Google Health app removes Fitbit calorie deficit feature, but there’s a potential workaround

This month, Google began automatically rebranding the old Fitbit app as the new Google Health app. Google calls the update a “fully redesigned and improved experience” that makes it “easier to find what you’re looking for” in tracking fitness and health goals. In practice, though, the transition has quietly dropped some long-standing Fitbit features, most notably the dynamic Food Plan calorie tracker.

Google’s own help page bluntly notes that “Setting calorie targets with ‘Food Plans’ will no longer be supported”. In other words, where Fitbit once automatically adjusted your daily calorie budget based on activity, the new app forces a fixed target. Google says the rollout should be complete by July 15 (with legacy data from removed features deleted after that date), but in the meantime, many loyal users are furious.

Officially, Google is pitching this as a sleek upgrade. The app is reorganized into Today, Fitness, Sleep, and Health tabs (merging Fitbit and Google Fit), with a new AI-powered health coach and focus on holistic insights. Google encourages “conversational logging” (text or voice) and even photo-based food tracking, emphasizing macronutrients and lifestyle patterns beyond simple weight management and calorie counting.

The trade-off, however, is the loss of Fitbit’s easy calorie-deficit tools. Sure, you can still set a fixed calorie target, but the old Flexi‐budget “Food Plan” that automatically increased your allowance when you burned extra calories is gone. In short, you can no longer tell the app to keep you in a 500-calorie deficit and have it adjust day by day: now it only tracks a static goal.

Fitbit’s user community has reacted with near-outrage. Reports began surfacing weeks before May’s switch. For example, an iOS user in early March noted on Reddit that his Fitbit stopped showing calories left for the day, instead just a static value, even after reinstalling the app. They observed, “I love Fitbit because it adjusts the number of calories I can eat based on my activity. However, now it’s giving me a set number… Is this a glitch or are they getting rid of this feature?” – presciently foreshadowing the official change.

After the Google Health update began, the frustration only exploded. In one recent r/fitbit thread, user Mister_DK explained that he used to have a dynamic calorie goal – “if I burned 2200 calories [the app would] allow me to eat up to 1200, but if I burned 3000, then the target rose to 2000” – but under the new app he’s now stuck with a flat target. “This was the sole thing I used Fitbit for,” he lamented, adding “if Google killed that feature then I need a competitor that has it”.

In another thread, a longtime Fitbit user warned that the app had become “basically worthless” for weight tracking, since you can’t add a calorie number, only scan food.

The sentiment is widespread: some users even say they’re rethinking Fitbit entirely. One commenter quipped, “Yeah this might be the end for me after 10+ years with Fitbit”, complaining that “they are removing the things we all like and forcing stuff we don’t care about”. Another warned, “I am so beyond frustrated … They either need to fix it fast or … others will be finding a new fitness app”.

The pain points go beyond calories. In the old Fitbit app, you could also create custom foods and recipes for precise logging, especially important for home-cooked meals. Those are effectively gone, too. Reddit users report the new app’s food database is wildly incomplete, and that there’s no way to add or edit a custom food entry except via the new AI coach (and only if you pay for the Google Health Premium tier).

As one poster noted, Google has taken away a feature that didn’t require a subcription, and locked it behind a paywall. The net result: even if you find that generic “100 Calorie” search hack (see below), you can’t build out a personalized library the way you used to. In short, features like dynamic calorie budgeting, custom recipes, sleep profiles, badges, and social groups have been retired – leaving many users feeling stripped of the Fitbit experience they joined for.

Fortunately, the community has cobbled together a potential workaround. The most common trick is to search the food log for “calorie”. As one Redditor discovered, typing “calorie” into the food database brings up a generic item (e.g. “100 Calorie Food” or even “One Calorie”) that you can add and then adjust the serving size to approximate any calorie amount.

It’s clunky, but it technically lets you mimic the old Quick Add feature. Other users are tapping the new tools: for instance, a few with Premium say they took a meal photo or chatted with the Google Health Coach to log calories, and it did work for them. Many are also turning to companion apps – Google Health can import data from services like MyFitnessPal or Cronometer via Android Health Connect or Apple Health. In fact, Google’s own documentation points out that you can track your nutrition using third-party apps like MyFitnessPal or Cronometer and pull that data in. In practice, that means one workaround is simply logging food in an external app, then letting Google Health display the imported calories and macros.

None of these solutions is as seamless as Fitbit’s old system, of course. They range from hacks and multi-step processes to paying for new AI features. Still, for now they’re the only options short of ditching the platform.

In the end, Google is staying the course with its vision. If anything, this update is less a cosmetic rebrand than a reset of how Google wants health tracking to work. Fitbit veterans clearly see that reset as taking away critical tools. Google may refine the Google Health app over time, but for now, many users feel stranded between Google’s new AI-driven model and the straightforward calorie budgeting they relied on.

Until Google addresses the gap, or until the company sees enough backlash to pivot, affected users will continue using these kludges or, as several have promised, start looking elsewhere.

The post Google Health app removes Fitbit calorie deficit feature, but there’s a potential workaround appeared first on PiunikaWeb.