MyFitnessPal
This app is one of the most sought-after apps in the food diary game.
The MyFitnessPal app boasts a food database comprising over two million
items. Indicate your current weight, what your target weight is,
height, age, activity level, exercise regimen, and how many pounds you
would like to shed per week, and the MyFitnessPal app will assist you
with staying on track toward your target weight loss goal. In addition
to logging what you eat and what you’ve had to drink throughout the day,
this app tracks your fitness regimen and provides support and
motivation from fellow users. The
MyFitnessPal app is available for free through iTunes and Google Play.
Fitocracy Macros
Macros is shorthand for
macronutrients—specifically the
nutrients that your body needs in copious amounts (hence the term
“macro”). Carbohydrates, fat, and protein are the holy trinity of the
macro diet. So, whether your journaling focus is on carbs, fat, or
protein this app will tell you how much of each nutrient you need. The
Macro Coach feature will also scan barcodes on food packages to find the
nutrition facts of your favorite foods for you.
The Fitocracy Macros app is available for free through iTunes.
Keto Diet Meal Plan
Weight loss is not the only reason the high-fat, low carb ketogenic
diet is touted as a diet actually worth its weight in results (no pun
intended)—research also suggests that the ketogenic diet may be an
effective regulation tool for improving your mental health by decreasing
symptoms of depression, anxiety, and ADHD. The Keto Diet Meal Plan app
provides you with meal plans within your carb limits. An expedient and
convenient feature of this app takes care of the tedious carb-counting
work of traditional dieting for you.
The Keto Diet Meal Plan app is available for free through iTunes.
Rise Up
Perhaps dieting, exercise, and better nutrition are not the only
concerns you have about keeping close tabs on how much you eat. Body
image is also a fundamental concern of those seeking to improve their
health. Rise Up is an app designed with eating disorder sufferers in
mind. Its basic principles of self-monitoring are derived from tenets of
cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). In addition to logging your meals,
you can add distinct details like: the location of where you ate, whom
you were with, and your mood at the time you ate.
The Rise Up app is available for free through iTunes and Google Play.
Yazio
Whether your desire is to lose weight, acquire more muscle, or to
just feel healthier, this app caters to the versatility of the average
individual’s weight loss goals. Utilize this app to track your daily
activities and manage your food diary. A built-in bar code scanner
enables you to efficiently search for the food you want to include in
your log.
The Yazio app is available for free through iTunes and Google Play.
See How You Eat
The rise of social media colossuses like Instagram, Twitter, and
Facebook has taught us two basic truths: (a) selfies are an indelible
feature of the modern digital landscape and (b) as a runner-up to taking
pictures of themselves, people love snapping and sharing photos of
food. The See How You Eat app was designed with visual learners in mind.
Using this app, you can see at a glance all of the food you have
consumed that day. Visual reminders of what you’ve had to eat on a given
day create a compelling argument for making healthier choices. This app
promotes healthy eating at regular intervals to boost energy and abate
impulsive food choices that can wreak havoc on your longterm nutritional
goals.
The See How You Eat app is available for free through iTunes and Google Play.
MyPlate
In addition to an online food diary, this app promotes a
comprehensive database of 625,000 foods and 1,500 fitnessrelated items
that enable users to monitor their daily calorie consumption as well as
how many calories they burn. Calories can be tracked over a specified
period and delineations of how those calories were acquired or burned
are also provided.
The MyPlate app is available for free through iTunes.
YouAte
This app takes the tedium, guilt, and ambiguity out of classic food
journaling. YouAte encourages users to steer their focus away from
traditional carb counting and calorie emphasis by simply taking a closer
look at the food choices they are making.
Maintaining a food journal on this app is as convenient as snapping a
photo of everything you munch on throughout the day. Reviewing
snapshots of the food they eat motivates users to consistently evaluate
whether the choices they’re making are really helping them to achieve
their goals.
The YouAte app is available for free through iTunes.
Pukapal
The Pukapal app is an imaginative and interactive spin on the
traditional food diary app. Users of this app “feed their puka” by
documenting and sharing their meals and by liking their favorite dishes.
Pukapal allows users to upload photos of their food to their timeline,
add captions, and earn rewards by sharing and inviting friends to join.
This collaborative app also offers weekly timeline suggestions to
motivate and inspire users to continue tracking their culinary
adventures.
The Pukapal app is available for free through iTunes.
My Food Diary
This app takes a holistic approach to helping you achieve your weight
loss goal. My Food Diary features seven different methods for logging
meals and a vast database of 80,000 expertly complied food items. If you
wish to share your account with a spouse, friend, or significant other
you can also log recipes that you and your companion commonly make. My
Food Diary provides color-coded nutrition reports daily and you can even
assemble your own graphs using personally selected data.
The My Food Diary is available for free to members of the MyFoodDiary website.
So, whether you are a snap-and-post food journal enthusiast or more
of the meticulous and traditional recordkeeper variety—maintaining a log
of what you eat just got easier, more convenient, more modern, and more
fun with the creation of these vastly popular food tracking
apps. Nutritional goals may vary from person to person, but rates of
achieving long-term success can grow exponentially when you have
resources and collaborative feedback at your fingertips.
Best Meal Planning Apps
Best Overall: Paprika
"Gives you tons of flexibility and customization for a small one-time fee instead of a monthly rate."
Best for Time Crunched Cooks: Mealime
"Create a profile, add your food preferences, then choose your week’s meals from recipes the app curates just for you."
Best for Weight Loss: Plate Joy
"Plate Joy’s highly personalized meal plans are a boon to those with specific dietary restrictions."
Best for Weight Loss Runner Up: Eat This Much
"The app will generate custom meal plans from its database using your preferences and calorie goals as a guide."
Best for Social Media Fans: PrePear
"With one click you could have a month’s worth of recipes from one of your favorite bloggers added to your calendar."
Best for Meal Preppers: MealPrepPro
"Recipes
are quick to make — just 10 to 30 minutes for four days’ worth of food —
and designed for you to make a big batch one day."
Best for Using Up Leftovers: Big Oven
"Easily
add ingredients from each recipe to a grocery list with the click of a
button, share the list and cross off what you buy."
Best if You're Budgeting: Meal Board
"Allows users to upload recipes from pretty much anywhere on the web, and categorize them how they see fit."
Resourced from:
The Spruce Eats
Living Safer