Best Fitness Apps

I have downloaded, used, and am now ready to review! Two categories- food and exercise apps. There are tons of free food tracker and exercise applications ready to go in your app store. By tons I mean 224 free food trackers and 2131 exercise apps. I am about to take away your confusion- poof- and turn your phone into your personal assistant to build that lean, mean, sexy machine.

FOOD- Starting out with the food trackers, because everyone loves food. To have this be a tell all on the good and bad of fitness apps, I need to go full disclosure. I think food trackers are an amazing tool, that you should use daily, ween yourself off, and bring back if needed. What do I mean? They are great when you are starting, it allows you to see what you are putting into your body. What foods give you the most bang for you buck and what the amount of food you should be eating looks like. Once you reign in the intake, I think you should ween yourself off the app and start to eat mindfully. Learn your hunger and full cues. Learn what portions look like. Different topic, for a different day but worth mentioning as it is EASY to get numbers crazy and to stop listening to your body.

Back on track...
WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER- MyNetDiary
This is my personal favorite, I like many of its features and it takes the grand prize by a hair to myfitnesspal(which is also fantastic).
What Can I Do with it? With MyNetDiary you can track your meals, exercise, WATER, measurements, and vitamins. It also give you a tab for daily notes. Daily notes is a great place when you move towards mindful eating to take track of any medical conditions(blood sugar, meds, blood work), how you feel during your workout, your mood while eating, what you did that day, etc, etc.

What will it do for me? MyNetDiary has an charts tab. When you click this tab you can choose what you would like to see displayed as a graph(weight, nutrients, calories, exercise, BMI, BMR, and measurements) and the time period you would like to see in the chart. It is very cool to track your progress and also see how the weeks you did not feel so hot relates to your progress or lack there of. Under the Meals tab MyNetDiary will show a breakdown of macronutrients and micronutrients for the food you consumed that day. In the exercise tab it will give you an estimation of calories burned for each activity you perform based on you age, gender, weight, and height. My favorite is the analysis tab. The analysis tab will summarize your balance of calories for the day, taking into consideration both food intake and energy expenditure during exercise.It will tell you your target number of calories and how close you were to this goal. It then gives you an estimation of how many pounds you are on track to lose a week and month if you were consistent with this intake. Then onto the day's highlights! It will give you a thumbs up or down as well as a short blurb about your calories burned, trans fat/sodium/cholesterol/saturated fat, fiber, and breakfast.

Anything Else?
MyNetDiary does also have its own community as well as a way to link into social media. The energy being part of a group provides is always motivating. To share and hear experiences, both failures and successes, such as yours makes you feel, well normal and also inspired. There is also a MyNetDiaryPro that costs 3.99 and comes with a food scanner. You can the bar code and all of the foods nutritional data will enter into the app, huge time saver!

Take Home- It is easy to use and pleasing to the eye. It provides a important data as well as a way to track things such as body measurements, supplements, water, and micro/macronutrients.

EXERCISE- I want to mention two. For a couple of reasons. If you want to say I am indecisive and the title of the blog is deceiving, I accept that criticism with open arms. Nike Training Club and FitStar(even though they keep sending me emails with the subject- Feeling a little pear shaped?). Why? Both have options! For Free! They ask what your goal is. They ask what your current level of fitness is. They both have demonstration or live videos as well as have commentary reminding you of form(huge) with verbal cues.

As for differences FitStar is made by Tony Gonzalez who has a tight end, I mean IS a tight end for the Falcons. It is geared to both men and woman. After each exercise it asks you if it was too easy, just right, or too hard. This is a great idea as it is feedback that a trainer would ask. However, it is tedious. You may think, don't be silly Meghan, your just complaining! When you start to get into a workout rhythm however, you need to stop go over to your device, click on the option, and then it gives you a break and shows you a demo for the next exercise. It makes the workout routine a bit choppy for my liking. That said, Tony has a smooth voice and makes up for it in charm by telling me how challenging the moves are and how good I am doing :) He better start sucking up a bit more though if he plans on calling me pear shaped all the time!

Nike Training Club's biggest downfall is that it is marketing towards woman. Every workout is a woman. The colors scream girl. The free badges you unlock- WHERE MY LADIES AT? I have no problem with woman specific programs (although I believe woman can do the same exercises as men and in general it is just a marketing scheme) EXCEPT that NTC has great workouts. Female or male, these workouts are challenging. If you are a guy or heck a lady that is advanced just use a heavier weight. If you can use the 20s, don't go near the 10s!

Take Home- These programs both offer A LOT for FREE. Fitstar does have upgrades within the app, while NTC does have a shopping area for Nike goods in there app(clever). Last but not least, they can both be done IN HOME(barring you have a pair of dumbbells for NTC).


Try these out and let me know what you think!
As always stay happy, healthy, and fit. #whatisyourfitnessgoal? www.fosterfitness.org