Avatar App Review: Who Should (And Should NOT) Use It?

The Avatar Nutrition App caught my attention because it claims to be a “built-in diet coach.” As a nutrition coach, having worked with 300+ clients ranging from those who want to lose a few pounds to pro athletes, anytime I see an app suggesting they can “do my job,” it makes me want to put those claims to the test. So, my colleague Janine Collins and I purchased Avatar Nutrition and used it for a month.  

Key Takeaways

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• The app will accurately adjust calories and macros based on how your body responds and progresses each week. 

• There is also the ability to talk with a coach through the app for extra support (a feature not seen in other apps).

• Avatar is best for those who don’t have a coach but want a sense of accountability. 

• After testing 18+ nutrition apps, even though we were extremely impressed with Avatar, our final verdict is that we’d rather use MacroFactor instead for calorie and macro tracking. You can read our MacroFactor review here.

What is Avatar?  

Avatar Nutrition is a calorie and macro tracking app that feels like a built-in diet coach with its weekly check-ins, calorie and macro adjustments based on your progress, and level of customization.

• Want to learn more about the brand? We interviewed the Founder of Avatar, Mark Springer. Read the Avatar Nutrition Story here.

Avatar was designed to help you reach your goals through nutrition whether it be weight loss, reverse dieting, weight gain, or weight maintenance for body recomposition. 

The app provides you with access to a live coach, recipes, and a large food database to help keep you on track.

Avatar: Quick Overview & My Experiences 

After trying the Avatar app for a month, I was very impressed because it has many features that I haven’t seen on other diet-tracking apps (I’ve tested and reviewed dozens of nutrition apps on FeastGood.com). 

The features that I enjoyed the most were the (1) weekly check-in, (2) access to a live coach, and (3) ability to make daily adjustments based on whether you want more carbs or fats, or more calories for a heavier exercise day ‒ I’ll cover each of these in more detail later in the article.

Even though I’m a nutrition coach, I can see myself using this app because I like the accountability of a weekly check-in. Oftentimes as a coach, you’re so focused on your clients that you forget to make yourself a priority too.

The app’s calorie target that it had set for me was only slightly more aggressive than I wanted at first but I stuck it out until my first weekly check-in to see if the app would adjust my calories and macros accordingly based on how my body weight was changing.

For reference, I selected weight loss as my goal and set my preference to losing 1lb/week.

Theoretically, to lose 1lb per week, I would have to be in a deficit of 3500 calories per week.

I know that I can maintain my weight by eating 2300 calories per day, so an appropriate deficit for me to lose 1lb per week (-3500 calories) would be a 500 calorie deficit per day (500 calories less than my maintenance calories), which would be 1800 calories per day.

The app recommended I eat 1705 calories per day, which put me in a 595 calorie deficit per day, which is a 4165 calorie deficit per week. This intake would theoretically result in me losing around 1.2 lbs per week, which is only slightly higher than my preference of 1lb/week.

Once my weekly check-in came around I had lost around 1.5lb/week, so the app adjusted and added slightly more calories to my calories target, which put me on track for my 1lb/week loss the following week.

What does all this mean?  For my goal of losing weight, the app progressed my calorie intake from week to week exactly as I would have if I was doing it manually myself, which gave me a massive level of trust in how the app’s algorithm works (I can’t say the same for other diet apps).

Lastly, I wanted to test the live coaching feature since it’s a novel concept when it comes to nutrition apps.  It’s a feature that acts as a live chat messenger through the app. 

I reached out to a coach using this feature to see if they were empathetic, knowledgeable, and able to give actionable steps because I feel that these are important pillars for coaching.

The coach that I communicated with was extremely helpful, very empathetic, and gave me a weekly goal to help motivate me for the upcoming week, which I was very impressed with.

Key Takeaway: Overall, I had a very positive experience using this app and I will continue to use it. I would even recommend it to those who can’t afford a nutrition coach but still want to get a similar experience. 

How Does Avatar Work?

Avatar works by asking you questions about your age, height, weight, body fat percentage, activity level, and overall goal to calculate how many calories you need to meet your goals and what distribution of macronutrients (protein, carbs, fats) it recommends.

Once you have your calorie and macro targets the app gives you access to its food database so that you can track your intake to meet the suggested targets.

The goal is to adhere to within 5 grams of your recommended macronutrient targets each day to be considered “on track” to meet your goal. 

After a week, you will have your weekly check-in where you record your updated weight, and body fat percentage and you have to specify whether you were on track with your macros by selecting “yes” or “no”.

If you’re a woman, it will also ask you if you are within 5 days of starting your period and if you feel you’re retaining fluid (an awesome feature, which I haven’t seen elsewhere). 

Lastly, you have the option to take a progress picture and keep track of those pictures in the app over time.

If you weren’t on track with your macros for the week, the Avatar App won’t make any adjustments because it needs you to adhere to the recommendations before it can determine if your intake needs to adjust.

If you are on track with your targets then the app will be able to evaluate whether your macros are set appropriately or if they need to be increased or decreased to keep you working towards your goal at an appropriate rate.

What I Liked About Avatar

1. High Levels of Accountability Through Weekly Check-Ins

I also like that the app has weekly check-ins that hold its users accountable and teaches them when and how their calorie and macro targets should be adjusted to keep them working towards their goals.

The weekly check-ins serve as a source of accountability because if you’re not within the 5 grams range of your macronutrient targets then the app won’t make adjustments for you.

Additionally, those without nutrition coaches are often wondering when and if their intake needs to be adjusted, so the fact that the app advises users week-to-week based on how they’re progressing is very beneficial.

2. Ability To Change Carb & Fat Intake Depending On Which You Prefer Eating More

The app lets you adjust your carb and fat preferences daily, which I love because some days I want more carbs (like on intense workout days), and other days I want more fats (like on rest days).

In most other tracking apps, this feature either doesn’t exist, or the app doesn’t want you to make those customizations so it’s extremely clunky to personalize your macros. 

I like this feature on Avatar because I typically plan to have certain days that are high in carbs and days that are higher in fat based on my workout schedule.

Regardless if you’re like me or not, I also think it’s beneficial for those who don’t care about whether they’re eating more carbs or fats but want to stay on track with their overall calorie and protein goals.

If there’s a day when you’re craving more fats, you can easily shift your macros to have more fat and fewer carbs without affecting your progress.

3. Suggested Food Lists To Help You Learn Which Foods Are Carbs, Fats, & Protein

I like that the app has a suggested food list in its tracker because sometimes I just don’t know what to eat and I know many of my clients feel the same way, so having a list of foods available for each macronutrient is helpful.

Also, sometimes people just aren’t very familiar with what foods are considered carbs, fats, and proteins so the suggested food list is also great for that purpose. 

4. Flexible Macro Targets That Help Avoid Feeling Like You Need To Be Perfect

The app has an accepted macro range (not a fixed number) for how close you need to be to your macro targets to be considered “on track”, which I like because it sets a realistic expectation rather than expecting perfection.

Oftentimes, when people are too obsessed with hitting their macros perfectly they develop a negative relationship with food, they burn out and stop tracking altogether, or they are too afraid to eat without tracking their macros.

This is why I always try to teach my clients to take a more relaxed approach to tracking macros, where the goal is to be within a certain proximity but not to be spot on.

5. Menstrual Considerations For Check-Ins

As a woman with a menstrual cycle, I’m pumped about the menstrual consideration questions that are included in the weekly check-ins.

It’s completely normal to retain water around your period and I feel like most people just don’t know that and start to panic when they see the scale go up.

The fact that Avatar asks you about whether you’re in proximity to your period and if you feel that you’re retaining water helps to normalize body weight fluctuations during menstruation so that women understand that they didn’t randomly gain 5lbs of fat overnight.

6. An Option To Set Reverse Diet As A “Nutrition Goal’

Avatar Nutrition is one of the only apps on the market that gives you an option to set “reverse dieting” as a goal. 

Reverse dieting is the process of slowly increasing your calorie intake over time to help speed up your metabolism without gaining more fat than you’re comfortable with.

Reverse dieting is super important for those who have spent a long time in a caloric deficit. It’s essentially the phase of your diet that you want to implement after achieving your weight loss goal.

I won’t go into details about what reverse dieting is and who should do it, since I’ve covered it in these other article:

• When To Start Reverse Dieting

Most people have no idea how to implement a reverse diet if they aren’t working with a nutrition coach. 

I tested the process of how the app walks you through a reverse diet, and it’s the same methodology I would implement with my clients if I was working with them one-on-one. 

While many people won’t use this reverse dieting feature (as I assume most people will use the app for weight loss goals), the fact that the app coaches you through the correct reverse dieting process is exciting.

What I Didn’t Like About Avatar

There are only two things I didn’t like about the Avatar app:

1. There Are No Specifications For Verified Foods

One of the things I didn’t like about the app is that it didn’t specify which foods in its database are “verified foods”. Verified foods are foods that have been matched against a food database (which has been verified by a dietitian) that has accurate calorie and macronutrient information for that particular food.

The benefit of logging foods that are verified is that you know that they contain accurate nutritional information so that when you log them into your day you know that you’re getting the correct number of calories and nutrients based on the serving size that you’re consuming.

Having something to distinguish which food is verified is important because the app does allow users to create their own foods and recipes, which tend to be inaccurate more often than not because of user error.

Most tracking apps have a checkmark that appears next to foods that have been verified, but Avatar doesn’t have this feature to distinguish between verified and unverified foods which makes it easy to log foods into your day that are inaccurate.

2. Asks For Body Fat Percentage But Doesn’t Do Anything With This Information

Another thing I didn’t like about the app is that it asks for your body fat percentage during its intake questionnaire but then doesn’t use this information in how it calculates your calorie and macro intake.  

Here was the problem I faced:  You need to know your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), the number of calories you burn at rest, to then understand how many calories you need to consume to lose or gain weight. 

Two calculators are the most effective for calculating your BMR: The Mifflin St. Jeor Equation and The Cunningham Equation.  There is a third calculator, the Harris-Benedict Equation, but it isn’t as accurate.

The Mifflin St. Jeor equation is the most accurate calculator if you don’t know your body fat percentage. However, if you do know your body fat percentage then the Cunningham equation is by far the most accurate. You can also use our BMR calculator.

The Avatar app makes you input a body percentage using visual estimation, measurements, and/or calipers.

But, what puzzles me is that they didn’t use the Cunningham equation, despite having your body fat percentage. 

What puzzles me further is that even if they only wanted your body fat percentage as a measure of progress and not as a BMR calculator, they used the less accurate Harris-Benedict equation over the Mifflin St. Jeor equation.

Overall, I’m just confused as to why they chose a less accurate calculation when they had all of the information they needed from users for the accurate calculations.

Does this have an impact on the end user?  Not really.  It just feels a bit sloppy and not in line with best practice. 

Key Features & Benefits of Avatar

The key features and benefits of Avatar are:

Ability To Change Carb & Calorie Intake On Days When You’re More Active

One of Avatar’s best features is that you can easily adjust your carb and calories based on your activity level. 

If you’re having an intense workout day then you might want more calories and carbs on that particular day, which is no problem at all if you’re using Avatar.

If you increase your calories on certain days of the week, then the app will adjust your calories lower on other days of the week to compensate so that you’re always on track for your overall goal (weight loss, gain, or maintenance).

For example, if you need to stick to 14,000 calories per week to hit your goal, you can eat 2500 calories one day, and 1500 calories the next day, and the app will still keep you on track with your weekly 14,000 calorie goal as it updates in real-time.

Large Recipe Database For Inspiration

Another great feature that this app provides is a recipe database for users to look through and add to. Having recipes at one’s disposal helps keep you inspired to cook and excited about the food that you’re eating, which leads to sticking to your diet longer in my experience.

There are plenty of recipes to choose from with breakfast, lunch/dinner, dessert, and appetizer/snack recipes, all of which have plenty of variety to keep you from getting bored.

You can edit any of the recipes as you see fit, based on what ingredients you have available and what measurements you use for each ingredient to really make these recipes your own and to log them more easily.

“Vacation Mode” Setting For Times When You Need A Break From Tracking

Vacation Mode was something I had never heard of until I started using the Avatar app, but now that I know that it exists, it’s a feature that I wish every tracking app had. Vacation mode is a feature that you can switch on when you need a break from tracking.

You might need a break from tracking so that you don’t burn out, or maybe you actually are going on vacation; either way, having the option to “pause” your check-ins and other expectations that the app has is great.

If you didn’t enter vacation mode but you weren’t logging your nutrition, then you would still be prompted to check in and the app would think you just weren’t following what it programmed.

By entering vacation mode, you can turn it back off when you’re ready to get back to tracking and it will make adjustments purely based on where you’re at, instead of adjusting your macros based on where you were when you entered vacation mode.

Live Coaching Feature That Allows You To Communicate With A Coach

Last but not least, is the live coaching feature that gives you access to a real-life coach whenever you need support or you have questions.

The ability to talk to a coach one-on-one is so valuable for those who don’t have a nutrition coach that they’re working with to keep them accountable, answer questions about the process, and give advice.

I love that they’ve provided options for a live chat, or just a quick email so that there are different avenues to connect with a coach based on what the user is most comfortable with.

The live coaching feature can be accessed in the drop-down menu under “coaching”.

What Other Customers Think 

After my positive experience using the app, I was curious about what other users had to say about their own experiences using the app, so I read through the Google Reviews of the app.

The app has an impressive 5/5 stars; however, there are only 247 reviews and 14,000 downloads. This app is relatively new (developed in 2020) but Avatar Nutrition has had a desktop version since 2013 which has over 130,000 users on its own. It will be interesting to see how the app’s rating changes as the number of downloads and reviews increases.

The most common theme among reviewers was that they felt this app was a game changer for making macro tracking easier with automatic adjustments based on their weekly check-ins. 

Most reviewers also stated that they took full advantage of the live coaching to understand certain concepts, ask for advice about struggles they were having, or as a push to keep going.

Of the current reviews, it seemed like most people were using the app for weight loss and reverse dieting with great success. There are no reviews of users being unhappy with their results, which is impressive because in my experience there are people who complain even if they lose 5lbs in one week.

The only negative themes among the reviews were some glitches with the app freezing or force stopping, but it seems that they’ve resolved these issues because I never had any issues with the app glitching.

Overall, the app seems to be one of the better macro tracking apps available on the market despite its lack of popularity compared to other apps on the app store.

How Much Does Avatar Cost? 

The Avatar Nutrition App is a paid app that does not have a free version; however, there is a 14-day free trial that users can take advantage of to see if the app suits their needs before paying for the app.

After the 14-day free trial, you can choose between 2 different payment plans:

• Monthly Membership
• Annual Membership

The monthly membership costs $9.99 per month.

The annual membership costs $97.99 per year, which equals around $8.17 per month.

Who Should Use Avatar?

• Those who want to track their macros  

• Those who value customization and personalization 

• Those who want the ability to communicate with a coach

• Those who want recipes to provide inspiration

Who Should NOT Use Avatar

• Those who struggle to adhere to their diet

• Those who don’t want to check-in on a weekly basis

• Those who are brand new to tracking and may be intimidated by all of the customization options

Sign Up For Avatar

The sign-up process for the Avatar was simple, as it only requires you to create an account, answer questions about yourself, and then you can start their 14-day free trial.

The questions that Avatar asks during the sign-up process are:

• Age, height, weight, body fat percentage, activity level
• Goal (muscle gain, weight loss, weight maintenance, reverse dieting)
• How aggressive you want to be in pursuit of this goal

They do also have videos that explain how to use the app. You can watch these anytime by clicking the drop-down menu in the app and selecting “Tutorial”.

Avatar Alternatives 

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I’ve tested 18+ nutrition apps (click to check out the full list). Based on my experience, here are some top 2 alternatives:

MacroFactor

The Avatar app alternative that I recommend is MacroFactor because it has the largest food database that’s been verified by a registered dietitian, so you don’t have to worry about the foods that you’re logging being inaccurate.

MacroFactor is great for those who are new to tracking and those who have been tracking forever with customizations for how automatic the app works.

You can choose how involved you want to be in the calorie/macro adjustment process: automatic adjustments, the ability to make adjustments if you want, or complete control. Use the link below and enter the code FEASTGOOD when signing up to get an extra week on your free trial (2 weeks total). You can cancel anytime before your trial ends without being charged.

Lifesum

The second best alternative for the Avatar app is the Lifesum app (click to read my review), which I would recommend for those working with a nutrition coach.

The Lifesum app also has a great recipe database and is easy to use so that those who are new to tracking won’t feel overwhelmed.

Avatar Nutrition Comparisons

• Avatar Nutrition vs RP Diet

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Avatar Good For Weight Loss? 

Avatar is good for weight loss because its calorie and macro recommendations are adjusted based on how your body is responding; therefore, as long as you’re consistent with tracking you will reach your goals.

Is Avatar Free? 

Avatar isn’t free, you have to sign- up for a monthly or annual membership to use the app. However, there is a 14-day free trial that you can use to decide if the app is a good fit for you.

Is Avatar Compatible With Apple Watch? 

The Avatar app is not compatible with Apple Watch because it doesn’t track exercise or consider calories burned as part of its calculations.

Is Avatar Accurate?

I found that the Avatar Nutrition app was accurate, especially after the first weekly check-in where calories and macros are adjusted based on how your body weight changed during the first week of tracking.

How Do I Cancel My Avatar Subscription?

To cancel your Avatar Nutrition subscription you can delete your subscription in iTunes or Google Play. It’s important to note that deleting the app won’t stop your subscription, so you need to cancel your subscription to stop payments.

How To Contact Avatar?

You can contact the Avatar Nutrition team in the app by clicking “Coaching” in the drop-down menu. You can also go to their support page here.

Other Nutrition App Reviews

• MyNetDiary Review
• BetterMe App Review
• MyMacros+ App Review
• Fooducate App Review
• Noom Review
• Carbon Diet Coach Review
• Cronometer App Review
• FatSecret Review
• MyFitnessPal Review
• My Diet Coach App Review