Keeping track of what we eat isn’t just for watching our weight or trying to lose a few pounds. It can help us lead healthier lives overall. We can see what we put into our bodies that might our impact cholesterol levels, cause heartburn, or even keep us awake at night.
With food tracker apps for iOS and Apple Watch, you can not only track what you eat, but get tips for healthier foods, view your calorie and nutrient intakes, and more, wherever you go.
These are the best four food tracker apps to get you off to a healthy start with your daily diet this year.
MyPlate does more than just count calories. You can keep a complete food diary that includes all meals, snacks, and water along with exercise.
Tap to add a food and search with helpful suggestions as you type. When you see the item you want to add, tap it and you can see the total calories, protein, and carbs for the food. Add the number of servings, choose a date if necessary, and set it as repeating if it’s something you eat each day.
The main screen gives you a nice view of your Food Diary with a graph and amounts of nutrients per meal.
Extra sections and features:
Progress section to see how you’re doing with your goals.
Meal Plans you can sign up for with messages from Livestrong.com.
Workouts for keeping track of your exercises.
Community to share with other app users.
MyPlate Calorie Counter on Apple Watch:
View your calorie intake by meal.
Check out a chart just like on iPhone with carbs, protein, and fat intake.
Add a food item using dictation then select from the search results and add your servings.
MyPlate Calorie Counter gives you a great number of helpful features for free. But if you need just a bit more, you can upgrade to MyPlate Gold. This subscription plan offers a clean eating guide, advanced workouts, ad-removal, and more. The app is available for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.
With MyFitnessPal, you get a clear view of your goal, with food and exercise, right on the Home screen.
Tap the plus sign on the bottom to add food, water, or exercise. If you select Food, you’ll be asked to select a meal or snack. Search for a food or create one of your own. Then, check out the carbs, fats, and proteins, add a serving size and number, and view extra nutrient details like calcium, iron, vitamins, and potassium as available.
You can review the Nutrition section showing what you have consumed per meal, per day or week.
Extra sections and features:
Home screen view gives you an overview of your stats along with helpful articles, videos, and tips.
Diary for tracking your meals, snacks, water, and exercise.
Progress shows how close you are to your weight goals and lets you share and upload photos.
The More area contains options for goals, challenges, nutrition, reminders, steps, a community, and other helpful features.
MyFitnessPal on Apple Watch:
View your quick nutrient intakes.
Add water, a meal, or a snack.
Check out more nutrient details including fiber, vitamins, and sugar.
Review your step count.
MyFitnessPal also offers its host of useful features for free and you can take a look at the MyFitnessPal Premium plan for options like a food analysis, timestamps, ad-removal, file export, and more. The app is available for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and iMessage.
Another terrific app for food tracking is Lose It! – Calorie Counter. Similar to MyFitnessPal, you can see a nice view of your calorie budget and your progress on the My Day tab.
Head to the Log section to track your meals, snacks, water, and exercise. You can snap a photo of the food as well as tap to search and add one. Like with the other apps, you’ll get a view of the nutrients for the food and add your servings, but you can also show the serving size guide or add to Siri. The app also gives you a handy barcode scanner for adding foods of your own that you can select over and over.
If you truly are trying to lose weight, you can add your weight each day and track that as well.
Extra sections and features:
My Day shows calories, nutrients, bonuses, challenges, and nutrition plan ideas.
Log is where you track your food, water, exercise, and weight.
Social is a section to connect with other app users like you.
Goals lets you see your weight goal and how close you are to it.
Me is the profile section where you can check all of your data quickly.
Lose It! on Apple Watch:
View your daily calorie goal and your progress towards it.
Check out your log and mark the day complete when you finish eating. Use Force Touch to add a meal or snack.
See your step count.
View your nutrients chart.
See your weekly progress at a glance.
Lose It! – Calorie Counter also offers bonuses like badges for completing goals, which might be a good motivator. If you’d like to check out the Premium version, you can set more goals, gain more insights, and personalize it, all via in-app purchase. The app is available for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and iMessage.
Lifesum: Diet & Macro Tracker is one more food tracking app you should definitely try. With its attractive interface, you can see nutrients, progress, and calories left for the day on the main Diary screen.
Add a meal by searching for the foods, scanning the barcodes, or snapping photos. Then adjust the servings, review the nutrients, and tap to add it to your diary. For the meals and foods that you add, you’ll see smileys or frowny faces in your Diary which is a cute way to scan for how healthy you’ve eaten for the day.
You can switch over to the app’s Classic view to see your stats with bar charts if you prefer.
Extra sections and features:
Diary is where you add all food and drink items.
Me is your profile section where you can update your weight and check out lifestyle and body stats.
Plans offers help with meal plans based on your needs and specific diet. Plans require the Premium version of the app.
Recipes gives you a slew of options for your next meal. Do a search, check out what’s trending, or view by meal type. For full recipe details, you’ll need the Premium version of the app.
Lifesum on Apple Watch:
View your intake of carbs, fats, and protein.
See how healthy your meals were with smileys and frownies.
Be reminded to stay hidrated.
Check your eat, drink, rest, move, and stretch stats.
Lifesum: Diet & Macro Tracker may not offer as many free features as the other apps, but for basic food tracking, you’re set without spending a dime. And, it’s super easy to use, so give it a try and if you enjoy it, you can get the Premium version via in-app purchase. The app is available for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and iMessage.
Start Tracking!
Hopefully one of these food tracking apps for iPhone and Apple Watch is exactly what you’ve been looking for. Let us know if you already use one of these or if you plan to give a certain one a try!
Sandy worked for many years in the IT industry as a project manager, department manager, and PMO Lead. She then decided to follow her dream and now writes about technology full-time. Sandy holds a Bachelors of Science in Information Technology.
She loves technology– specifically – terrific games and apps for iOS, software that makes your life easier, and productivity tools that you can use every day, in both work and home environments.
Her articles have regularly been featured at MakeUseOf, iDownloadBlog and many other leading tech publications.
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