I’ve been on another of my fitness binges and thus have been scouring the app store for more apps that will help me (and now hopefully you as well) on my journey. Oh I’ve found some goodies indeed. This time around my goal was to be able to keep track of my food and workouts so I know just what I am putting inside me and how much I move on a daily basis. And of course something to help keep me on track and not slack off.

Well hold your horses lads, because I’ve found some awesome and FREE fitness apps to help you get fit. We’re going to go through the different apps one by one over the coming weeks to help you choose the best one(s) for your needs:

MyFitnessPal

First up we have a great app to keep track of calories. Now I know there is a debate going on about whether or not we should count calories and I usually fall in the ‘don’t count calories’ side of things. However, I still wanted to see how many calories I was eating a day. I use this app as a way to keep track of what I am eating (MyFitnessPal boasts that it’s the world’s largest nutritional database) and keep an eye of how many calories I’ve been putting into my system. I was surprised to learn that certain foods that I ate on a regular basis were really high in calories. Not that I’ve stopped eating them mind you (steak I’m talking about you), but now when I do eat a large, yummy steak I am aware that my next meal should be something lighter.

MyFitnessPal

With MyFitnessPal, you’re also allowed to sync different apps (we’ll talk about them at a later date) with it so that it can keep track of how much you’re working out and adjust your daily calorie intake accordingly. I cook at home a lot and with other calorie trackers it’s hard to calculate the calories of a home cooked meal, but with MyFitnessPal you can also enter your personal recipes and track that. Not to mention its awesome barcode reader. Oh how much time that saves. Just scan and viola! There is your item!

MyFitnessPal

Other than that if you don’t have any other fitness apps synced to your MyFitnessPal, then you can manually enter any workout you do that day and again, it recalculates your daily calorie intake. This is bloody brilliant because this app adjusts to your life and tells you in real time how many calories you should have a day rather than give you a number and expect you to stick to that no matter what.

MyFitnessPal

Since you enter your weight goals when you first login, the app makes sure it adjusts itself so that you are always on track. The more you work out, the more you can eat. Funny thing is, if I see that I don’t have many calories left for a nice dinner, I would take my ass out for a run or a workout. Yep! Moving so I can eat. It’s a lot less terrible than it sounds. I don’t think I have worked out so consistently, mainly because the calories I am allowed is quite low being a mostly sedentary person (you get to pick this when you login and can change it anytime) and being able to track myself this way motivates me.

This isn’t a quick fix, fast weight loss app. You will need to consistently enter all the data in order to get accurate readings (or as accurate as possible). So far in one month I have lost 1.5kg. Woot! Next up we’ll talk about Pacer app – the app for walking. Stay tuned!

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