Every January, the New Year’s fitness resolution energy is sky-high. But as weeks slide into months, those motivations often fizzle out. Before you know it, you’ve put everything you’ve lost back on, and the unfortunate cycle of shame and guilt continues.
No judgement here. I’ve gone through the same wash countless times over my life, gaining and losing weight, giving up and trying again and again. It’s only over the past few years that I’ve managed to keep my fitness goals relatively stable, and I’ve still got a lot to learn.
Having said that, over the years of using, testing, and reviewing fitness tech, include a wide array of fitness trackers and smartwatches, I’ve found that the right apps can make the whole process a heck of a lot easier. And in some cases – and without exaggeration – they’ve changed my life.
The best apps help take the load off your already tired brain, increasing your chances of success in the process. They often sync with your devices, integrate with other services you use, and present clear insights that make fitness feel less like guesswork, and more like something you can control.
On that note, here are a few apps I recommend to help you stay on track, no matter what your goals are.
MyFitnessPal
When it comes to nutrition tracking, MyFitnessPal consistently ranks among the best thanks to its huge food database and broad integration support. The app simplifies logging calories and macros with barcode scanning and an extensive searchable food library, making it easier to stay mindful about what you eat.
MyFitnessPal also plays nicely with a wide range of devices and services you might already use. It integrates with fitness ecosystems, including Garmin Connect, Fitbit, Samsung Health, Apple Health, Google Fit, and Android’s Health Connect, so steps, workouts, and estimated active calories sync with your nutrition goals, reducing the faff of manual entry.
Whether you’re dieting, building muscle, or simply want better insight into eating habits, MyFitnessPal helps turn hard-to-define goals into manageable targets, while massively helping you stay on top of your nutrition in the process.
Download MyFitnessPal: Android | iPhone
NutraCheck
NutraCheck’s calorie-counting experience uses a US or UK-focused food database with hundreds of thousands of verified items – from supermarket brands to common restaurant meals. You can also create your custom meals, popping in your family recipes with ingredients, amounts, and portion sizes, letting you keep track of the staple meals you eat each week.
For me, NutraCheck changed my life, helping me lose around 38kg/84lbs over the course of a year. Combined with a set of kitchen scales for weighing food and ingredients, I, for the first time ever, could reliably hit a daily calorie deficit without any of the usual punishing guesswork. It was a transformative experience, and I continue to use it every day to help maintain roughly the same weight (or bulk or cut depending on my goals).
Like MyFitnessPal, NutraCheck doesn’t stand alone either. It syncs activity data from trackers like Fitbit and Garmin (steps, workouts, and active energy) and can connect via Apple Health to pull in exercise metrics from other apps and devices, making your calorie balance more accurate.
That ability to see your nutrition and movement in one place – without manually entering workouts – is what makes NutraCheck sustainable for daily use, and why it’s continued to be part of my routine over years of tracking. Your food logging soon becomes a habit, and for naturally unintuitive over-eaters like me, it’s a genuine game-changer.
Download NutraCheck: Android | iPhone
Garmin Connect
If, like me, you use Garmin hardware – whether it’s a watch, heart rate sensor, scale or all of the above – Garmin Connect becomes the central hub for your fitness ecosystem. It aggregates activity metrics, training load, sleep quality, and body measurements into one place, giving a more complete view of your health and performance over time.
What I value most about Garmin Connect is its big picture overview. It’s not just about today’s workout – you can look back across weeks, months, or even years to see trends and real changes in performance, recovery, and activity – and that kind of historical context keeps me motivated, especially when short-term progress feels slow.
If I’m on a cut and losing weight slower than I’d hoped, I can look back to see where I was a month ago, see the trendline going down, and remind myself that I’m still on the right track, and this is all a marathon, not a sprint.
Garmin Connect also integrates with external platforms, syncing workouts automatically with Strava for social and performance tracking, and connecting with the likes of MyFitnessPal and Nutracheck, lulling in your daily activity data automatically. This lets each app do what it does best, while feeding into your broader fitness picture
Download Garmin Connect: Android | iPhone
RP Strength
RP Strength, formerly known as Renaissance Periodization, is an American fitness and sports-nutrition company that delivers evidence-based training and diet tools online. It’s best known for its science-driven approach to strength training and body composition, led by sport scientist Dr. Mike Israetel.
One of RP Strength’s flagship offerings is the RP Hypertrophy app, a strength training platform designed to help users build muscle through progressive overload and structured workouts.
The platform has premade training plans and an expanding exercise library with technique videos, giving users a clear progression model to follow in the gym. Workouts are designed around Renaissance Periodization’s methodology, helping you increase volume, adjust loads over time, and track sets and reps to support muscle growth.
RP Strength’s tools are more specialised than general fitness apps, focusing heavily on hypertrophy (muscle-building) rather than comprehensive activity tracking or wearable integration. Based on science, sticking to the workouts will net you an increase muscle size, making it ideal for those looking for that fuller, bodybuilder aesthetic.
It’s also worth noting that RP Strength’s broader software ecosystem includes a separate RP Diet Coach app with nutrition planning and tracking features, though that’s a separate app in its own right.
Download RP Diet Coach: Android | iPhone
Strava
Strava is consistently recommended for its blend of activity tracking and social engagement, especially for runners and cyclists. It records GPS-based workouts – including pace, distance, elevation, and routes – and layers them with history and trend views that make progress feel real and fun.
What sets Strava apart from most, is its community and challenge ecosystem. Users create segments, share activities, and participate in challenges that turn routine workouts into small goals worth pursuing – a powerful motivational tool if you thrive on connection and accountability.
Strava also integrates well with Apple Health (bringing in workouts recorded with Apple Watch) and with Garmin Connect (automatically importing tracked sessions once accounts are linked), creating a flow of activity data that updates without extra effort.
Download Strava: Android | iPhone
Nike Training Club
Not every fitness goal needs spreadsheets and data – sometimes what you need most is direction. Nike Training Club delivers that with an expansive library of guided workouts, spanning strength, mobility, cardio, HIIT, yoga, and more, all led by certified instructors.
Workouts can also integrate with Apple Health, so completed sessions contribute to your daily activity totals alongside steps or exercise recorded elsewhere, making it easier to track overall movement without consolidating apps manually.
If planning workouts is the thing that usually stalls your fitness routine, its structured content – from single workouts to longer plans – removes that barrier and makes consistency easier to sustain.
Download Nike Training Club: Android | iPhone
It’s not just apps which can help you achieve your health and wellness goals though. Here’s our tops tips on how to use your fitness tracker to get fitter than ever in 2026.
