App stores are full of shiny weight-loss promises. Most of them fail the one test that matters: will you still be using it in three months? The eleven apps below have been chosen because people stick with them, the data they collect is actually useful, and they don't rely on gimmicks. Pair one food tracker with one movement tracker and one habit layer, and you have a system.

1. MyFitnessPal — for calorie and macro tracking

Still the most complete food database on the internet. Barcode scanning, recipe import, and a free tier that's generous enough to get real work done. The main drawback is crowdsourced entries that occasionally lie about calories — pick verified entries when you can.

2. Cronometer — for people who care about micronutrients

Same job as MyFitnessPal, far more accurate, and the only mainstream tracker that shows you vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. Use it if you're eating low-calorie and want to confirm you're not starving yourself of magnesium, iron, or protein leucine.

3. Lose It! — for a gentler learning curve

Cleaner interface than MyFitnessPal and a friendlier onboarding. The built-in "Snap It" photo feature is handy for restaurant meals where the label isn't obvious. A strong choice for the first three months of tracking.

4. Noom — for people who eat emotionally

Not really a tracker; it's a behaviour-change course that happens to include a tracker. The daily psychology lessons on hunger cues, emotional eating, and cognitive distortions are the actual product. Expensive and chatty — but if talk-yourself-out-of-it is your pattern, it's the tool for the job.

5. Zero — for intermittent fasting

The cleanest fasting timer on the market. Set a window, get a gentle nudge when it's done, and watch your streaks build. Pairs well with any calorie tracker because fasting only works if the eating window is still sane.

6. Strong — for lifting

Muscle retention is the single most underrated factor in sustainable weight loss. Strong is the fastest way to log a lifting session on a phone — pre-fills last week's numbers, shows you when to add weight, and stays out of your way. Free tier covers three custom routines.

7. Nike Training Club — for bodyweight and hybrid workouts

Hundreds of guided workouts, most of them free, ranging from fifteen minutes of yoga to thirty-minute HIIT. The production quality of the videos is genuinely excellent, and the progressive programs ("six-week strength," "ten-week runner build-up") remove the planning burden.

8. Strava — for running and cycling

The GPS is best-in-class and the social feed is the best gamification in fitness. The subscription adds useful features (route planner, fitness score, heart-rate analysis) but the free tier is fine for most people. Works with almost every watch on the market.

9. Apple Health / Google Fit — as the connective tissue

Don't overlook the built-in hub. Both platforms aggregate data from the other apps on this list, so your steps, workouts, weight, and sleep live in one place. That single view is often what turns isolated habits into a coherent routine.

10. Sleep Cycle — for the piece almost everyone ignores

Sleep debt quietly sabotages weight loss by raising cortisol and driving carb cravings. Sleep Cycle tracks your nightly duration and wakes you in a light phase. Even if you ignore everything else, adding thirty minutes of sleep moves the scale.

11. Habitica — for the identity layer

A gamified habit tracker where building habits feels like levelling up a character. Silly on the surface, and effective for people who have tried and failed with plain checklists. Works for "drink 2 litres of water a day" as reliably as for "go to the gym."

How to combine them without burning out

Two or three apps, maximum. A calorie tracker you'll open after every meal, a workout app you'll use three or four times a week, and a habit layer that zooms out. If you're opening eleven apps a day you've built a job, not a routine.