Top apps for fitness

Your phone is your virtual wingman, life coach and best friend.

Google Maps helps you navigate through Pittsburgh. Spoonr finds you locals to snuggle. Snapchat gives you a lens into the lives of your social peers.

Like everything else, working out improves when you are wired in. The “Miami nightclub” Spotify playlist can double as your workout jams and facilitate your squat session, but there are apps out there to help you stay fit as well. Whatever your dietary goals may be, here are the apps to coach you through them.

1) For those of us who want to eat healthier to avoid the dreaded post-Thanksgiving food baby, calorie tracking phone apps keep an eye on consumption when we don’t.

Calorie tracking apps — such as MyNetDiary and Livestrong’s MyPlate calorie tracker — search and add the calories you accumulated in one day, allowing you to reduce your intake of certain foods or increase intake of others. Calorie tracking apps also help you appreciate just how many calories are in everything you eat, teaching you how to better portion your food.

For example, I might eat a small slice of my grandma’s pound cake, under the impression that because it was such a thin slice, it couldn’t be too bad for me. After searching it in the calorie tracker, I learn I just consumed what was a 350-calorie slice of pound cake. I allotted myself 1,500 calories that day, so now I know how to limit myself for the rest of the day.

2) Nutrition apps like Fooducate and ShopWell will help you learn what’s really in your food when grocery shopping. The apps also rate foods according to your custom nutritional needs. This way, you can take control of your diet and tailor it to meet a nutrition goal.

3) You may prefer to spend most of your workout lifting heavy plates of metal and grunting incessantly. Or, you’d rather drench your clothes in sweat during a rigorous cycling class. Regardless, there’s an app to coordinate that burn.

Apps like JEFIT and Two Hundred Squats help track your performance in the weight room. JEFIT helps you set up your workout and then keeps track of reps and amount of weight you lift, saving it for your next workout as a benchmark you’re encouraged to challenge. Two Hundred Squats helps you keep track of your squats over a six-week period, helping you reach — or dip to ­— two hundred consecutive squats.

4) For people who want to keep track of their cardio workouts, Endomondo tracks your cardio by monitoring heart rate and calories burned — allowing you to quantify every dimension of your healthy lifestyle.

Smartphone apps take care of the brain work so you have more time to put in the physical work. You can still sweat to the oldies, but it’s best if you bring your workout to the 21st century with a little app power.

Marlo Safi primarily writes about public policy and politics for The Pitt News.

Write to Marlo at mes26@pitt.edu