HCF HEALTHFULFREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Account management and security

• How do I sign up to HCF Healthful? 
• How do I reset my password?
  
• Can I delete my account and personal data? 
• How do I change my privacy settings?
• Is my data protected on HCF Healthful?

Understanding the Health Score 

• What’s the Health Score? 
• What’s a good or bad Health Score? 
• Is the Health Score accurate? 
• Is the Health Score a medical product?

Tracking and third party devices 

• How can I track a workout?
• What third party devices and apps are supported? 
• Can I connect historical data from third party devices or apps to HCF Healthful?
• How do I turn on automatic step tracking?
• How do I manually add data (activity, body values, sleep data)?
• Why’s my activity and energy data from a third party device or app sometimes different to HCF Healthful?
• Can I delete a tracked workout? 
• What does MET mean?
• What’s the scientific basis of the nutrition model?

Engagement and social 

• How do I add an activity or nutrition goal?
• Can I join a challenge?
• Can I create a challenge?
• How do I find my friends who’ve signed up to HCF Healthful?
• Can I invite friends to join HCF Healthful?
• Can I share my workout and workout pictures on social media?
• How do I activate an achievement?
• Can I turn off notifications from HCF Healthful’s Coach?
• I’m having trouble with my HCF Healthful account, who can help me?

1. Download HCF Healthful on your mobile via the App Store or Google Play.
2. Select whether you’re new to HCF Healthful or if you're already registered and would like to log in.
3. If you're new to the HCF Healthful app, complete the registration form using your HCF membership number to confirm you’re a current HCF member and ensure you keep access to the app.
4. To help generate an initial Health Score, enter your personal information including your:

   - date of birth
   - height
   - weight
   - gender at birth

5. Add your email address and create a password. Your password needs to be a minimum of 8 characters and have at least 1 uppercase letter, 1 lowercase letter, and 1 digit or punctuation character.
6. Once you’ve completed the registration process, you’ll receive a confirmation email and can start using the app to help you achieve your health goals.

1. Tap on the Forgot Your Password? link on the login page.
2. Enter the email address linked to your HCF Healthful account.
3. We’ll send you an email with a link which will ask you to set a new password.
4. Confirm your new password by tapping Reset Password.

You can delete your account at any time by going into the app, selecting Me, followed by Settings then Platform Settings. Scroll down and click on Delete Your Account. You’ll need to enter your password to confirm the deletion of your account. Your account will be deactivated immediately and your data will no longer be visible.  

We’ll keep your data for 30 days in case you change your mind and would like to reactivate your account. After 30 days, your data will be permanently deleted. 

To keep your data safe and secure, we’ve implemented multi-factor authentication for when you sign in to the app.  

You're in control of your data within the app and can choose what to share or keep private. You can change the privacy settings of your account at any time and determine who’ll be able to see what. The only types of data that may be shared are Health Score, workouts and earned achievements. Sensitive personal data like weight, age or blood pressure, aren’t accessible to other users. 

Click here to read our privacy policy and terms of use. 

With the rise of health and fitness-related wearable devices and apps on the market, it’s never been easier to get access to a variety of health- and fitness-related data.  

The Health Score helps you understand your personal health and wellbeing status against certain criteria. It’s based on your physical make up (body), how you feel (mind), and how you live (lifestyle). It’s a scientifically calculated number from 0 (low) to 1,000 (high) and moves up or down in real-time, depending on how your body, emotional wellbeing or lifestyle data changes.  

You’ll be asked to complete your assessment during registration, but if you decide to skip it, you can come back and complete it later within the home screen of HCF Healthful. 

The Health Score is based on over 300 million person-years of clinical data and was developed by in collaboration with a professor and former long-term scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston. 

Your Health Score is personalised using the information you enter when you sign up to HCF Healthful, including your age, gender, height and weight. All other data points for the calculation of the Health Score have been automatically inferred with estimated average values at that moment. The more you use the HCF Healthful app and the more it knows you, the more accurate and personal your Health Score will become. 

In HCF Healthful, you can track over 115 different fitness activities using the integrated tracker by tapping Track.

In the Track Menu, you can select your activity by tapping Change Activity or the fitness activity icon on the screen. You’ll then see the list of available activities that can be tracked on HCF Healthful. Some of these activities show a compass icon to show that they’re GPS-based activities. Select the activity and then tap on Start to begin tracking your activity live.

If you’ve already completed a workout and want to add it manually, click on Add Activity manually.

In addition to tracking directly within HCF Healthful, we support many of the popular fitness tracking devices and apps. These include:

• Connect powered by Garmin: workouts, GPS workouts, heart rate, steps, weight and sleep
• Fitbit: workouts, GPS workouts, heart rate, steps, weight and sleep 
• WITHINGS: workouts, steps, weight, blood pressure and sleep
• POLAR: workouts, GPS workouts, heart rate and steps
• Google Fit: workouts, steps and sleep
• STRAVA: workouts, GPS workouts and heart rate.

Different vendors have different approaches to how they send your data to HCF Healthful, and many don’t send historical data. 

For the majority of third party devices or apps, we can import your data from the moment you connect your device or app to HCF Healthful. For some devices that do allow the integration of historic data, we’ll integrate it. This is the case with TomTom (integrates 30 days’ history) and Garmin devices (integrates up to 100 items). 

There’s no in-built step tracking functionality within the HCF Healthful iOS app. If you own an iPhone 5S or newer, you can track steps with the Apple Health App (Healthkit), as the iPhone has a built-in step counter. 

After linking HCF Healthful to your Apple Health app:

1. open the Apple Health App on your iPhone
2. tap on Sources then HCF Healthful
3. go to the section Allow HCF Healthful to read data and activate Steps.

If you own a compatible Android device, you can activate automatic step tracking by:

1. opening the side menu
2. tapping on settings then APP
3. activating Automatic Step Counter.

To manually add fitness activities and sleep data: 

1. tap on Add Activity Manually
2. search for the activity by swiping up and down the list, or by using the search functionality and tap on it
3. enter the required fields 
4. add a photo of the workout
5. tap Send (this button will only appear if there’s enough data to save the activity).

To manually add body values:

1. tap on Add Body Values
2. tap on the value you’d like to change.

To manually add sleep data:

1. tap on Add Sleep
2. enter the required fields (date, duration in bed, duration asleep, which needs to be lower than or equal to the duration in bed, and number of times awoken). These 4 data points are needed as a minimum to activate
3. tap on Save and the manual entry will be logged and visible in your sleep journal. 

HCF Healthful only integrates raw data like steps and heart rate. The calculation of energy models and calories burnt is done by HCF Healthful, as it’s important for the app to remain consistent in how your workouts are calculated across various fitness tracking sources. This is because third party devices and apps can use different models, leading to differences between their data and the data seen on HCF Healthful. 

To maintain the integrity of the Health Score and the challenges we run in the app, we do the energy calculation directly on our platform.  

To delete a tracked workout go to Me, followed by Lifestyle then Activities. Tap on the specific workout in My Workouts followed by Delete.

When a tracked workout has been imported from a third party device or app and deleted within HCF Healthful, it may reappear the next time the 2 apps sync. We recommend deleting the workout directly from the third party device or application to make sure it doesn’t re-sync with HCF Healthful.

The nutrition model assesses the adoption by the user of what’s typically regarded as a healthy diet. Currently, based on evidence from studies, the nutrition model uses the so-called Mediterranean Diet (MD). However, HCF Healthful complements this with other validated questionnaires, like the ‘Mindful Eating’ questionnaire. While questions about the MD gives information on what you eat, the validated ‘Mindful Eating’ questionnaire provides insights as to how, when and why you eat or drink. 

This allows us to expand the applicability of the nutrition questionnaire to a larger population and allows for the widening of the dietary and behavioural dimensions to additional foods and eating habits. 

Activity and nutrition goals can motivate you to create new routines to help improve your health and wellbeing. There are a range of goals included ranging from simple to advanced so no matter where you’re at on your health journey, there’s something for you.  

To add goals tap on Coach, then Goals. Available goals will then appear and you can swipe to find the goal that appeals to you. You can also tap on HCF Healthful Coach, Activities Coach or Nutrition Coach to see all available goals in their respective sections.  

Tap on the goal of interest then Add Goal. You can also add a goal in the Me page on the goals dashboard by pressing on the pencil icon. Once you’ve joined a goal, it’ll be displayed in the goals overview page under My Goals. You can have a maximum of 3 nutrition goals at a time. 

You can join a challenge by tapping on Social, then on Challenges. Then swipe to look at the different challenges and tap on the one you’re interested in.  

If you'd like to join a team challenge, you need to tap on your team in the list of teams. You can also add a challenge on the Me page in the challenge dashboard by pressing on the pencil icon. 

Friends who’ve already signed up to HCF Healthful can be found in the user directory within the app. Find them by following these steps:

1. Tap on Search Friend in the user directory.
2. Enter the first name, last name or the email address of the friend and tap Enter.
3. Tap on the name of the friend to access their page. The page might be empty if your friend doesn’t share their data publicly.
4. Send a friend request by tapping Add Friend. Once your friend accepts the invitation, you’ll get an acceptance notification.

If you have friends who are HCF members and haven’t signed up to HCF Healthful you can invite them by email. Invite them by following these steps:

1. Go to the Social tab in Friends and tap Invite a Friend by Email. 
2. An email will open, tap on To: and enter the email addresses of the friends you’d like to invite.
3. If needed, you can edit the template text. Then press Send.
4. Once your friends have signed up, you’ll need to send them a friend request.

You can share your workout details recorded on HCF Healthful with friends on WhatsApp, Messenger, Facebook and email. But you can only share your workout photos taken with HCF Healthful on Facebook and X (formally Twitter). The photo you share will include the HCF Healthful logo, activity distance, time and average speed of your workout.

To share your workout on Facebook or Twitter follow these steps:

1. Track your workout or add it (with all the details like distance, duration, etc.) manually once completed.
2. Take a picture while working out or if you’re adding the activity manually, choose a picture from library.
3. Click Share, then select Facebook or Twitter. Once you’ve chosen, make sure the blue tick appears close to Share on Facebook/X (formally Twitter).
4. Click Send followed by Share Now on the pop-up.

To share your workout on social media other than Facebook or X (formally Twitter) follow these steps:  

1. Track your workout or add it (with all the details like distance, duration, etc.) manually once completed.
2. Take a picture while working out or if you’re adding the activity manually, choose a picture from your library.
3. Click Share, followed by More. Choose the social channel you want to use and make sure that the blue tick appears next to Share On.
4. Click Send followed by Share Now on the pop-up.

Achievements are automatically activated for you and they start at a low level. Once you’ve reached your achievement (e.g. cycling: 100 km), the achievement in the same sequence (e.g. cycling: 500 km) will be auto-activated. 

Achievements can be accessed by tapping Achievements. Each achievement category is organised by Next Achievements and Earned Achievements. To check the status and progress towards attaining an achievement, tap on the specific achievement so that the results unfold. Attained achievements are communicated in the news feed on HCF Healthful and within the coach section. 

You can edit the Coach settings in the upper right corner of the Coach page. Here you can choose your preferences in terms of areas of interest (exercise, nutrition, general topics, and social notifications) as well as the frequency of interaction.  

Simply move the slider to define more or less interaction. The Coach will use these preferences in combination with other conditional message attributes to deliver the best coaching experience.