Can Apple Watch Track How Many Calories You Eat?

Smartwatches are incredibly powerful devices capable of tracking calories burned with relative accuracy, but can Apple Watch track how many calories you eat?

In this quick guide, we’ll discuss the possibilities and limitations of Apple Watches calorie tracking features.

Can Apple Watch Track How Many Calories You Eat?

Apple Watch, as of its current versions, cannot directly monitor the calories you consume. It can, with relative accuracy capture calories burned, activity metrics, heart rate, and more, so why can’t it track the calories you eat? It just comes down to the tech not quite being there yet.

However, they did recently file a patent for AR technology to monitor caloric intake.

So, is that it? Is it impossible to monitor my caloric intake with my Apple Watch?

Not quite. Let’s talk about why.

Alternative Ways to Track Caloric Intake on Apple Watch

Despite the Apple Watch not being able to track food intake natively, there are still other options available.

There are numerous third-party apps that are on the market now which are capable of logging your caloric intake, such as the popular MyFitnessPal.

MyFitnessPal

MyFitnessPal allows manual logging of meals, and the good news? It can synchronize with your Apple Watch, keeping all your health metrics in one accessible location.

However, the unfortunate news is that when MyFitnessPal mirrors to your Apple Watch, it does not display how many calories you’ve eaten.

Instead, it shows you how many remaining calories you have left to eat (and there is no way to customize this screen). Then you can use this to calculate how much you’ve eaten.

To find this screen:

1. Open the MyFitnessPal app on your Apple Watch
2. Notice the “Calories” listed. This represents the amount you have left to eat for the day. The number is calculated by subtracting your calories eaten from your caloric goal for the day.

As you see in the pictures above, MyFitnessPal says that I can eat 1660 more calories today. That is because my goal is set to 1990 and I have already logged 330 calories on MyFitnessPal on my iPhone.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you track calorie intake on an Apple Watch?

Tracking of caloric intake is not a feature that is available on Apple Watches yet. However, there are apps such as MyFitnessPal that track calories and can be mirrored to your Apple Watch.

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