The 5 Best Meal Planning Apps of 2024

“Healthy food doesn’t always taste great to me, but I knew I had to suck it up and eat better. The Trifecta meals are not fried chicken, but they are still really good.” Download our ground breaking app for a personalized plan and intuitive weight loss tools. A subscription to Cozi Gold is free of ads, has improved calendar options, and includes more trackers and reminders. An annual membership to 8fit costs $79.99 without any other monthly options.

Features

Each profile includes screenshots and direct links, so you can confidently choose the tool that will streamline your life and redefine your relationship with food. Choosing the one that best fits your personality and specific health goals is your best bet for success. Sticking to your diet and achieving your weight loss goal can be a difficult task, but it can be made much easier with a little technological help. A unique feature of this app is its barcode scanner, which scans food items directly into your account.

Vegan Diet Guide: Benefits, Risks & How to Do It Right

The basic Eat This Much app is free, but you can become a premium member for as little as $5 per month with an annual membership or $9 month-to-month. One of the hardest parts of following any diet is keeping your meals varied and interesting. Best-in-class shared lists with voice entry and location reminders. Our team of licensed nutritionists and dietitians strive to be objective, unbiased, honest and to present both sides of the argument. The timeline feature may be helpful for those who are motivated by seeing progress over time as you can check in on the timeline regularly. The premium option is $4.99 per month if billed annually and $8.99 per month if paying as you go.

Our 8-Week Healthy Habits Plan Is Here

The dishes come with flavorful sauces and marinades, and they strike a nice balance of protein, healthy carbs, and vegetables. Factor also leans on diverse cuisines, so the herbs and spices give the meals bold, distinctive flavors. I never felt hungry afterward, unlike with other prepared meal services. Joining Factor is pretty straightforward, whether using the website or the app. Deliveries arrive between Saturday and Wednesday, depending on location, and orders can be updated until the weekly cutoff.

Real food. Real results.

  • This app isn’t just for people who are watching calories or following a specific diet.
  • Price per serving on these meals is high, among the highest of any service we tried.
  • It’s a robust tool for those who prefer to build their meal plans from a curated collection rather than relying on app-generated suggestions.
  • Health organizations like the American Heart Association recommend limiting saturated fat to about 13 grams per day on a 2,000-calorie diet, so these meals can quickly push you over that limit.
  • If you opt for the latter, a chef will build a weekly plan for you based on your specific dietary needs, like soy-free, gluten-free and/or nut-free.
  • Many meal planning apps give you the option to filter by vegan meals, but they can have limited options.

As a result, you’re likely to resort to old eating habits which can trigger a vicious cycle of rapid weight loss and weight regain. To establish a healthy calorie deficit, talk with your doctor or a registered dietitian. The keto diet is high in fat, moderate in protein, and low in carbs. By restricting your carb intake to less than 50 grams a day, this eating plan helps trigger ketosis, the process by which your body burns fat instead of carbs for energy.

If You Walk Every Day, Here Are the 2 Other Things You Should Be Doing, Too

It’s minimalistic and super easy to navigate, allowing you to meal plan, categorize recipes, and build shopping lists to make your trip more efficient –– all for free. The Pro version is a one-time fee of $19.99 on iOS, which offers some bonuses like device syncing and unlimited recipe saves, but they’re not necessary. Mealime is another minimalistic planning app with a pretty robust free version that allows users to browse tons of curated recipes and generate or customize meal plans. The upgrade is one of the more affordable options at $2.99 a month, but the free choice has more than enough to sift through.

best diet meal planning app

How can I count calories without an app?

best diet meal planning app

With Paprika, you’re in charge of saving and entering recipes to build meal plans. Therefore, it’s probably best for people who can structure a meal plan with minimal support. You can also easily adjust the number of servings (up to 6), share recipes, and change measurement units. It also helps you create diet plans without limiting or restricting certain food items. Instead, the app focuses on calories and nutrients as a way to promote weight loss.

Do this 1 breathing exercise before you get out of bed to change the tone of your entire day

The platform excels at making recipes interactive and easy to follow while cooking. Unique to the meal planning apps listed, Paprika offers a free trial with no time limit. The trial version only allows you to save 50 recipes and doesn’t sync to the cloud, but the rest of the features are available.

Prepared meals require almost no time and energy other than what it takes to actually eat the food, but typically run a few bucks more per serving. We select ingredients and meals to match your dietary preferences. Are you feeling motivated to change your diet and embrace a healthier lifestyle after watching the groundbreaking Netflix Emmy Award winning documentary series, “You Are What You Eat”? Take the same path to wellness as the participants in the documentary who experienced remarkable transformations after just weeks of enjoying Trifecta meals.

Nearly every app on our list offers a free trial or a limited free version. We highly recommend you test-drive your top two or three contenders for at least a week. This app is an exceptional choice for anyone seeking a structured yet flexible approach to nutrition without the manual effort.

The app also saves your most recent food logs and provides a list of common foods to make future entries easier. The home page displays a bar chart with the percentage of calories consumed and remaining calories for the day, which the app calculates when you set your goals. This is an estimate of the number of calories you should consume each day. It then uses your calorie budget to help you reach a calorie deficit. The app also has a chat community where users can swap success stories and get tips, recipes, and more.

Meal Delivery Services

In fact, this type of healthy-eating plan can be good for most people. When I tested Factor as part of our meal delivery services evaluations in the Good Housekeeping Institute Nutrition Lab, I was genuinely impressed by how good the meals were. The nutrition, the flavor, and the is unimeal legit overall quality really stood out. After I had my son, I decided to sign up for a subscription and ended up sticking with it for about a year. It made life so much easier during an especially hectic time and even helped me save money compared to buying lunch near the office every day. The South Beach Diet focuses on eating foods with a low glycemic index, meaning they won’t make your blood sugar spike.

Best for easy meal planning

The chicken was crispy, and the herbs de Provence in the breading were a great touch; the potato salad, studded with cornichons, dill, egg and a zingy dressing, was a lovely complement. While we thought the vegetable pairing with the steak was mismatched, it’s hard not to love chimichurri butter slathered on succulent meat. Ingredient inconsistencies aside, HelloFresh provides a good value. Meals designated to serve 2 certainly did; we even had leftovers of the noodle curry. They’re healthy and deliver many benefits, like fiber for improved digestion. They contain many valuable vitamins, phytochemicals, and antioxidants for better health.

Overall, the meals were convenient and nutritious, but I made sure to pay attention to saturated fat, sodium, and protein to keep my meals balanced. Meal Planner was specifically designed to fit seamlessly into the MyFitnessPal experience. You can easily log your planned meals to your MyFitnessPal food diary to keep track of your daily macros and calories. Join 50,000+ happy customers who’ve discovered the easiest way to eat restaurant-quality meals at home. No prep, no cleanup, no grocery shopping – just delicious food in 3 minutes. I am a picky eater…as in love just meat and potatoes but I was looking to try Keto.

With all that competition, meal kits have become comparatively more affordable and easier to make. Picking the best from dozens of meal kits requires a lot of testing. Flavorful recipes and dairy-free versions of your favorite foods prove that living without dairy can be just as delicious. It’s low in sugar, high in fiber, and provides sustained energy. Choose the old-fashioned variety if you have a few minutes to spare, and the one-minute oats if you’re in a rush.