There’s no longer an excuse to sabotage your diet when away from home: Smart phones go with you everywhere, and can even be used to encourage, educate, and hold you accountable to your fitness goals. So what tools are worth the hype? We share the eight downloads you’ll want to check out before you start pursuing those ambitious diet objectives.
1. Lose
It!
Compatiblity: iPhone and iTouch
Cost: Free
Perhaps one of the most simple and easy-to-maintain applications,
Lose It! is a basic calorie counter, fitness tracker, and food diary
with few bells and whistles. While it contains a wide array of commonly
consumed foods, those who use their own recipes or buy new items at the
packaged food market will want to add those into their favorites list
for easy future reference. Daily exercises include common tasks like
yard work, yoga, and walking, and the app gives you the ability to
adjust your intensity level to more accurately reflect how many calories
you actually burned.
2. Go Pedometer
Compatibility: iPhone and iTouch
Cost $1.99
Forget about the clip-on pocket pedometer. This handy app allows your smart phone to track your every step (literally). Placed in your pocket, on a belt, or in your hand, Go Pedometer automatically stops counting when you stop, measures distance, and calculates calories burned.
3. SparkPeople Food and Fitness Tracker
Compatibility: iPhone and iTouch
Cost: Free
Having received rave reviews from members for years now, the SparkPeople online community is becoming an effective (and supportive) way to meet any weight loss or fitness goal. This corresponding free diet and food tracker gives you just a little more of that group goal-setting while in the car or at work, and it seamlessly syncs with a user online account. (No need to enter your info when you get home!)
4. Pandora
Compatibility: Android, Blackberry, iPhone, iTouch, Palm, Windows Mobile
Cost: Free
Not necessarily new to the market (most people have been using Pandora in some form for years), this custom jukebox-to-go can be a fantastic motivational tool for anyone looking to shape up or slim down. If you’re tired of being in the “zone” only to have your workout interrupted by a less-than-peppy tune, just set your custom Pandora channel to something upbeat (techno, maybe?) and let your body move to the music.
5. Eat This, Not That
Compatibility: iPhone and iTouch
Cost: $4.99
One of the more pricey apps on our list of favorites, this program is based on the best-selling book by the same name. When counting calories isn’t enough, you can depend on Eat This, Not That to give you the ugly truth about the foods you encounter every day–and offer you a guilt-free alternative to help you feel full (not deprived.) In addition to giving a grade for almost every product available at your grocery store, there are fun quizzes which test you on your knowledge of 13,000 popular items at chains like Chili’s, Whataburger, Hooters, and more!
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