The most popular New Year’s resolution is always this one: start exercising. Which is a great resolution. Whether you’re hitting the gym for the first time or just upping your time there, you’re going to have a positive effect on your health by resolving to workout. So guess what my New Year’s resolution was? That’s right, work out more. But I’m doing it with some major help. Namely, these awesome free apps that help you keep track of your fitness progress.

Fitocracy is a Social Fitness app started by two nerdy gamers. They decided to balance out all the WoW and Call of Duty by getting to the gym; only they decided it would be way more fun if going to the gym were like a video game. Fitocracy has quests that users can complete to level up and attain achievements. You gain levels by logging your workouts and you feel just as awesome as when you beat a boss level, when you complete quests. Pretty much every exercise, from planking to mountain biking, can be logged to gain points.

You can also give props to people, like my friend did to me.

One aspect of the app I find really helpful is the groups. Much like Facebook, you can join a group, like Lady Lifters or Cyclists, and within each group is a feed where people post questions, advice, where to get the best equipment, and tips. You can also follow people and message them, sort of like Twitter. It’s a really useful app for keeping track of your workouts. Plus, I think the little robot is hilarious.

Another great app: Lose It! A calorie counting app that helps you find the food you’ve been shoving into your mouth so that you can figure out how many calories it contains. What’s great about the app is it has a lot of restaurants and brand name food in it’s system, so it’s pretty hard to not find what you’re looking for. It can also scan bard codes, just in case.


As you can see, I like chicken. Also, knowing how much under I was because of the chicken was useful for future meals.

The easiest part about the app is it tells you how many calories you need, or don’t need, to intake in a week if you want to lose 1/2 lb., 1 lb., etc. And if you need to adjust that based on your workout routine, just plug in more numbers and it adjusts and keeps track for you! Pretty awesome if you hate math and writing everything down. Plus, there are badges you can earn to help keep you going and friends or groups to motivate you.

There are plenty more apps you can download, like Fitness Buddy or My Fitness Pal, but these are two of the easiest, free apps you can use to help you with that New Year’s Resolution. So don’t start juicing (taking creatine) if you don’t know the what’s/how’s. You could just go read about others’ experiences in the feeds on Fitocracy. Hopefully this app helps you out and makes your workouts easier and more enjoyable. Good luck with your New Year’s resolution and may you look this good someday:

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