By Stephanie Scott
hen it comes to meeting your health and fitness goals for 2022, the most powerful motivator may be right in your pocket. Fitness and exercise tracking apps are specialized programs that you can download on a phone, tablet, or computer. They track calories, give recommendations to improve nutrition, and help record exercise achievements – and health experts note they can be a wise way to put your smartphone to good use.
“One of the biggest reasons people give up is they don’t have the right tools, so they get overwhelmed, and they quit after a few weeks,” said Sheri Shon, a nationally recognized fitness professional. “When you have the right tools and the right motivation, you have a much better chance of success.”
Here are some of the best fitness and exercise tracking apps, all offering free subscriptions with additional premium options.
Best Overall: MyFitnessPal
One of the first calorie and activity tracking applications boasts over 19 million users for a reason – it offers a great “one-stop-shop” for calorie and activity tracking. After setting up a profile, the MyFitnessPal app will evaluate your goals and provide personalized calorie and activity goals. Features include more than one million food items to track (including barcode scanning of packaged foods), daily exercise and food diaries, and a supportive online community.
Best for Monitoring Nutrition: Fooducate
Tracking calories is great for weight loss, but for those with nutritional goals in mind, Fooducate is an amazing tool to help you understand just what you are getting out of each meal. In addition to easy-to-use exercise and calorie trackers, Fooducate brings in an educational element and helps you analyze how your choices affect your health. The free app syncs with Android and Apple health apps. The pro version boasts an expansive restaurant menu catalog to educate yourself before dining out.
Best Fitness-on-the-Go: Daily Workouts Fitness Trainer
The free Daily Workouts application provides more than 100 exercises, broken down into 5 or 10-minute workouts. The workout requires little to no equipment and can be selected by goals or style of workout. The workouts are designed to meet a wide variety of skill levels and are demonstrated by certified personal trainers. The application records your calories burned and workout progress and integrates to the Apple Health app, no additional fitness watch or tracker required.