7 Excellent, Alternative Health Apps for Focused Goals in 2020

Fooducate

Fooducate helps you revolutionize your diet with education and high-quality suggestions. While the app encourages you to track your calories, fats, carbs, sleep, and so on, its real value is in learning more about your food choices. Not only does the app have hundreds of thousands of barcode scanning options for when you buy, it can also rate the foods you are picking with a grade that helps you find healthier alternatives that are still in the same vein of what you want to eat.

It also includes extra information about trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, GMOs, artificial sweeteners, and many other sneaky aspects of food that you may want to avoid. An excellent pick for those who want to get a little obsessive about their diets – and it links easily to Apple Health!

Pear Personal Fitness Coach

Pear connects you with human coaches who have athletic experience and plenty of video content to help you create the best exercise regimen possible. From on-demand workouts that you can do anywhere to detailed strength training plans for all the machines you like, there’s a lot to work with here. The tracking technology is also very good, letting you know when you should speed up a workout or when you are going too slow (those videos are also great for helping you maintain proper form and avoid injury). Everything is compatible with the Apple Watch and Apple Health too, which makes a particularly good combination. 

There is, however, a catch. The app is subscription-based, and you only get a couple of weeks to try it for free. However, the annual cost is far lower than something like a gym membership, making this a great choice for those who want to exercise at work or at home and need some coaching to develop a great plan (for many, those two weeks may be enough to set up a regimen).

Noom

Noom is fun to say – and sets you up with personalized weight loss coaching and tons of authentic tips. The app will welcome you to your new fitness lifestyle day by day, provide reminders (now is the time to take a weight measurement, etc.), and offer encouragement (what do you do when you’re scared of getting on the scale, etc.). They call it “psychology-based evaluation” and it’s a great approach for those who’ve struggled with diets in the past and feel comfortable making small changes that add up over time.

The app is very, very easy to get into and offers two different approaches: One for successful dieting, and one for successful workouts. Pick just one, or both! The minimalistic approach and day by day steps make this app one of our favorites.

MyFitnessPal

Ordering in to eat or heading out to your favorite restaurant is awesome, and within the bounds of a diet (and budget), still easy to do. However, many people don’t really know the calories or health of their favorite foods, they just know what they like. If you order restaurant food frequently, this can quickly add up over time and cause problems in meeting your diet. MyFitnessPal can help.

The tool is incredibly simple. Just search for the type of the food you’re about to eat and the name of the restaurant. MyFitnessPal can show you the calories, carbohydrates, sugars, sodium and even vitamins in that particular food. Log your meals and keep an eye on your calories with MyFitnessPal.

Dietbet

Dietbet offers a very simple type of motivation: Money. You join a particular group on the app that’s working toward a weight loss goal, usually a challenge that lasts a month or so (although longer and shorter ones are available). There’s a required minimum “bet” you make to join the group, which gets contributed to the overall pot. Those who meet the goals for that challenge are the winners, and the pot is split among them – some of the games also have lotteries and extra prizes. So, there’s both a cost to playing, and a cash award for losing weight. This combination has proven very effective for a certain type of fitness fan that needs this kind of push to really lose their weight.

All / Out Studio

If you’re serious about strength training, you may find many of the fitness apps on the market to be…disappointing. All / Out Studio addresses these issues with workouts specifically geared toward building muscle and getting shredded. Their programs focus on strength training, weight loss, and specific tools like kettlebells, HIIT, and even dance cardio. It’s an excellent choice for those who are serious about their fitness, but don’t have their own personal trainer.

Two things to note: This app is very video focused and works best when it’s on a screen you can follow along with – and it has a subscription cost of $9 per month, so you’ll have to budget for it.

Wholesome

We’ve discussed buying foods at the store and ordering food from a restaurant, but there’s another obvious facet – making recipes at home. And while diet recipes are easy to find, the Wholesome app offers a masterful collection of recipes that taste great and still help you meet your goals, along with an in-depth scoring system so you can check a recipe for what’s in it, calorie counts, and more. It’s an ideal option for those who prefer to cook a lot from home and want a simple recipe guide to help them eat healthier and lose weight.