Technology is great, isn’t it? This day and age it seems like new and exciting things are being invented every day to make life easier. Especially when it comes to the your health.
There are a lot of cool fitness and nutrition apps out there that have made getting stronger and burning fat significantly simpler. In this article, I want to share 5 of them with you. And the good news is all 5 are free and available on Android and iPhone.
So let’s get started!
1. Myfitnesspal
This is probably the one most people are familiar with. Myfitnesspal is an online food journal. Food journals have been shown to be useful when the goal is weight loss. Studies indicate that you typically lose twice as much weight when you write down what you eat.
The app allows you to track your food so you can know how many calories you’ve eaten and your macronutrient (carbs, fat, and protein) breakdown for the day. It has an entire food database so all you have to do is type in the specific food you are eating and select it.
One nice feature it has is a barcode scanner. Instead of typing in your food, you can scan the barcode and it inputs all the nutrition facts into your journal. This app makes journaling a lot easier and it’s more interactive. You can connect with your friends and help keep each other accountable.
2. Meal Logger
Meal Logger is a photo food journaling app. This application puts a slight spin on the traditional food journal. Photo journaling is becoming more popular these days.
While journaling can be helpful, some research has shown there is a downside to writing your food down. We are really good at underestimating how much we have actually eaten. With a photo, you can easily tell the quantity and quality of your food. All you have to do with snap a picture and select your serving size.
Just like Myfitnesspal, you can connect with family and friends to motivate and challenge each other to eat better. It offers a community like feel that will keep you engaged and help you stay on track.
3. Fitocracy
Fitocracy is an online training journal. Are you catching onto the theme of how important journaling is? 🙂
A training journal can be useful to record workouts, weights, sets, and reps performed. This is important as most people don’t track these things. But Fitocracy offers much more than that.
You can create your own workouts or select pre-programmed workouts. It also has an enormous exercise video library along with detailed instructions for each exercise. So if you are going through a workout and are unsure of what to do you can refer back to it.
It tracks your activity via points so you can earn badges for each milestone reached. You can also connect with others to get support so you can stay motivated each and every week.
One other great thing about the app is it offers online personal training. This is a paid feature, but you will be given a coach that will take you through an assessment, provide you with a nutrition plan, and build your workouts. It makes it an affordable way to achieve your health and fitness goals.
4. HabitBull
As the name suggest, this is a habit tracking app. I’ve talked plenty of times on this site about how crucial building habits are to long-term success. This app makes it ridiculously simple to break a bad habit or build a good one.
All you have to do is type in your specific habit and set it up to remind you each day. Each habit comes with it’s own calendar. If you complete your habit for the day, you will check it off on the calendar. This helps you build streaks and the longer your streak becomes, the easier it will be to keep your habit up.
I encourage all of my clients to use this app to track their daily habits. Having it remind you each day will help you stay consistent and create good habits that last a lifetime.
5. Interval Timer- HIIT Training
Interval training is where you alternate periods of hard work with periods of easy work. It has some tremendous benefits, and if your goal is to burn fat and get leaner it something that should be included in your training program.
If you want to switch back and forth between hard and easy work it helps to have a timer. For example, I will often use bike sprints with my clients as a form of interval training. I’ll have them pedal as fast as they can for 20 seconds then pedal slowly for 40 seconds.
Using Interval Timer, you can set up this 20/40 alternating time scheme and select how many rounds you want to complete. It buzzes to alert you when to switch. Two other nice features are it will continue to run when the screen is locked and connect to your music playlists. Overall, it’s a nice app to have if interval training is a big part of your workouts.
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There’s a saying you’ve probably heard before that says “work smarter, not harder”. These 5 apps will certainly help you do that. The advances in technology have made it easier to stay accountable and motivated to accomplish any health and fitness goal you can think of. Use these apps to your advantage and let me know of any others apps you use in the comments below!
Photo Credit:
1. https://angel.co/myfitnesspal
2. http://snecommunicationsdivision.blogspot.com/2014/02/meallogger-makes-food-journaling-easy.html
3. http://mashable.com/2012/12/28/fitocracy-fitness-app/
4. http://www.kelseyads.com/best-apps-new-years-resolutions/
5. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/interval-timer-timing-for/id406473568?mt=8
