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The Best Fitness and Healthy Eating Apps Combo
- Name
- Ryan K
- @thefabryk
Since I stopped working with an online fitness coach a few months ago that essentially handed me all my workouts and meal plans without much thought on my end, I was at a bit of a momentary loss with how I should continue the upward fitness journey on my own. The ideal solution would be an all-in-one app that would use machine learning techniques to measure your body, give you ideal workouts and foods based on your exact body type, but I have not found anything of the sort yet and until I or someone else develops it (🤪 let's be real -- I am a bit lazy for that type of undertaking) I decided I needed to piece together different apps to get the results I want.
After much trial and error, these are the two apps that I use on a semi-religious basis to reach my fitness goals. They are not perfect by any means, and you may notice I put as cons the pricing, but for approximately €125 for the entire year, they certainly cost less than my €150 monthly online personal trainer bill.
For Fitness: Jefit
Our current testosterone boosting plan, which has kicked my ass!
After trying several gym workout planners (using trials, of course), this is the one that stuck! When downloading the app for the first time, you put in your basic measurements and goals (i.e. toning, bulking) and the app spits out a few professionally-curated workouts for you to follow. You can then customize from there until your heart is content, and you have the ideal weekly plan for you to follow!
On top of being a workout planner, when you start your workout you can track all your reps/sets/weights, which I found in my fitness journey to be one of the most important (but underrated) components to upward growth in fitness.
An added bonus is the sheer customization ability in the app. You can swap out exercises for comparable ones if you are bored or injured. Furthermore, you have a workout generator tool in case you want to create a one-time workout targeting whatever body parts you want to target.
Pros:
- Easy workout planning based on your goals
- Great tracking tools: both for tracking workouts and body measurements
- Wonderful customizability
Cons:
- Interface is not the prettiest and sometimes a bit difficult to navigate
- I noticed that a lot of the workouts are a bit longer than I am used to (sometimes 1.5ish hours). However, I find that since some workouts are a bit repetitive, I usually set a 1-hour timer and try to get as much done as I can in that allotted period.
- Maybe a bit pricey: I am paying €13.49 monthly, but will likely upgrade to the €72.99 yearly option as I have become such a regular user
For Mealplanning: MealPrepPro
I love me a well-organized, pretty app!
If you are an exercise enthusiast as we are, you will likely know that eating healthy is half the battle when it comes to fitness. The times when I have been the fittest in my life, I have followed generally strict meal plans and practiced intermittent fasting and saw enormous results!
I have tried more meal-planning/prepping apps then you can imagine and the one that came out on top is MealPrepPro. Where do I start with this? Well, first the interface is intuitive and beautiful and easy, as an app should be. But more importantly, it is one of those apps that fills in all the gaps of other lackluster meal planning apps like it.
After downloading the app, you follow a handy set-up guide to determine how much your daily calorie goal should be. Then you move onto the planning generator tool.
The planning tool is very straight forward, allowing you to specify meal types (flexible, low-carb, Mediterranean), the number of days you want to plan for, which meals specifically you want to plan for (this helps if you are intermittently fasting), and even the number of people you are planning for (a major game-changer as Fabio and I like to do this together). You can also specify how many days you want to eat the same meals in a row, which makes meal-prepping much easier.
After your meal-plan is generated, everything is just super straight-forward. You are given delicious meal options with the optimal fat-carb-protein ratios you need, plus an easy shopping list generator organized based on different areas of the supermarket.
There are too many good things about this app, and I recommend you just go and download it for the trial period to see if you like it!
Pros:
- Super intuitive interface through the entire journey
- Planning tool is spot on with full on customization and clarity
- Meal planning for multiple people (also customized based on their goals)
- Easy to make recipes with all the proper metric vs. imperial measurements
- Shopping lists are organized and easy to follow
- So much more, that I am not conveying properly here :)
Cons:
- Could be a bit expensive. At €49.99 for the year, it might be out of some people's price points, but well worth it!
- Would be lovely if it supported intermittent fasting, but with some tweaking you can get the app to achieve this
By no means are these apps perfect, but the combination of them create a pretty powerful duo to help you achieve your fitness goals without the need of an expensive coach. Of course, without a trainer, discipline and willpower is needed to follow these plans, but I think the intuitive and gamified nature of both of these apps help the process!
Give it a go and let us know what you think!
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