Are you tired of pushing your limit with no visible results? Take a stroll with us through some of the best weight loss apps of 2020 that’ll help melt it off. The current US adult obesity rate alone crossed the 40% mark, sitting at 42.4% for the first time, with most people working towards losing it. Why is losing weight so difficult, and why do people who lose weight end up gaining it back? The answer to which lies in an unhealthy lifestyle.
The simplest way which helps with weight loss is by adopting a lifestyle that is focused sustainably on healthy eating habits and regular exercises, among other physical activities. The apps listed below help you keep track of every impacting factor from your calorie consumption to the number of steps you take each day. They also provide you with an ideal diet plan and reminders for your exercise routine. Take a look at these apps and their shortcomings and choose the one that matches you and your goals.
Contents
MyFitnessPal
Most weight loss problems revolve around bad eating habits and unaccounted calorie intake. This app logs your food, keeps track of your calorie intake, and further integrates all that information into a weight loss strategy. It has a nutritional database of about 11 million different foods, including restaurant dishes, to take care of all your irresistible cravings. It then breaks down the nutrients and calories of everything you consumed, generating reports in the form of pie charts(for better understanding) elaborating your carbohydrate, fat, and protein intake as well.
To keep you encouraged, the app offers a message board feature, on which you can share healthy recipes, tips, and success stories with other users and vice versa. It also has a barcode scanner for packaged food nutritional information and an extensive online recipe booklet for healthy meal ideas. MyFitnessPal also syncs with apps like Fitbit and Jawbone to adjust portion sizing and meal plans according to the calories you burn with each workout session.
Drawbacks-
The database values of nutrition may not be accurate as other users enter most of it. Choosing between multiple options and adjusting portion sizes on the app may come across as time-consuming and tiresome.
Noom
This app helps you make sustainable lifestyle changes to lose weight. Based on a simple heath and lifestyle-related questionnaire along with your weight loss goals, Noom allows a calorie budget for its users every day. It also has a food database of 3.5 million food items used to track your weight and food intake.
The app includes virtual health coaching, teaching its users helpful eating habits to stay healthy. At the same time, quizzes and motivational reading are also available daily for engagement purposes. Log your exercise drill, BP, sugar levels, weight, etc., and find support through live chats and community groups within the app. The color-coded system works hand in hand to encourage a nutrient-dense diet.
Drawbacks-
This app has a Gold subscription fee of $5.99/month or $34.95/year for its users to access all the services the app has to offer, even though the app is free to download.
WW
WW or Weight Watchers is a company that offers multiple weight loss goals and monitoring services. Following your weight loss goals, the app assigns daily calorie intake using its SmartPoints feature, where users aim for points with assigned diets and can easily track their progress using graphs and detailed reports within the app.
Several studies ascertained the positive impact WW has on its users’ health and weight loss, in contrast to people who don’t use it. Users can also participate in the in-person meeting of WW held across the US or choose to stay digital entirely.
The app features an activity tracker to log your food and track your weight along with other fascinating picks like weekly workshops, live 24/7 coaching, reward structures, social networking with other individuals, and a barcode scanner to ease your food entries. Another exciting aspect of the app is its 8000 recommended recipes for the users to choose from, based on their preferences and meal timings.
Drawbacks-
The app needs users to pay a $3.22/week subscription fee, which can rise to $12.69/week with additional digital coaching charges.
Fitbit
You cannot lose weight with just a maintained diet. Regular exercise and physical activity are just as important, and this wearable Fitbit device helps you track your exercise routine with its activity tracker throughout the day. Fitbit syncs all your information from the number of steps you took, your heart rate, food and water intake, nutrition information, calorie intake, weight goals, and even sleeping patterns. This information is all accessible to its users on the Fitbit app.
The app also delivers notifications on how close you are to your fitness goals and allows you to set reminders and alarms for exercising. Once you reach a specific goal, you are presented with awards to encourage you further on your weight loss journey. Fitbit’s strong community also allows you to connect with other Fitbit users and share your progress and participate in several challenges. Fitbit is similar to other devices in its league like Apple Watch, Google fit, and jawbone. Therefore, you might want to compare benefits and prices before deciding which one suits you the best.
Drawbacks-
Although free, the app contains in-app purchases and a subscription fee of $9.99/month or $79.99/year. Furthermore, to avail of features like heart rate monitoring, step counts, and exercise manager, the user needs to own a Fitbit device, which can get quite pricey.
Fooducate
We all have been near a food aisle in a grocery store, confused while choosing the right product for our weight loss goals, navigating our way through its nutritional information for what seems like forever. The app features a nutrition scanner that can scan the barcode for over 250,000 different food items and provide you with detailed information on its nutritional value and ingredients while also cautioning you about all the unhealthy components of the product, which people generally overlook. It then also suggests healthy alternatives for the product you wanted. The app includes tools to track your food and exercise routine. It is also a genuinely reliable app as it tends to keep your allergies in mind while suggesting products.
Drawbacks-
While this app is free for the most part, certain features like low carb diets, allergy tracking, etc., can only be unlocked for a fee starting from $0.99, which can scale as high as $89.99. Other fitness apps that work equally well include apps like ‘Lose it,’ ‘FatSecret,’ ‘Oh She Glows, ‘Sparkpeople’ among many others with several meal plans, personal trainers, exercise routines, and extensive food database, and activity trackers.
Conclusion
There are plenty of apps available today to bring you closer to your weight loss goals and a healthy lifestyle. These health apps monitor everything you do and consume in a day and make you aware of how your choices and habits impact your health and how minor lifestyle changes can be life-changing for many individuals. They also keep you motivated with community support, a points system, progress charts, and periodical stats on how close you are to your goals.
While these are a few benefits of using a fitness app, some people might either feel burdened with a task or find the whole process simply overwhelming, time-consuming, and rough for their mental health, and that it is entirely okay. These apps can sometimes feel like a lot if you want to sail on a smooth boat forward and take one step at a time with the choices you make. You also don’t need to stand by society’s expectations, risk your mental health and overdo it. Being healthy is a choice you make, and you decide how to implement those in your life. But if you are serious about shedding some pounds or keeping yourself accountable to living a healthy lifestyle, you should definitely check out these apps and find the one that works the best for you.
