MyFitnessPal (Free. iOS, Android, and Windows) - Food diary, calorie counter, weight tracker, exercise and activity counter, and it has a social aspect so you can share your activity with friends. Most foods and restaurants are searchable within the app. There is a barcode scanner so you can import the nutritional information. I have found the nutritional information for recipes I found in magazines or from Pinterest. The app gives you great nutritional and weight loss progress charts. Informs you how many calories to consume each day to meet your goal and at the end of the day when you select that you are finished for the day it will inform you what your weight will be if you continue to eat that way for five weeks. This is one of my favorite and most used apps.
Fooducate (Free. iOS and Android) This app has a colorful, friendly, easy to use platform that walks you through setup in a thorough step by step fashion. It syncs with the Apple Health app for iOS users. It does a fantastic job of giving in-depth nutritional information for grocery items by giving foods a grade and explaining why. It's weakness is finding restaurant and recipe nutrition information. Excellent exercise calorie burning calculator and nicely developed community section. It calculates BMI and has some really great articles to educate users about how to eat healthier. I disagree with their calculations on the number of calories a person should consume. I dislike the ads at the bottom and the little ways it tries to get you to purchase premium features.
MapMyFitness – Weight tracker, food diary / calorie calculator, and workout journal. It does a good job of trying to walk you through the basic functions of the app when you begin. If you run or cycle it gives statistics on workouts. You can share your activities with an online community. Imports / syncs with a long list of fitness trackers, heart rate monitors, etc. There are "challenges" from different sponsoring businesses that reward users for recording their workouts by entering them automatically in raffles for prizes. It tries to make it more social for you (or advertise to your friends) by automatically linking to Facebook and posting your activity, however you can opt out. I found certain aspects of the layout non-intuitive, find the display cluttered, dislike the ads, and dislike the multiple attempts to sell me premium features. The workout recording / calorie calculator leaves out most anything not running or cycling related. The food diary does not have as extensive a database or as user friendly a display as the others discussed.
Healthy Out (Free. iOS and Android) One of the tough things on a weight loss plan (aka diet) is when your plans fall through or you get incredibly hungry and have nothing to eat. You go out or get delivery, and this app will help you find a restaurant that has things that meet your nutritional requirements: Atkins, Paleo, South Beach, low fat, low carb, gluten free, and many more. It has a very slick display that is very intuitive. You can see what menu items are on your diet and it tell you whether you need to make special request for the item to meet your nutritional needs. It has nutritional information for menu items from certain chains. You can order and pay for food to be delivered to you through the app. Unfortunately, it does not have a good selection of restaurants for our part of Florida, hopefully they will grow and expand.
No comments:
Post a Comment