Using an app to organize caloric intake puts us in total control of what we eat and how that impacts our flat stomach goals. “People think they're eating less until they start honestly tracking and the awareness is surprising,” says Dr. Oksana Aron, MD, of the Dr. Aron Medical Weight Loss Center in New York City. An average woman needs to eat about 2,000 calories per day to maintain her weight, but 1,500 calories to lose 1 pound each week. Game on! Try one of these 4 standouts to log and lose.
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MyFitnessPal
“I don’t care what kind of app you use as long as you use it,” says Philadelphia weight loss expert Dr. Charlie Seltzer. He really likes MyFitnessPal with its ginormous database of more than 5 million foods. Input your daily intake and the app will quickly calculate your calories using simple graphs to track your progress. “A lot of data in all of the apps is user generated so there’s always going to be inaccurate info regarding calories,” he says. The first few weeks you should crosscheck the numbers IRL to make sure they’re legit.
LoseIt!
Ding! The LoseIt! app just sent a reminder to log your afternoon snack. Thanks. You can set goals for weight and body fat plus sleep, hydration, daily exercise, body measurements, and nutrients all with one program. We like the barcode feature to expand our personal food database and the access to menus from our fave restaurants. The app just introduced Snap It!, a food photo tracking and analysis feature so calorie counting is even easier to track.
Noom
Tell Noom how much you want to lose and how quickly you want to get it done. The app will create a plan to achieve that goal and it use traffic lights to keep you on track. Food is categorized as green, yellow or red based on calorie counts. Noom recommends users are 30% green foods, 45% yellow foods and 25% red food. Log your meals and see what “color” food you need to eat more or less that day. Need motivation? Message your dedicated health coach and she’ll give you a push.
FatSecret
Find out how many calories you ate in one meal, as well as the whole day with FatSecret. The app also breaks down a meal’s carbs, protein and fat. Learn from your eating successes and failures with a monthly summary view, which shows the total calories consumed daily and the total averages for each month. We like the community aspect of FatSecret. It’s motivating to feel you’re all in this together when you can share tips with other members. You can also create or participate in a group challenge.
