Five top calorie counting apps designed with features that match your specific goals and interests.
For many people, calorie counting can come in waves. At the beginning of the year, you download an app and add entries after every meal—careful to include even the hidden ingredients. After a few weeks, the task feels more overwhelming and exhausting, so you slow down and eventually stop. Then, you feel inclined to pick it back up again and download a different app, starting it all over.
Calorie counting is a lot. But, the only way you will see results is if you really commit yourself to the grind of eating and moving well.
It might help ease the grind if you found an app with features that match your specific goals and interests. Below are five top calorie counting apps designed for different purposes.
Cron-o-meter helps you personalize your goals, calories, and macronutrient needs based on your specific needs. For example, if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, following a paleo or vegetarian diet, or trying to cut carbs or fats, the app will customize and change its recommendations for your macros and micros.
It also allows you to scan the barcodes of the food you eat and will automatically add a single serving size of the ingredient into your app. Your profile will display a bar chart of your daily macros so that you can quickly and easily see how many you have remaining for the day. The app syncs your data to all of your devices instantly as well.
Whether you want to improve your health by losing weight or feeling more in control of your eating patterns, Zero will help you customize and keep track of your fasting/eating windows with alarms and alerts. Its journal entry feature will prompt you to fill out a quick description of how you feel after each fast and then sync that information with a mood calendar so that you can see your progress and trends over time. The app will also motivate you with reminders and tips to keep going.
The SparkPeople app boasts a community of other diet trackers and health and fitness professionals who can encourage you to eat well and learn how to make better choices. You can join in on challenges that will provide you with a little "healthy competition" (no pun intended). You can also scroll through other members' stories, watch fitness tutorials, ask questions on the message boards, and read the blog filled with more supportive content. This app also includes a vast food database with a barcode scanner, exercise journal, and meal planner.
MyFitnessPal integrates your personalized information to create an app conducive to your goals of weight loss, toning, weight maintenance, etc. As you log your exercise, you can see how the different types of workouts change your daily numbers depending on the duration and intensity.
Say you accidentally overdid your calories today. The app will give you an exercise recommendation of what you can do to get your day back on track. MyFitnessPal also connects to fitness classes available in your area so that you can know your exercise options and choose a calorie-burning activity that you enjoy.
Keeping track of calories when eating at home with the barcodes and brand names right in front of you is easier than ever. But, eating out, with meals that contain ingredients of unknown proportions, quickly becomes overwhelming and makes you want to either forget calorie tracking completely or never eat out again.
HealthyOut, however, simplifies the intricacies of eating out into a user-friendly calorie counting app. It will suggest items on the menu that fit within you calorie or macro goals and further narrow down your options to match your specific dietary restrictions (pescatarian, keto, paleo, etc.). Since it knows the menu, the app can easily add in all of the data so that you do not have to ask the waiter a million questions when ordering or input ingredients one by one after you finish eating.