The 10 Best Meal Planning and Tracking Apps to Help You Lose Weight

Once you’ve decided to overhaul your diet and lifestyle, you might need a little help. Help with meal planning, tracking, shopping lists, and most importantly, accountability. Making the choice to make better choices is the first and most important step! But you can set yourself up for success by having the best tools at your disposal. These meal planning apps can help you figure out what to eat, where to shop, and track your progress. They’re easy to use, and some of them even have huge communities you can lean on for support, which is so important.

One of the best meal planning apps on the market is also one of the most popular ones:

1. MyFitnessPal.

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MyFitnessPal has a huge database of food, with over 5 million different options. It’s super easy to use, and can help you track calories, nutrition, and even physical activity. It also syncs with a bunch of devices, like your Apple Watch and FitBit. And it’s free!

2. Lose It!

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Lose It! is another great tracking app that allows you to customize a weight loss plan (and budget!). The daily goals are totally achievable, and it does a great job of breaking down what your eating and how you’re moving, so you can see where you might need to improve. Also FREE.

3. Meal planning apps like Mealime make it easy to plan better.

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The basic version of Mealime is free, but in order to access some of the cooler features, you’ll need to upgrade to pro for $5.99 a month. The app offers customizable meal plans that are super user-friendly, so you don’t have to be a Michelin star chef to make them. You can even tailor the plans to exclude foods you don’t like or are allergic to, and there’s a grocery list function that makes shopping a breeze.

4. Fooducate

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Fooducate is a nutrition tracker that not only tells you how many calories you’re consuming, but the quality of the food you’re eating. Scan a food at the grocery store to see a far more detailed nutritional breakdown than you’ll get on any label.

5. Next up in meal planning apps: PlateJoy

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PlateJoy will create a customized meal plan for you, based on your needs and restrictions. The app itself is very user-friendly, but at $69 for 5 months, it’s on the higher end of meal planning apps. However, you get a lot of bang for your buck, including customized shopping lists, full nutrition information for each recipe, and even a pantry log that keeps you from buying items you already have.

6. YAZIO combines food, nutrition, and fitness tracking into one easy-to-use app.

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YAZIO is a free app that offers a personalized plan for your fitness goals, and tracks your nutrition so you stay on top of those goals. You can build your own meal plans, and the paid version even tracks stuff like body fat and blood sugar. Syncs with all your devices, too.

7. Make My Plate

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With Make My Plate, you can choose from free meal plans, or pay for the premium version which allows you to customize meal plans. The meal plans on the free version come with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks, and once you’ve chosen a plan, a shopping list is automatically generated.

8. Meal planning apps that have a built-in community are so helpful, like FatSecret.

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FatSecret is a pretty basic food tracking app, but as a food diary, it’s really beneficial. It has image recognition for food and meals, so you don’t need to input every single item. And the community is super helpful for offering advice, guidance, and support.

9. Prepear is another great app for planning and eating well.

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Prepear has a pre-set recipe database, but it also allows you to add your own recipes. The pre-set recipes are easy to make and a lot of them are kid-friendly, which is great. You can filter recipes based on preference, allergies, and cuisine options, and each recipe has a full nutritional breakdown. You can also generate a shopping list once you’ve selected your meals for the week.

10. If you need more from your meal planning apps, check out Eat This Much.

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Eat This Much is free to download, but to get the most out of the app, you’ll want to upgrade to the paid version for $5 a month. But trust me, it’s worth it. This app is the perfect combination of meal planner and nutrition and weight loss tracker. Just input your personal information, and it will calculate a nutrition plan for you. Then you can access the database of recipes, and either plan your own meals, or let the app generate one for you based on your preferences.

These meal planning apps can really help keep you on track, and put your health and fitness goals within reach.

(Image: iStock / monkeybusinessimages)

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