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Best Diet and Calorie Counting Apps for 2017

Studies have shown that counting calories can be an especially effective part of a plan to lose weight.

Here are my three favorite favorite apps to keep track of what you eat.

MyFitness Pal has developed the Calorie Counter & Diet Tracker app, a popular choice among the health-conscious. The app claims a database of 5 million foods and it even remembers your favorites. It works with other apps and devices such as Apple Health and Fitbit and counts your daily steps. It’s free for iOS and Android with premium services available for purchase.

Lose It creates a personalized weight loss plan based on how much you hope to lose. The app has a huge food database that is easily searchable. You can add your own custom foods and even use your smartphone’s camera to scan barcodes on labels for fast and easy input. Lose It also works with other apps like RunKeeper as part of an overall weight loss plan. The app is free for iOS, Android, and Kindle.

My Diet Coach is designed to keep dieters motivated and committed to meeting weight loss goals. It’s a pocketful of reminders that helps dieters overcome cravings, emotional eating, or feeling unmotivated to exercise. It has a simple easy to navigate design, and reminders are sent through notifications so they won’t be missed. The app is free for iOS and Android.

Mike is a veteran journalist whose video "PC Mike" reports have been distributed weekly to all 215 NBC-TV stations since 1994, making him one of the most experienced tech reporters in the country. His tech stories and videos have appeared on MSNBC, CNBC, the Today Show, The New York Times, USA Today and in numerous national newspapers and magazines. In addition to the PC Mike tech blog, he also publishes the Roadtreking.com RV Travel Blog in which he travels North America in an RV reporting about interesting people and places.