The best fitness and nutrition apps to help meet your 2015 goals
HOUSTON (KTRK) -- These free apps can get you on your way to reaching your New Year's Resolution weight.
BEST OVERALL HEALTH AND FITNESS APPS:
BOTH HAVE:
There are several fitness articles, healthy recipes, and tips to keep you motivated. There's a full library of videos and articles for exercise instruction, nutrition, and lifestyle habits.
They will both track your workouts with specialized and customized programs available based on different fitness levels.
Included in both free apps is a free community to join to have access to forms and specific groups, such as Over 40, Beginners, or gender specific.
DIFFERENCES:
SparkPeople has the added bonus of a food tracker and personalized meal plans available. There's no need to download a separate app to keep track of your daily food intake. It's all right there with one click to the site.
They also offer within their community, a section just for challenges, whether it's to lose weight or beat stress. You can join a community of like-minded individuals to keep you motivated and challenged.
Bodybuilding.com has a Store feature so you can order supplements at a reduced cost and pay minimal shipping. They keep track of your orders and remind you when it's time to place another order.
NUTRITION APPS:
My Fitness Pal (Apple, Android, Windows, and Blackberry)
Lose It! (Apple and Android)
Both apps operate the same way. You tell the app how much weight you want to lose and in what timeframe. It gives you a bank to work with each day. You input your food and exercise, and it will keep tabs for you.
The idea is that if you write it down, you will be more aware of what goes in your body and eat less, thus you will lose weight.
Both have the functions of scanning bar codes, copying previous meals and foods, and having a restaurant database at your fingertips.
My Fitness Pal has a more extensive restaurant database, but Lose It! provides great visual representations that help see what you're eating.
FITNESS APPS:
EveryMove (Apple and Android, coming soon for Windows)
Map My Fitness (Apple, Android, Windows)
EveryMove is a rewards-based app that turns your every fitness move into points that can earn you rewards from retailers and services. Most likely, you are already logging your every fitness accomplishment so why not get rewarded? EveryMove easily connects with Map My Fitness, My Fitness Pal, Nike apps, RunKeeper, Runtastic, Strava, and more so that you don't have to manually enter your workouts.
Map My Fitness does just that. It's a GPS-based fitness tracking app that allows users to manage over 600 activities. Whether you are rock climbing, running, or playing tennis, Map My Fitness records your distance, duration, pace, calories burned, and more.
