If you're trying to lose weight or trying to live a healthier life, you need to watch what you eat. Sure, exercising is essential, but that's not the only thing you need to do. It would help if you did other things like dieting and even counting the calories of your food.
Counting calories might seem complicated to do, but it's actually pretty easy once you get into the habit of doing it. You can do it by yourself, but we live in a time when your smartphone can take that load off for you.
If you're planning on counting calories, here are some great apps that'll help you on your journey.
Why Should You Count Calories?
The topic of counting calories can be polarizing. Many people say it won't help you, but counting calories and tracking what and how much you eat can help guide you to lose or even gain weight if you need it.
Plus, it gives you a better sense of what your eating habits are and it can help you live a healthier life altogether. Even though counting calories can be overwhelming at first, having the right partner during your fitness journey can go a long way.
These five apps will help you make counting calories easy and—dare we say it?—even fun.
1. MyFitnessPal: Become Part of a Community
It's not surprising if you've heard of MyFitnessPal before. This calorie-counter and diet tracker app is used by over 200 million members, and there's a good reason for that.
MyFitnessPal has been around for over 10 years now, and it's not stopping any time soon. You can count your calories, track the nutrients of what you eat, and keep a record of your progress from day one.
You can create and enter your own recipes and easily import the nutrition information. Or, if you're going to eat out, you can quickly log the information of your favorite restaurants to know exactly how many calories you're consuming.
The best part of MyFitnessPal is the community. With thousands of users in many active forums, you can find people with the same goals as you and find a little motivation when you don't feel like being healthy.
2. Lose It!: It Gets Things Done
Lose It! is a great app that'll help you, well, lose it. This calorie-counting app is simple to use, but don't let that fool you. It will still get the job done.
What's great about Lose It! is that it tries to make counting calories easy from the start. When you first launch Lose It!, the app asks you a few questions about yourself and your personal goals. Based on your input, Lose It! will try to predict your eating habits in order to personalize your food search algorithm.
Plus, Lose It! also has an active community you can talk to in case you need advice or motivation.
3. Cronometer: Perfect for People on a Budget
When you're trying food diary apps to track what you eat, the more you can get for free, the better. And Cronometer is one of the best options you can try for free. This app has a bunch of features available to everyone for free, but you can also go for the subscription to step it up a notch.
You can track the food you eat manually or use an in-app scanner, so the app does it for you. But that's not all since Cronometer lets you keep track of your workouts as well. You can use the preregistered exercises or create new ones.
Granted, Cronometer doesn't have the biggest database of foods and recipes available, so sometimes you might need to create them yourself. Fortunately, you'll have immediate access to it once you do, and other people will too.
4. MyPlate: Great Place to Start
If you're looking for an app that doesn't just help you track your food or workouts, but actually gives you exercises and recipes you can follow, then you should try out MyPlate.
MyPlate is a really complete app that offers customizable goals as well as recipes and workouts if you don't know where to begin. Once you've set some personal information about your body and your personal goals, you can start entering all the food you eat to track your calories.
As if that isn't enough, you can also check out the workouts available within the app. You'll see a list of workouts, along with the difficulty and the time you need to complete them.
If you don't have time to work out, you can always try some of the recipes in your feed. These recipes are tailored for your body, and they'll help you accomplish your weight goals.
5. HealthifyMe: Straightforward But Effective
HealthifyMe is more than just an app that helps you count calories. It's also one of the best weight-loss apps you can get right now. All that while keeping its user interface clean and easy to use.
With HealthifyMe you can easily track your calories and your workouts. Plus, you can access many workouts available in the app that focus on different parts of your body. It doesn't matter if you want to tackle that belly fat or you want to strengthen your biceps; there's a workout for you.
What's unique about HealthifyMe is that it also has an Immunity Boosting Plan which helps you eat the right food to improve your immune system, as well as letting you track other daily actions like your sleep and how many times you've washed your hands.
Make It Count!
Now there's no excuse for you not to lose those extra pounds. From time to time, we all end up carrying a little extra weight, but dieting, exercising, and now counting calories are the best ways to stay in shape and live a healthier life altogether.