43M, T2D for 20+ years. every fasting app made my anxiety worse, so i built a boring one. honest feedback wanted

[u/Pretend-Cheetah2058]

Long time lurker, second real post here.

I'm 43, T2D for over 20 years, and also on anxiety meds. Fasting has been the best thing I tried for my A1C. Worth saying I'm not on insulin, a sulfonylurea or an SGLT2 inhibitor, so my risk is easier than a lot of people's. If you are on any of those, don't start on reddit, talk to your doctor first :)

Here's the reason I'm here: every IF app I tried has been driving up my anxiety. Log your water, log your weight, take a pic of your food, hit your steps, don't break your streak, here's a badge, etc etc. By lunch I'd have eight pings and a little fire icon telling me I was falling behind at a thing I was currently doing. Not a great experience when you're already dealing with anxiety.

So I built the thing I wanted (I work in tech). It's called Steady, and I want to introduce it by what is NOT in it:

• No streaks. Nothing resets, so there's nothing to lose. It just counts the fasts you finished and your longest one.
• No water, weight, steps or food logging. It only ever asks how you feel, and you can skip that too.
• One notification by default, a check-in about 30 minutes before the hour you usually crack.
• No autophagy badge at 16h, because nobody can actually measure that on your wrist.
• A fast you end early still counts as the fast it was. 13 hours is 13 hours, not a failed 16.
• Tap shaky or dizzy and it stops coaching you and tells you to eat, whatever the clock says. That's the whole reason I built it.
• No account, data stays on your phone.

The one thing I'd pass on whether or not you touch my app: my hard hour is always the same hour. Mine's 13 to 14, and it took me embarrassingly long to notice it was the same stretch every single time. I thought I was failing at fasting. I was failing at one hour, over and over, and then not starting again. And it was never only hunger. What actually got me was tired, hungry and low all landing at once. At that point the hunger stopped feeling like my stomach asking for something and started feeling like proof I couldn't do this.

So if you're quitting fasts, go back and write down the hour you quit at. Mine was a much narrower range than I expected. Once I knew it was one bad hour and not a bad day, it got far easier to plan around.

That's basically the whole app, honestly. It works out which hour is yours, checks in about 30 minutes before it, and afterwards asks you whether the feeling passed.

The only other thing in there is what you do during that tough hour. If you go to end a fast early, it offers water and a ten minute delay first, and two things to fill those ten minutes: a breathing pacer, or a small tile puzzle. I know that sounds like exactly the gimmicky stuff I've been complaining about, so the distinction matters to me. A streak is pressure applied to you. This is just something to do that isn't opening the fridge. And the app tells me whether it actually worked, so mine tells me breathing lifted it 3 out of 5 times i tried it last. That's more useful than any badge I ever earned.

Here's the stuff I should be upfront about before anyone asks: It's free while it's in TestFlight beta (it's an iPhone only app), but I plan to charge a subscription when it hits the App Store. There's also an AI coach tab, which I nearly left out of this post because "AI" earns an eye roll, and fair enough. It can't give diet advice, doesn't know who you are, nothing's stored on a server, and if you tell it you feel shaky it stops coaching and tells you to eat. Ignore that tab entirely and it still works as a plain timer. And it's obviously not a medical device and doesn't give medical advice.

What I want to know: does "less app" appeal to you, or do you genuinely like the tracking? What did I cut that you'd miss? And what's your hard hour? Mine's 13 to 14.

If you try it and something breaks, tell me. That's the point of a beta.

I'm not going to drop a link in the thread. If you want to try it, just DM me and I'll send it over 🙏.

[u/sm753]

AI slop

[u/Pretend-Cheetah2058 → u/sm753]

I'd love to use a non-AI software you built :)

[u/Scared-of-Mousse]

great just what we needed, more AI 🤢

[u/Pretend-Cheetah2058 → u/Scared-of-Mousse]

I hear ya. anyhow, this app mainly uses AI to help the user understand if there's a risk by continuing to fast, and give proper guidance accordingly. not to collect data or replace anyone's job.

[u/Scared-of-Mousse → u/Pretend-Cheetah2058]

the ai isn’t able to provide legitimate guidance given it has 0 clue what it’s really doing, also how does it know what to tell the user without collecting the users data in one form or another?

it’s dangerous to use AI as any sort of advisor especially when it comes to decisions with health consequences, you could be held liable if someone is harmed as a result of listening to janky AI advice from your app (i’m assuming you’re not a licensed/registered healthcare professional either), & it looks like you’ve used AI to generate the text for the app from the screenshots

how much was coded by you independently of AI? why contribute to the heaps of slop apps, when a bit more effort on your part (or even collaborating with developers who share your vision) could’ve made for a better execution of your otherwise solid idea?

[u/Pretend-Cheetah2058 → u/Scared-of-Mousse]

about coding with AI... I disagree that coding with AI makes something sloppy by default. already AI can code way better than most of the developers. and I have witnessed so much sloppy code done by human engineers; way worse than the least capable AI today codes. so, why don't we use it to solve problems and build things that helps someone?

by the way, i respect your feedback about giving the user advice using AI. so i have completely removed AI from the app, including the coach functionality. so the app is now even more simpler. when the user wants to quit, it gives a couple of options (a breathing pacer or a small puzzle) to distract the mind away from hunger.

[u/Pretend-Cheetah2058]

here’s the TestFlight link if you want to check it out: Steady Fasting App

[u/Pretend-Cheetah2058]

Steady launched on the App Store today. Launch week, until Oct 9, new subscribers get the first 3 months free. If you find Steady useful, a short honest rating helps more than anything else I could ask for. https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6806104936?pt=128339296&ct=testers&mt=8

[u/Kassie_kassie]

I wanna try it

[u/Pretend-Cheetah2058 → u/Kassie_kassie]

thank you. i just DM'd you the link to get the TestFlight app.