With the ketogenic diet and fasting being such popular dietary interventions it makes sense that there will be countless apps out there to try and make your life easier! Keto-Mojo decided to review the most popular ones being utilized in both the ketogenic and intermittent fasting community to make things even easier for you!
KETO APPS
MyFitnessPal
MyFitnessPal has been a free app that makes tracking calories and macros easy for quite some time now. The app is available on iPhone, Android, Windows, and Blackberry devices as well as access to the same features via their website.
Main Features:
- Calorie Tracking
- Exercise Tracking
- Large Food Database
- Support Via Their Online Community
What We Love:
- We love that you can add recipes in via scanning your own ingredients, adding the ingredients on your own, or importing the ingredients from a website.
- You can save meals, recipes, and foods for easier tracking!
- The exercise tracking syncs up with most fitness monitors such as Fitbit, Apple Watch, Garmin, Nokia, Pacer, Polar, Misfit, Accupedo, Withings, and Microsoft.
- The exercise tracking also syncs with a long list of fitness/exercise apps such as UA Record, MapMyRun, Polar Flow, Garmin Connect, Fitbit Tracker and many more (click here for more).
- You can track both your weight loss and your body measurements! This is great for those who want to monitor the progress not reflected by the scale.
- The community aspect. Whether it’s sharing your achievement and victories with your friends and family or getting help and support in the forums available to you in both the app and on the website, MyFitnessPal makes it easy to connect with other health-conscious individuals.
- Pro Tip: while you can’t necessarily share recipes, many bloggers and authors save their recipe macros under foods which you can then search for.
What We Wish They Would Change:
- One of the most cited complaints by users is that MyFitnessPal does not show net carbs. While this may be off-putting for some, not everyone tracks net carbs so it isn’t a huge issue in our books. An easy way to see where you are at as far as net carbs go is to go to the nutrients tab and subtract your fiber from your carbohydrates.
- We would love to see a way to save and share recipes with nutritional facts in the community!
- You have to subscribe to their premium service to be able to set your macros goal to the exact gram. Many other apps offer this at no additional cost to the user.
- Incorrect nutritional information on foods/products. This one is tough because it isn’t 100% MyFitnessPal’s fault. MyFitnessPal allows users the ability to create foods and enter in their nutritional information. This is great because it has helped the app to build a rather robust database. Unfortunately, there are many incorrect and duplicate listings.
Carb Manager
Carb Manager is the self-proclaimed, “World’s easiest and most comprehensive low-carb tracker and macro counter.” Carb Manager is another very popular food and exercise tracking app in the ketogenic community being that it caters to the low carb/keto dieters. Much like MyFitnessPal, you are able to track your food, drink, and exercise. The app is available on a computer, iPhone, and Android devices.
Main Features:
- Calorie Tracking
- Exercise Tracking
- Net Carbs
- Specific to Low Carb and Keto Diets
- Large Food Database
What We Love:
- The pie chart! One of the most recognizable features of Carb Manager is the pie chart which shows you a breakdown of your day in carbs, protein, and fat by percentage. Then to the right of it is the breakdown in grams for the precise amounts.
- Carb Manager does net carbs! Not only does Carb Manager do net carbs, but they do not charge for this feature. You do not need to keep track of your fiber or do the math throughout the day.
- Carb Manager has a large database of foods, although not as large as MyFitnessPals and you can choose to search or scan a barcode to find your food.
- While the database is smaller we have noticed considerably less incorrect entries when compared to MyFitnessPal.
- The community aspect of Carb Manager is much more inviting for those on a ketogenic or low carb diet as that is primarily who is using this app. Unlike MyFitnessPal which is not specific to any particular diet/lifestyle, the forums/discussions are generally keto/low carb positive and very useful to the beginner and keto veteran alike.
- You can set your macros goal to the gram without a premium membership.
What We Wish They Would Change:
- They charge for integration with other devices such as your Fitbit, Apple Watch, Garmin, and so on. For those that often track their exercise, this can be an inconvenience having to manually account for your exercise.
- We would like the ability to share and save recipes with others in the community.
Cronometer
Cronometer may not be as well known but it’s a great tool for those on the ketogenic diet! Cronometer has the smallest database of foods to search through, but it’s from the most accurate sources and provides more nutritional data. On the ketogenic diet, we should strive to get most of our macros from whole foods, and all three apps seem to have that pretty well covered. The difference is in the amount of prepared and specialty items included. Cronometer can be used on a computer or on iPhone and Android devices.
Main Features:
- Calorie Tracking
- Exercise Tracking
- Net Carbs
- Low Carb / Keto Specific
- Large Accurate Database
- Best Nutritional Breakdown
- Subtracts Sugar Alcohols
What We Love:
- The food database is incredibly accurate. They rely on food databases such as NCCDB and USDA versus allowing members to add foods on their own. When comparing searches with actual food labels, Cronometer comes up accurate every time.
- Cronometer calculates net carbs without a premium subscription. This is great for those that are sick of having to keep track of that separately!
- The daily breakdown of your micro and macro nutrients as well as percentages of each in relation to your goals and needs is very easy to interpret.
- You can select for Cronometer to count or subtract sugar alcohols for you.
- Syncs with multiple fitness devices and health apps for free!
What We Wish They Would Change:
- It would be nice if they allowed users to add to the database and possibly mark those that are unverified with a symbol so that this could help to increase the database.
- Like the other apps above we really wish there was a way to store both the recipe and the macros for it, and be able to share it within the community of the app.
- Frequent advertising for the premium membership can be annoying but the good news is that with the purchase of the Keto-Mojo Promo Bundle, you get 20% off their Gold subscription!
FASTING APPS
Zero
A fasting app named after the amount of food you eat while fasting: Zero. Zero is a very user-friendly app that helps you to track your fast and feed periods and analyze the data. Available on iPhone and Android devices.
Main Features:
- Track Fasting Times
- Track Feeding Times
- Syncs Fasts with Local Sunset and Sunrise Times to Sync Circadian Rhythm
What We Love:
- We love that the app is free in its entirety! It’s very rare to have an app that not only is easy to use, but also gives you all the features you need without a fee or ads.
- The app has a “science tab” where peer-reviewed research is available to all who are interested.
- Very user friendly! This app took us the least amount of time to master out of this list.
- Has various fasting schedules to choose from (Circadian Rhythm, Custom Intermittent, and 5:2)
What We Wish They Would Change:
- It is only available on iPhones. For those that use Blackberry, Windows, or Android devices you cannot use this app.
- It would be nice to see a community or friends feature where we can cheer each other on and ask questions. But really this is just a wish list and we love what the app has to offer.
Life Fasting
Life Fasting is an app available for download on iPhones, other Apple devices to track your fasts, and Android. With its very clean and user-friendly set up this is a great free app for both beginners looking to get into the world of fasting as well as the more experienced fasters.
Main Features:
- Track Fasting Times
- Track Feeding Times
- Multiple Fasting Schedules
- Community
What We Love:
- We love the community feature of this app the most. All of the fasting apps we review here are great and very easy to use, but the community feature sets Life Fasting apart. You can connect with your friends that use this app. You can share your progress, encourage others, and get feedback from family and friends. This extra level of support can be the key to success for those just starting out with no one to turn to for help and feedback.
- Resources and videos available within the app on fasting (including peer-reviewed research).
- A metric for hours of ketosis achieved as well as a breakdown of hours fasted.
What We Wish They Would Change:
- We wish there was a way to connect with all users in the community not just friends and family from your contact list. This limits the community feature if a user has no friends and family that also fast.
Fast Habit
This is yet another great tool for tracking your fast and feeding times. While this Fast Habit app is not free in its entirety the app is great for the real data heads out there that like to analyze their data and download their information. For those that use an Apple watch, the app does utilize the watch and you are able to use several features of the app without the phone present.
Main Features:
- Track Fasting Times
- Track Feeding Times
- Manually Add/Stop and Adjust Times
- Track Streaks
What We Love:
- We love that you can start, stop, and adjust fasting times at any point. In addition, you can manually add in a fast if you had forgotten to start the timer in the app.
- The app shows you how many days you have fasted in a row or “streaks”, as well as a weekly and monthly view of your fasts.
- Integration with the Apple Watch.
- The premium version is a flat upgrade price.
- Available for both Android and Apple users.
What We Wish They Would Change:
- There are a few feature drawbacks as far as extended fasts. This app does not track fasts of more than 48 hours.
- Not all the features are free. And while the $2 premium fee is worth it for us, we can see others not wanting to pay for features that come standard with other fasting apps.
