It’s backed with solid evidence as more and more people are jumping on the bandwagon and seeing incredible results. The fact that fasting has the potential to reprogram your metabolism only adds to the effectiveness of this weight-loss method, as we all know the key to losing weight is to eat fewer calories than the maintenance level. The easiest way to get started is to utilize intermittent fasting apps on your smartphone so you can keep at it from anywhere. We’ll be going over some of the best intermittent fasting apps in this list, but before that, let’s get some of the basics right.
What is Intermittent Fasting?
To put it in the most simple words, intermittent fasting is basically an eating pattern in which you switch between fasting for a certain period and then eating during the remaining time throughout the day. This kind of weight loss program doesn’t focus on WHAT you eat, but rather on WHEN you eat, as your whole purpose is to fast for a specific amount of hours at a stretch and then consume food after that. Depending on your preference, you may decide to fast for 16 hours a day and eat during the remaining 8-hour window, or you can try eating only one single meal a day for 2 days a week. Similarly, there are different ways to approach this program. Any of this can help your body burn fat, and it comes with a lot of health benefits as well, which are discussed below.
What are the health benefits of Intermittent Fasting?
Many studies have shown that intermittent fasting can positively impact your overall health, including your body and brain. Here are only some of the many benefits that are backed by research:
Induces essential cellular repair processes 🩹 Increases blood levels of human growth hormone (HGH), which can help promote fat burn and muscle gain 💪 Reduces inflammation, oxidative stress, and insulin resistance Potentially helps you live a longer life Improves heart health ❤️
Moreover, several studies even showed that it could help reduce the risk of cancer and type-2 diabetes.
Types of Intermittent Fasting windows/plans
Before starting intermittent fasting, it’s essential to understand the different types, and what they consist of so you can better decide which type is suitable for you. Here are the 4 most popular ones.
#1. Time-specific eating
This option involves having a set number of eating and fasting hours in a day. For instance, you dedicate 16 hours for fasting and the remaining 8 hours for eating. This option becomes convenient because we already fast while sleeping, so you’d have to extend that overnight fast till lunchtime. This means you’d be skipping your breakfast and jumping straight to lunch. There’s also another method for time-specific eating, which is the 14/10 method. It means fasting for 14 hours and being allowed to eat for the other 10. Both of these methods are great for people trying intermittent fasting for the first time, as it doesn’t make any significant changes to your eating schedule.
#2. 24-hour fasting
As it already suggests, in this option, you’d be fasting for an entire day. Usually, people fast from breakfast to breakfast or lunch to lunch, and this option should only be done once or twice a week. This means you’d return to your regular eating schedule the other 6 or 5 days of the week. Remember that this option can lead to side effects like fatigue, headaches, and lethargy.
#3. Alternate day fasting
Alternate day fasting means you’d be fasting on one day and return to your normal eating schedule the next day, and then repeat this throughout the week. On the fasting days, you’d be limiting your calorie consumption to 500 or about 25% of your average daily intake.
#4. Twice-a-week diets
In this option, you’d be fasting two days a week with a break between those two days. So, let’s say you’d be fasting on Wednesday and Friday. On the other 5 days, you’d eat your normal diet. Coming to the two fasting days, the approach is usually to have 200 and 300-calorie meals that contain fiber and protein to keep you full while not going over the calorie meter at the same time.
What are you allowed to eat on a clean Intermittent Fast?
Even though your main focus would be on when to fast and when to eat, it’s still important to ensure you follow a clean and healthy diet throughout the week for your own betterment. 🥗 Technically, there are no restrictions on what you can eat, but it’s always a good idea to follow a balanced diet that can help you sustain with enough energy and nutrition on a day-to-day basis. With all that aside, let’s now look at the intermittent fasting apps.
Lasta
Live well. Live better. This is Lasta’s motto. An app has several features combined for one goal: to help users change their approach to nutrition and find a healthy relationship with their bodies. The support tools built into the Lasta app will improve your life and help you achieve weight loss outcomes. With Lasta, you may pursue and achieve your goals no matter where you are. Lasta will allow you to:
get your personal meal plan; track your mood changes; choose an individual fasting program; explore the 30-day course on cbt psychology; meditate; track your daily activities; learn how to eat mindfully.
You can also visit the Lasta website and check out the blog with many valuable materials and scientific research from knowledgeable experts about nutrition, health, and weight loss.
DoFasting
With all the weight loss tools equipped, DoFasting can be your one-stop place for all the intermittent fasting information and guidance. This app has a whole bunch of articles, workout videos, recipes, trackers, and expert-approved tips and is 100% science-based. It also allows you to create daily, weekly, and monthly meal plans and compare them to your daily calorie intake to better understand how you are progressing. Not to mention, DoFasting can also track your water intake, daily steps, and weight to provide helpful insights.
Zero
Users of the Zero app have achieved incredible results after using it, which is why it remains one of the first choices when it comes to intermittent fasting. It’s the perfect guidance for newbies starting with this weight loss program. This app contains helpful articles and tips related to losing weight and what beverages you should be drinking to squeeze out the maximum potential. It also has a wonderful feature, the “mood graph”, which helps you track your mood during the fasts and review any patterns while eating certain foods. 😟😃 Zero can be customized to your own preferences so that it fits the type of intermittent fasting you’re into.
Fastic
Fastic has a large community of fellow intermittent fasters that’ll be a great launching ground for your weight loss journey, as you can interact with them and garner support. Aside from that, for the free version, you get features like steps counter, water tracker, and a fasting timer. To unlock more useful features like challenges, recipes, and more, you’d have to upgrade to their premium plan. This app also does a great job of keeping you motivated throughout the process by providing you with brownie points and much more.
Simple
As the name suggests, Simple really does make everything seem simple, so you don’t get overwhelmed at any point. It hands you customized fasting plans, meal and fasting tracker, expert-led tips and advice, and much more. In fact, it thoroughly understands your body and goals before suggesting anything, so you won’t be using a “one size fits all” formula. It also shows you what exactly is happening with your body with each fasting stage to help you know the process better. Simple is compatible with several other health and fitness apps as well.
BodyFast
Trusted by over 25 million people worldwide, BodyFast is another popular option that you can consider getting on. It’s packed with a bunch of meal planning and fasting tips that’ll help you troubleshoot any challenges you’ve had with intermittent fasting. You can also switch between the different types of intermittent fasting plans depending upon your goal and needs. To help you stay well-motivated, it gives you challenges to complete and trophies as a reward for completion.
Life Fasting Tracker
A great app to share progress with people on the same journey as you, Life Fasting Tracker encourages you to set goals together and achieve them while keeping yourself accountable. Here are some of the many features of this app:
Tracking and logging your progress Science-backed tips and tricks It supports all types of intermittent fasting plans and windows Integrates with wearable devices for easier tracking
All the data you put into Life Fasting Tracker is 100% secure with the best security technology in use. 🔒
Window
Having been featured on some of the biggest sites like Women’s Health and Good Housekeeping, Window can be your safe bet regarding intermittent fasting. It has various trackers for different purposes like:
Water Weight Meal plan Nutrition Stats Fasting Eating
It has all the helpful tools you’d need, and also you can go through their blog posts that feature content from leading nutritionists. Not to forget, you can sync your data with the Apple Health app.
Ate
Very visually appealing, Ate is an app that’ll get you hooked immediately with how it looks and works. It’s a visual food diary that helps you keep track of the time elapsed between meals and snacks. This app is very connected to social media because it encourages you to share your food choices on your social accounts so that you can look back on them. It’s a fantastic food journaling medium that’ll allow you to experiment with new eating habits.
Fastient
If you’re looking for a straightforward intermittent fasting app that does nothing more than what’s required, Fastient would be the perfect option. It’s filled with features you’d probably regularly use, such as journaling and tracking progress. It displays all the essential information about your journey, like how much weight you’ve lost so far and what was your longest fast. Their premium version would allow you to upload progress photos and access more cool features.
FastHabit
With features like stats monitor, calendar, reminders, and the ability to sync with your Apple Watch, FastHabit can prove to be a very useful app for you. It’ll keep you on track with your weight loss journey using intermittent fasting. If you’re someone who changes their fasting goals often, then FastHabit is the app that can easily handle that. It can keep up with your shifting preferences by adapting to any fasting window you set.
Fastyle
Having Fastyle on your phone is like having a personal intermittent fasting mentor in your pocket. Upon entering a few details, like your goal, history, and experience, this app generates a personalized plan for you to follow. 📝 Within the app, you’ll find tons of articles, audios, guides, and videos, along with fasting hacks and motivation to make the process seamless. There are also trackers for different purposes that you can start using right away.
Sunrise Fasting
Once you enter your location on the Sunrise Fasting app, it’ll set an accurate start and end time for your fast based on the timing of your area’s sunrise and sunset. Other than that, it lets you:
Make notes Create custom Fasting plans Track your mood Track your fasts View badges, history, and progress Access guides and videos to learn more about healthy fasting
This app is totally free to use and get started with.
Vora
A combination of a fasting tracker and a social platform, Vora is a useful app that keeps things at a basic level but does just enough to help you achieve your goal. It features graphical records of your recent fasts and encourages you to interact with people on the social platform by sharing your progress. Community support can help you take accountability for your own habits, and this app makes it easy to do just that. 👥 Moreover, you can leave notes for future reference, which is useful when you want to look at them later.
WeFast
An app dedicated solely to women and their weight loss journey, you can find a very supportive system within the WeFast app. It features various amazing features related to intermittent fasting that you can start using right away and see results. Beginning from suitable fasting plans to getting encouragement daily and then smashing your goals before sharing them with fellow women fasters, WeFast is an app that you should check out to get a good helping hand in your journey.
Conclusion 🍽️
Those were the best apps that you can download on your smartphone device and jump into the world of intermittent fasting with the proper guidance. All of them allow you to get started for free to get your feet wet in the program and then decide for yourself if it’s suitable for you or not. You can go with one or try multiple of them to find the kind you’re looking for. Next, you might want to check out these smart health trackers.
