CAPE TOWN - The holiday period is the most tempting to indulge in all the sugary desserts and big family meals.
This could be very detrimental to your usual diet. However, there are smartphone apps to help you stick to your diet over the holiday season.
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Here is a list of apps that can help:
1. Lose It!
By telling the Lose it app about yourself, it’ll create a custom weight loss plan, setting you a daily budget and goal for you to aim for. Its image recognition means it’ll identify the food you’re eating automatically, saving you from entering it yourself.
It breaks things down according to every part of nutrition.
2. My Diet Coach
The app offers four main features in the free version which are comprising reminders, motivational photos, perseverance tips and a diet diary.
In the paid version you get three extra features including a food craving panic button, a weight chart and a points system. The app also has the usual features for diet apps, which is the diet diary, calorie counter and BMI calculator. The app also allows you to customise an avtar to look exactly like yourself.
You can set reminders so you remember to drink water and prepare vegetables. If your facing a challenge, by the touch of a button the app will greet you with relevant motivational tips and inspiring pictures.
3. MyFitnessPal
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MyFitnessPal is a free calorie counting app that features a food database of over 5 million foods. When you first set it up, you'll need to enter some information about yourself including your date of birth, weight and height, as well as your goal weight and how much you want to lose each week.
The app then creates a custom plan for you, providing you with a calorie goal to work towards, which appears on the top of the diary page where you add your food, exercise and water intake.
As you add, you'll see the food calories being deducted and the exercise calories are added as well.
4. Diet Assistant- Weight Loss
Weight Loss is another free app that will deliver you a range of meal options to suit the diet you are on, whether it be vegetarian, pescatarian or high-protein, among others. Like MyFitnessPal, you need to enter some information about yourself, including your target weight, and the Diet Assistant app will then assist you in achieving your goal.
There are dedicated shopping lists per diet plan, nutritional facts, meal and weight entry reminders and a built-in BMI calculator, as well as a weight graph so you can see your progress.
5.FatSecret
FatSecret offers an easy to use food diary for you to track as well as plan in advance what you’re going to eat.
Image recognition of food and meals make it even easier to add what you’re eating, with a community that’s keen to advise on how best to proceed. A weight tracking tool, along with barcode scanning, rounds off the package.