10 Best Fitness Apps

Look, exercising on a consistent basis and eating properly are difficult tasks to maintain over the long term. We all need a little help in our attempt to stay healthy and reach our fitness goals and that help can come from friends and workout partners.

However, we can also gain some assistance through our pocket computers (what most people call phones) and the numerous fitness apps out there. These apps offer motivation, track progress, manage your fitness and diet, offer multiple workouts, and allow you to customize their programs to meet your specific needs. Most are free to get started and offer for-pay premium services. Here’s our list of the 10 best fitness apps…

• 8fit is an app that offers both fitness and weight loss workouts and advice. It provides you with over 350, mostly body weight workouts of 5 to 20 minutes as well as custom diet and workout plans. It also provides you with professional advice, reminders and suggestions. 8fit is free with premium services that unlock all workouts, custom meal plans and grocery lists, among other things.
• MyFitnessPal has it all. It tracks your calorie intake and calories burned, offers over 350 cardio and strength workouts, allows you to connect with friends, logs and tracks your workout progression, contains a database of over 11 million foods, and offers  numerous customization options. Of course, some of these features are only available with the premium service that costs about $10 per month…well worth the cost.
• Charity Miles is a unique app in that it allows you to raise money for charity for every mile you walk, run or bike. After you’ve chosen your charity (or charities, you can donate to more than one) Charity Miles, through its corporate donors, will donate $0.25 for every mile you walk or run and/or $0.10 for every mile you bike. The app tracks your mileage and money raised and you can join or create a fundraising team. Another great feature is that the app is free.
• FitOn is for those that like at-home workouts led by celebrity trainers. Its strength is the variety that FitOn offers from HIIT classes to stretching to yoga to guided meditation. FitOn also allows you to choose the intensity level and time length of your workouts. You can also sign up for classes with your friends and message them during the class. The app is free, and an added fee allows you to receive customized meal plans and recipes.
• Sworkit, for a monthly fee, gives you access to certified trainers, over 400 workouts, 800 exercises and personalized goals to include weight loss, strength, and/or improved flexibility. Sworkit also offers workouts from novice to expert. You can also choose the type of workout you’re after, from cardio to flexibility and it allows you to vary the length of your workout.
• Daily Workouts Fitness Trainer is perfect for budget conscious (it’s free) people looking for an easy-to-use, at-home fitness app. Developed by a fitness trainer, this app offers easy to follow video instructions, randomized workouts that vary in length from 5 to 30 minutes and it’s great for those new to the fitness app craze.
• Fooducate does what its name implies, it educates you about the food you’re putting in your body. It offers a food tracker, community-based support recipes and diet tips. However, its most popular feature is its barcode scanner that gives you detailed information on any food item scanned, to include whether you, specifically, should be eating it, a letter grade and a complete nutritional breakdown. It also informs you of potential nutrients missing from your diet. The app is free to download and use and offers various in-app purchases.
• 7 minute workout is exactly that, a short workout for those who don’t have hours to devote to training. It offers pre-workout audio, video and text demonstrations and requires no equipment. This beginner-friendly app offers three types of workouts: basic, ab-focused and high-intensity. It’s the perfect app for when you just can’t seem to fit a workout into your day.
• Yoga Studio is like having a full yoga library in your pocket. It offers over 70 yoga and meditation classes that focus on strength, balance, flexibility, relaxation or any combination of the four. It provides in-class commentaries on over 250 poses to include their benefits, modifications, variations and cautions all for a small fee.
• Couch to 5k is for those who, well, desire to get off the couch and run all 3.1 miles of a 5K in 9 weeks. It’s focused on those new to running and offers 20 to 30-minute workouts three times per week. The app tracks your pace and distance progression in its graphs section and allows you to share it with others. It also offers you the choice of four virtual coaches to provide that much needed motivation.

If you’ve been looking for a bit of motivation to help achieve your fitness goal, there’s an ‘app for that’ just for you as evidenced by the above summaries. By all means, check out those that look promising and good luck out there.