Our top five fitness apps

Article Date: 29th February 2016

Getting fit, eating well and giving up smoking all take organisation and dedication. With this in mind there are a number of helpful fitness apps out there that can lend a hand as you work to improve your lifestyle. Downloadable on both smart phones and tablets and available for both iOS from iTunes and Android from the Play Store, here’s five of our favourite fitness apps

MyFitnessPal

MyFitnessPal is a free calorie counting app that incorporates a food database of over 5 million foods. After having inputted some personal information, you can set your goal weight and how much you want to lose each week.

The app then creates a custom plan for you, providing you with a calorie goal to work towards and a diary where you add your food, exercise and water intake. This allows users to gain insights into where their calories and nutrients are coming from and how to make healthier choices.

Couch to 5K

Get off the couch and get running with the Couch to 5K training app. This app is designed to help people who want to get fit get off the couch and ready to run their first 5km race in nine weeks. During that time, a virtual coach will help you through sessions lasting just 20 to 30 minutes that you must complete three times a week.

Users have a choice of four different motivating virtual coaches—Johnny Dead, Constance, Billie or Sergeant Block – all with different characters.

Foodswitch UK

Packaged foods can be surprisingly high in salt, fat and sugars, so the FoodSwitch app can help make your grocery shopping healthier and enable you to make better food choices for you and your family.

Containing the nutritional information for over 90,000 food products in the UK, the app allows you to scan barcodes of packaged foods with your camera and see what’s in the food you’re eating. It also offers options for similar foods that are healthier based on established nutrition criteria.

Smoke Free

Smoke Free is a stop smoking app that includes over 20 different, evidence-based, techniques to help people become – and stay – smoke free. See how much money you’ve saved, how many cigarettes you’ve not smoked, how long you’ve been smoke free, how much life you’ve regained and how your health is improving.

You can also use the app to log your cravings, get tips on dealing with them and map where they most commonly appear.

Seven

Seven features a series of 7-minute workouts that require no more than a chair, a wall, and your own body weight to complete.

Free with in-app purchases, each exercise is based on scientific studies to provide the maximum benefit of working out regularly in the shortest time possible. It also tries to make sure you keep it up. If you miss three workouts in a month your progress resets to zero and you must start again.

There are many other fitness apps out there that are very useful. If you have used an app that has helped you let us know on social media, we would love to hear about it.