Weight-Loss Apps for Food Lovers

By Megan O. Steintrager, Epicurious.com

Users of the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry know there are hundreds of apps that promise to help you lose weight easily and quickly. Unfortunately, many health and fitness apps assume that you're willing to live on either fast food or cabbage; we're not sure which is worse. To find the best diet apps for the typical Epicurious member-somebody who loves to eat and generally prefers food made from scratch with few processed ingredients-we tested some of the most popular weight-loss apps in the Apple and Android markets, many of which are also available for the BlackBerry. (Some apps have iPad versions, and as tablets in general gain popularity, more apps will no doubt be developed for the platform.) Of course, you can already search thousands of healthy recipes using the Epicurious Recipes & Shopping List app, but for those who want to go the extra mile for weight loss, we deemed the five apps in this chart to be the cream-or perhaps the skim milk-of the crop.

See also: Our Ultimate Grilling and Barbecue Guide

How We Tested
We created "EpiGal," a 40-year-old woman who's 5' 4" and weighs 150 pounds. She has a relatively sedentary lifestyle (a 9-to-5 office job) but is willing to exercise a few times a week. Using Self's Happy Weight calculator, we arrived at a target weight of 130, which she'd like to get down to by losing one pound per week-generally considered a reasonable rate by doctors, nutritionists, and dieters who want to avoid being ravenous, listless, and grouchy. For a sample day's meal for our test subject, we followed day one of Epicurious' Diet Solution. The plan-developed by nutritionist Dana Lilienthal-calls for cutting 500 calories from the typical 2,000-calorie diet, for a total daily caloric intake of approximately 1,500 calories, which translates to about one pound dropped per week.

See the complete app guide at Epicurious.com


Calorie Counter and Diet Tracker by MyFitnessPal

Available for: iPhone, Android, BlackBerry
Cost: Free
Grade: B+
The Bottom Line: Much of the data, including foods, measurements, calorie counts, and exercise stats, is user-submitted, which means it's plentiful but prone to human error. You have lots of choices, but just not always the ones you're looking for.

Ease of use
Simple, clean design; easy to navigate between days and meals.

Worst drawbacks
Food measurement choices are maddening-you have to hunt around for the right combination of food and amount, instead of just selecting the food and then the amount. For example, we couldn't select tablespoons of lime juice or cups of peanuts, so we had to convert to ounces.


MyNetDiary Calorie Counter PRO

Available for: iPhone, Android, BlackBerry
Cost: $3.99
Grade: B
The Bottom Line: All aspects of the app-its language, imagery, and data-entry tools-are very utilitarian.


Ease of use
Weight-loss goals, target dates, and daily calorie goals are easy to choose and change. But the app layout is not intuitive. We had to dig around to find out how to search foods, scan bar codes, and save favorite foods.

Worst drawbacks
The app's instructions are poorly written and hard to follow, making it difficult to use without lots of trial and error.

Lose It!

Available for: iPhone
Cost: Free
Grade: B
The Bottom Line: The simplicity of this good-looking app is its greatest asset and its biggest downside. The screens aren't overcrowded with data and choices, but sometimes we'd like more data and choices.

Ease of use
Clean and streamlined, this app has by far the most attractive interface, with user-friendly scroll bars, entry boxes, and buttons that make it easy to navigate and enter data.

Worst drawbacks
Of the limited selection of preprogrammed foods available, most are packaged foods or from chain restaurants.

See also: Blue-Ribbon Chicken Dishes

SparkPeople Diet & Food Tracker

Available for: iPhone, Android, BlackBerry
Cost: Free
Grade: B
The Bottom Line: This app functions best as a companion to the SparkPeople Web site, but the app and site together make for a friendly diet companion with plenty of community support on the site.

Ease of use
Relatively easy to navigate, and the overall tone of the app is very positive and encouraging, with messages like, "The more you exercise, the more calories you burn!" and "You have surpassed your calories-burned goal for today."

Worst drawbacks
The initial account setup is buggy and required multiple attempts. The app selection of "real" food is spotty, with a bias toward packaged and chain foods. App does not allow you to go back in time, although you can do this on the site.

Tap & Track Calorie Counter

Available for: iPhone
Cost: $3.99
Grade: B-
The Bottom Line: This no-fuss app works well offline, but it's best for people who eat a lot of brand name/chain foods or know the calorie amounts for their meals and just want to "quick add" calories and exercise.

Ease of use
You can browse or search for foods in a number of ways, but there's no search function for exercise or brand-name foods, which means you have to scroll through a long alphabetical list. Woe to you if you're trying to find "yoga," "Zumba," or "Wendy's."

Worst drawbacks
Proposed daily calorie allotment of 1,194 for "EpiGal" seems quite low. And the User Guide/FAQ is so poorly written that it leads to confusion rather than clarity. For example, your "food score" is prominently tracked in the app, but it's unclear what that is. Perhaps it refers to Weight Watchers points? The FAQ isn't very clear, nor is the discussion thread on the app's Facebook page.


Criteria for Picking Diet Apps

Our focus was on the top calorie-counting apps that work with any diet. Therefore, we omitted apps like Fast Food Calorie Counter that narrowly focus on chain-restaurant food, as well as apps that simply track weight or body-mass index. We also skipped the many points-counting apps designed for the Weight Watchers diet, but downloading one of those makes a lot of sense if you're following that popular plan.

Other Apps to Consider 

In addition to our five highest-rated apps, fitness enthusiasts might also want to consider Calorie Tracker by LiveStrong or DailyBurn's Calorie, Workout, and Fitness Companion. Both have excellent workout options, but the apps were ultimately too buggy, dependent on the companion Web sites, and rife with up-selling of add-ons to make the final cut for our list. We also nixed SimpLabs' Diet2Go because it doesn't have a robust calorie-counting function, but if you're simply looking to eat healthier, this app's push-to-phone daily menu suggestions are good if you select carefully (try the Mediterranean Diet, not one of the many fad or cleanse options). And finally, Lose Weight with Andrew Johnson is a popular motivational app based on the premise that, as the iTunes description says, "Many weight problems start in the mind."

Prices and availability subject to change.


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