The Best Apps for Weight Loss: Diet Plan Tools, Fitness Trackers, and More

There’s an app for that. A lot bonafide europe of them, in fact. The trick is finding one that best suits your goals, preferences, and needs.

“Weight loss apps can help people become aware of what they’re actually eating, as well as the number of calories they consume, which is helpful because we generally underestimate the number of calories in some foods,” says Deena Adimoolam, MD, an endocrinologist in Fair Lawn, New Jersey.

Best for Tracking Eating Habits

We should note that Everyday Health owns the Lose It! app — and for good reasons.

The best apps for weight loss let you chart your food intake and document exercise, says Reshmi Srinath, MD, the director of the Mount Sinai Weight and Metabolism Management Program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. These may sound like bare-bones goals, but Dr. Srinath says that Lose It! excels in this regard.

Lose It! takes a user-centric approach to goal-oriented weight loss plans. You can opt into higher-calorie days within an overall weekly calorie deficit, select intermittent fasting windows, and you can even pick goals like “I want to feel stronger.”

Best for Fasting

The Simple app is an intermittent fasting and weight loss app designed to help you understand your habits and teach you how to build healthier ones.

This app is great for novice and experienced fasters who want to eat healthy but don’t want to track calories. The simple design and features help you create a fasting schedule that works for you, and can be adjusted as needed.

“One particular feature of the Simple app that stood out to me is the neutral language around food. The nutrition analyzer promotes positive feedback and supports building a healthy relationship with food, which I find so much value in for promoting sustainable and healthy change,” says Katie Olzewski, a Chicago-based registered dietitian.

Best for Diet Plans

If you’re following a specific diet — keto, paleo, or high-protein — this is the app for you. First and foremost, it’s a calorie counter. It allows you to log food to stay on track with your macros and micronutrients so you avoid nutrient deficiencies while trying to lose weight.

If you’re following a form of intermittent fasting (IF), there’s also a timer to track your eating and fasting times. The app contains a barcode scanner so you can easily add packaged foods, a database for logging meals from restaurants, and a recipe logger so you can save your favorite meal ideas in one place.