Apps to Help You Get in Shape

Start your journey to fitness and well-being with some advice from the experts. Get a health tip from the Cleveland Clinic, a world-renowned medical center, to start every day right. Short articles on food, body, and mind are sure to help inspire and maintain your new healthy lifestyle.

Next, find an exercise program that will work for you by consulting iFitness Pro. You can browse exercises (including cardio and stretches) for different body areas, muscles, and equipment, and then add them to your own workout, or use one of the many preset workouts. Each exercise includes photos, a description, and a video, so you're sure to get it right. Even better, iFitness Pro will track and graph your exercises, syncs via iCloud, and includes a calorie counter as well as body weight, body mass index, and measurement trackers! It's a great all-in-one solution for anyone hesitant to dive into the more targeted offerings.

If you want a comprehensive solution, look no further than FitnessBuilder. The app includes tons of workout ideas and videos. There are so many workouts available that you can sort them by location (e.g., gym, hotel room, outside) or goal (e.g., flexibility, cardio, bodybuilding, weight loss, yoga). FitnessBuilder also includes health and fitness-related news, statistics and logging, and even the ability to ask a personal trainer a question from within the app! Be aware that the FitnessBuilder comes with a free month of premium subscription, but thereafter you will need to pay a monthly fee to access all of its features.

Of course, there are some great, comprehensive apps that don’t require a subscription fee. Exercise.com has many exercises, routines, and tools to help you stay on track for free. The only drawback is that it's not as well-designed as some others and has more loading time.

If you need more motivation for your new fitness routine, Nike Training Club allows you to use your celebrity obsessions as motivation! As you work out, you can earn points to unlock the ability to view and use celebrity’s workouts. Although the app is ostensibly for women, its considerable content should be useful for men as well. Nike Training Club includes several pre-set workouts labelled based on your goals, videos, exercises, and the ability to create your own workouts.

One key to achieving your fitness goals is to regularly change your exercise routine (the technical term is periodization). That's where British Military Fitness, and its eight hours of boot camp workouts, comes in. The app has a randomizer feature that mixes and matches exercises, so you’ll never do the same workout twice. Once you choose the duration, intensity, and type of workout (cardio, muscular, or both), the app's instructors and helpful videos talk you through the entire ordeal.

Navy Seal Fitness, on the other hand, offers an entirely different perspective, although from a similarly militaristic background. The app is more like a textbook than an instructional aid, but at least it's a good textbook. In fact, each chapter of the app covers a specific topic related to fitness, from cardio to stretching to nutrition. For some, a reference guide may be an essential component for starting something new, and you won't find a better one than Navy Seal Fitness.

Not everyone likes exercise classes and gym workouts—some people just want to run. If you're new to running, Ease into 5K's training regimen will start you from scratch and still have you running five kilometers in just nine weeks. The app builds gradually to the 5K goal by using specific intervals of walking and running. The app interrupts your music to prompt you to switch, so you don't even have to pay attention! It also logs your runs so you have a record of your progress.

Would you run more if zombies were chasing you? Probably! That's the concept behind Zombies Run, a unique fitness app that hopes putting you into the story will make you run faster. Big fans of The Walking Dead or those who normally get bored running may find the extra motivation they need to run by imagining they are running from zombies.

If running and gym workouts aren't your thing, why not try picking up your bike? B.iCycle uses your iPhone’s GPS to track your bicycle rides. The app records distance, speed, altitude, time, and calories burned. You can even see real-time progress on the app’s map!

Sometimes you just need a little extra motivation to get moving. If winning prizes for working out will kick you into high gear, then Nexercise is for you. You'll earn points, achievements, and real coupons and gift cards. All that and a healthy waistline!

If none of these workout programs seems appealing, go in the opposite direction with some yoga. Both experienced and new yogis should find All-In Yoga a great guide for setting up a yoga routine at home. The app will create a workout based on your inputs, and also includes preset workouts, poses, and the ability to create your own workout. If you exhaust the initial offerings, you can also subscribe for $20/ year and get access to more content.

After you find your preferred exercise routine, it's time to tackle the dreaded next step: dieting. Calorie counting and food journals are proven to help people lose weight and eat better, and thankfully they've gone high tech. Instead of logging your meals in a notebook, you can let Lose It! do the work for you. Once you enter in your current stats and your goal weight, Lose It! tells you how many calories you need to eat in a day to achieve your goal. The app then helps you stick to the prescribed number by making it easy to find information on the calories in many food products. Lose It even adds up your calories and subtracts your exercise, which means no more math! Colorful food icons and spinning wheels make it downright game-like, taking the drudgery out of dieting once and for all.

If you find that Lose It! doesn't give you enough direction for what to eat, try intelli-Diet App. Once you enter information about what you like to eat and your lifestyle, intelli-Diet creates a personalized meal plan for you. The app even reminds you when to eat and makes sure you get your daily intake of water. You can also track your weight loss from within the app.

Once you start coating calories, you may find your cooking needs a makeover as well. Good Food Healthy Recipes has healthy recipes for every meal and situation, which makes planning meals much easier. However, Good Food Healthy Recipes isn't specifically designed for weight loss, so be sure to look at the calorie information for each recipe before you begin cooking.

If you need some more healthy recipes for your new lifestyle, browse the extensive database in Healthy Recipes - By SparkRecipes. The app uses helpful filters to make it easy to find a meal for any occasion or food preference, including dietary needs such as gluten free and vegan. More, the user ratings help you select the right meal every time.

Of course, you're not always going to be able to cook, so it's helpful to educate yourself about restaurant food. Eat This Not That! Restaurants helps you navigate menus by providing calorie information for many popular restaurants as well as the ability to log your meal selection from within the app. Eat This Not That's main attraction, however, is its game. Users are presented with photos of two plates of food and a title/name for each and told to click on the one that is fewer calories. You'll be surprised how often you're wrong.