Fitting into that old pair of jeans you have not worn in ages can be really hard, and so is trying to look good in that evening gown so you can go to the wedding dinner you have recently been invited to. Or perhaps you are hitting the obese section in the Body Mass Index (BMI) scale and you would like to eat healthily so you can lose weight and be healthy. Whatever the reason, diet and exercise are two very important sections in losing weight that should not be overlooked as the relationship between the two can affect your weight loss progress. Calorific is here to help.

What is it and what does it do

Main Functionality

Calorific is a great app to assist you in tracking the foods that you eat. It lets you break down your every meal into different components. For example, if you are having a burger, you can break it down to two slices of bread, a medium-sized patty, some lettuce and perhaps pickles as well. The same principle applies to other complex foods that are different kinds of foods paired up together.

Pros

• The foods are all divided into three parts – the good (coloured green), the okay (coloured orange) and the bad (coloured red)
• The categories are used in a food ratio, where they  suggest you to have a ratio of 50%:35%:15% – green, orange and red respectively
• Helps with water tracking
• Asks you what time you normally wake up so they can organise what time your breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner and night snack is at

Cons

• If you’ve eaten a huge meal with many things, it takes a long time to add everything you took/you may have forgotten about it
• Does not help with exercise

Discussion

Tracking your diet is not really that easy. Sure, some apps on your mobile phone may have a diet tracker in it, paired up with an exercise tracker. You can also look at nutrition facts and write it all down in a little notebook. But what if some foods you have been eating are not in it? Perhaps it is something that you have created yourself, like a mixture of this and that. You will be clueless as to how to record them inside your little diary as you do not know the amount of calories in them, and thus not record them. That would be a huge mistake in your weight loss quest.

The app tailors the time according to your body clock. Simply by telling them what time you normally wake up, they will tell you when it is time for breakfast, lunch, dinner and the morning, afternoon and night snacks in between the three main meals. It also sets a certain amount of calories you should only eat a day if you would like to lose a certain amount of weight (the amount should be set by you, of course) that the app advises you to follow.

Calorific, however, is easy to use. Their slogan, “Healthy eating in 2 clicks”, is not a marketing gimmick of any sort – it is actually true. While it does not actually encourage you to eat healthy foods, it gives you a little idea of what you have been eating for a particular day, and many people will take the initiative to try and change their diet to a healthier one. All you have to do is open up the app, click on what meal you are having and enter what you have eaten. Simple as that!

Conclusion and download link

This amazing app has helped me maintain my weight, preventing me from going into the “obese” section and I have never been healthier. While I am still striving to lose weight, this app has helped me tremendously so since it is a free (therefore completely risk-free app if it does not work for you) app, it is definitely worth the minute to install it on your iPhone.

Price: Free

Version reviewed: 1.0.3

Requires iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad – iOS 3.0 or later.

Download size: 2.1 MB

Calorific on Apple App Store