Five Calorie-Counting Apps to Help You Achieve Your Goals

1. MyFitnessPal

Perhaps one of the more popular calorie-counting apps on the market, MyFitnessPal is a free app for those who want to track their macros (protein, carbs and fat) and gauge their calorie intake easily. Users can opt to scan food barcodes using QR technology to quickly access nutrient values. MyFitnessPal’s database has over 11 million foods, including brand-names. You can also calculate the nutritional content for your recipes. Set your daily calorie + weight goals and reminders to log your meals with this app to remain on track with your fitness journey.

Premium users can see which foods rank highest in nutrients, set calorie goals by meal, export their data to CSV files, view macronutrients by gram or percentage, set macro goals and other exclusive content.

Exercise entry is also an option with MyFitnessPal, but frequent users and nutrition experts recommended being aware of calorie burn estimates on apps, which like cardio machines, might not always be completely accurate. The app also has recipes, blogs, forums and integrates with the Under Armour fitness apps as well as the running app, RunKeeper. You can also add friends to receive and give support as you reach your fitness goals.

2. Carb Manager—Low Carb and Keto Diet Tracker

Are you on the keto or low-carb diet? Then you should check out Carb Manager, a free app. For those who want “keto made easy,” you have access to over a million foods to track. Along with these foods are over 1,000 low-carb, high-fat recipes, 10,000 user-submitted recipes and 350,000 web recipes. The app also allows you to create your own shopping list, devise your own meal plan and connect to other apps like Fitbit, Google Fit and Apple Health. You can also learn about the keto diet and popular keto foods. Their advanced features include tracking ketones, blood sugar, insulin usage and much more.

3. Lifesum Health App – Get Healthy and Lose Weight

Lifesum is for those seeking to lose weight. They offer a variety of diet plans such as low-carb and keto and can recommend a diet for you based on their six-question quiz about your dietary preferences and lifestyle. Their three-week weight loss program provides a shopping list and meal planner and their Life Score feature helps you keep your goals in sight and gives you the advice to adjust your regimen based on your daily routine. You can also track your macronutrients, sync with health apps like Apple Health, Fitbit and Google. You also have access to their database that contains hundreds of recipes. Lifesum also features a helpful meal planner which makes staying on track and sticking to food options that align with your goals even easier. According to the developers, premium users are four times more likely to reach their fitness goals.

4. Yazio – Lose Weight Fast

A new free weight loss app, Yazio encourage mindfulness and helps bring health and wellness to the forefront of the user’s mind to promote sustainable weight loss. The app does more than just allow you to log calories and track food, but also helps users increase or decrease activity levels. Premium members can also take advantage of the app’s coaching system to receive daily nutritional advice. Yazio centers less around low-carb lifestyles specifically, but still features a carb chart front and center on the status page.

5. MyNetDiary

This app features a searchable database with almost a million food entries for users. Those using MyNetDiary can also utilize their website to log their entries. It boasts itself as the quickest of food data entry apps on the market, scanning barcodes with ease and retrieving nutritional info almost immediately. My Net Diary also has a separate Diabetes Tracking app that allows users to track blood sugar, A1c, insulin, cholesterol, as well as other custom trackers. The app helps users see the big picture of their health. MyNetDiary also has a community of users who share videos of their success stories to help people keep up the motivation. Also, if you need help creating a plan and have a target weight, MyNetDiary can craft a balanced diet plan for you. 

Thankfully, in this day and age, there is no shortage of helpful information or tools to equip ourselves with to live optimally and make the best choices for maintaining our health. Carb and calorie-counting apps are no different and there’s one out there for you and your goals.