. Let's just say the phrase “explain it like I am 5” comes up a lot.

I know not everyone is a fan of AI but I see it more as a tool rather than a replacement, it gets MANY things wrong or makes them overly complex and confusing. I mean… What it makes works for the most part but any type of human jumping into it I feel tends to be more confusing. Of course, there will be societal and environmental impacts due to AI but I don't think it's necessarily the place of this blog post to get into it a discussion about those details. In this case I hope with the help of AI I can provide a free and helpful app that can help people get healthier.

The App

No Strings Attached – No Payments – No Data Collection – No Cloud – Works Offline.

This is the baseline and goal of the app I want to create. An app that even if I stop developing it, it still works. All features are available to the users and any future community “online” features can be entirely disabled for those who don't want to use it. As of writing the features are as follows –

Track Your Fasts: Simple one-tap timer to start and track your intermittent fasting sessions with count up or count down modes.
Fasting Phases: See real-time metabolic phases from fat burning to autophagy as you fast.
Weekly Schedules: Create custom weekly fasting schedules with different start times for each day.
Custom Plans: Create your own plans or choose from presets: 16:8, 18:6, 20:4, OMAD, and more.
Weight Tracking: Log your weight and track progress with interactive charts and trend analysis.
Weight Trends: View 7-day, 30-day, 90-day, or all-time weight trends with smooth trend lines.
Weight Prediction: See where you'll be in the future based on your current trend. Stay motivated with projected goals.
View Your Stats: Beautiful charts showing streaks, averages, total fasting hours, and personal records.
Monthly Calendar: See your fasting activity at a glance with a color-coded monthly calendar view.
Streak Tracking: Stay motivated with current and longest streak tracking for completed fasts.
Smart Reminders: Get notified when your fast is complete or when it's time to start.
Custom Encouragements: Write your own motivational messages that appear during your fasts to keep you inspired.
Water Reminders: Stay hydrated during your fast with customizable water reminder notifications.
Extend Anytime: Going strong? Easily extend your fast beyond your original goal.
Full History: Review all your past fasts with detailed timing, duration, and completion status.
Edit Past Fasts: Missed a fast or forgot to start? Edit start and end times for any session.
Mood Tracking: Rate how you feel during or after each fast to discover patterns in your wellbeing.
Export & Import: Backup and restore your data. Your fasting history is always safe.
100% Private: All your data stays on your device. No accounts, no cloud sync, no tracking.
Works Offline: Full functionality without an internet connection. Your data is always available.

Depending on when you read this there may be more missed from this list and I would encourage you to check out the website for the latest information.

SixteenEight - Intermittent Fasting Tracker

The app is not currently open source, but I do accept any feature or bug requests using github or direct emails. If I ever personally stop development on it, I will most likely make the app open source and release it to the public under a community friendly license.

I hope to eventually make the app available in the Apple Store as well, but apparently it requires development process to happen in MacOS which complicates things considering I don't have one.

Links

Website: SixteenEight - Intermittent Fasting Tracker
Download Link: SixteenEight Fasting - Apps on Google Play
Public Repo: lzinga/sixteeneight-issues: issues for the www.sixteeneight.app