Keeping a food diary can help you track your calories, micronutrients and portions. It can also make sure the food you are eating isn’t too high in salt, sugar and saturated fat. But these apps are not just about food and diet anymore. Many of them have evolved into platforms which can help you track hydration, count your steps and even analyse your quality of sleep
If you are curious and want to get started, here are three of the best apps available to download in the UAE:
1 My Fitness Pal
This all-in-one food, exercise and calorie tracker is easy and free to use. It’s popular with personal trainers and even doctors who want to help people get into healthier habits and lose weight. When you first log in, you will be asked for some basic information which helps the app determine what your calorie intake should be in relation to your goals. Then, all you need to do is simply log the foods you eat using the search bar (the database has over 14 million foods listed) and then manually enter the portion size. Or you can use the barcode scanner – a nifty tool that helps you track the details of packaged foods using your phone’s camera to scan the barcode. Once you’ve entered a meal once, you can save it and reuse it again later. Other features include a recipe database for inspiration and a database of meals from popular restaurants to make eating out easier to track.
2 Healthify
Used by over 40 million users worldwide, Healthify describes itself as the ‘go-to wellness coach, fitness tracker and your personal cheerleader’. Tech lovers will be glad to hear that AI plays a major role in Healthify, with Ria, an AI nutritionist and health coach, as your trusted friend and advisor. Ask her anything, from questions on your health stats to meal ideas. The app’s other main feature is Snap, a revolutionary calorie-tracking tool, which enables you to take a photo of your meal to get instant nutritional details. Responding to your sleep and daily activity, the app can make proactive suggestions on how to tweak elements of your lifestyle to reach your goals. The team behind the app are based in India and have a huge database of more than 55,000 Indian foods available to track.
3 Noom
Noom was founded in 2008 by Saeju Jeong and Artem Petakov because they were dissatisfied with how the American healthcare system focuses on ‘sick’ care instead of health care. The app helps users to learn to eat more mindfully and empowers people to take control of their health using psychology, technology and human coaching. Personalised lessons, one-on-one support, easy-to-use features and tracking tools make this a versatile platform. More than just a tracking app, Noom uses the latest in behavioural science to help people with chronic and non-chronic conditions such as stress and anxiety, hypertension and diabetes.
Use Google Play or Apple Store to download these apps.
