Let’s throw it out there – diets stink. No one likes being on a diet. No one likes dragging their bodies out of bed at the crack of dawn to get to the gym. No one likes going out to eat with a group of friends and ordering a water and a salad. And no one likes feeling hungry.

Dieting is hard, so when you make the decision to go on a diet, not only do you need to be careful to choose the right one for you, but you also need all of the help that you can get when it comes to sticking to your plan and resisting temptation.

Well, there’s good news out there: your smartphone can make you skinnier. Yup, it’s true! Your daily companion that’s always attached to your hip (which could stand to lose a little of that extra meat, probably) can be your on-board motivation to get thin. Check out these 5 apps that were built just for helping you stick to your diet and lose weight fast!

Calorie Counter PRO

Calorie Counter PRO is the app that all of the major health publications are talking about because so many people have been using it successfully. With a database of over 400,000 foods with all of their nutritional breakdowns and a bar code scanner that lets you scan any additional food product to store its nutritional information, this truly is an all-in-one food and nutrition database.

You can keep track of every little morsel that goes into your mouth, including customizing recipes that are made at home. You also keep track of your exercise program and how many calories you’ve burned – all right in the same app. And maybe one of the best parts – when you’ve done something right, like, say, eliminated trans fats from your diet for a day, the app sends you a congratulatory message and lets you know that you’ve decreased your risk of heart disease.

Calorie Counter PRO is worth every penny of its $3.99 ticket price.

While Calorie Counter PRO does an amazing job with tracking food that you’ve already eaten, which may help many people in sticking to a diet regimen, others need someone or something there 24/7 telling them what to eat and when.

That’s where Intelli-Diet steps in. This app lets you set your weight loss goals and then record the foods that you currently have in your kitchen. Based on the information you enter, it establishes a fully customized diet for you that’s easy to follow. Then you set alarms that will remind you when to eat each meal.

This super smart app (hence the name “Intelli-Diet”) will only run you up $3.99.

Eat This, Not That!

Since dieting stinks no matter how hard you work and how successful you may be with it, why not make it fun with a little diet game? That’s right, Eat This, Not That! makes dieting a heck of a lot more fun than it usually is!

While this app has a few similar features to others, like tracking calories and how much food you eat in a day, its best feature is its game show. In this game, you’re shown 2 different foods, and you have to choose which one you think is better for you. When you give an answer, the app tells you the actual answer, giving nutritional information to back up its response.

You’ll end up saving yourself hundreds, and sometimes even thousands, of calories learning about foods that you thought were healthy but are actually terrible for you. Oh, it’s just $4.99 for the app, and it can keep you occupied for hours on end and teach you a little something to help out with your dieting initiatives at the same time.

400 Calories or Less Cookbooks

This app shies away a bit from the food database apps in that it’s more a collection of recipes, much like a cookbook, than a logging device.

This app lets you browse tons of different recipes from 4 cookbooks, all with different themes. Each recipe creates a meal that will cost you 400 calories or less! So if you’re not the best cook but are trying to eat healthy, 400 Calories or Less Cookbooks could be a great starting point to give you some great recipe ideas that are totally on your diet.

It’s a free app, so while some reviewers feel there aren’t enough recipes to choose from, it’s still a good starting point for anyone looking to be a healthy cook!

GymGoal Plus

The last piece to the dieting puzzle is of course exercise, and it can be difficult to track your progress and keep on pace if you can’t remember to record your workouts or are even unsure of what kind of workouts will benefit you most.

GymGoal Plus not only gives you workout routines and schedules, but it also features animated demonstrations of each exercise so you’re never in doubt of whether you’re performing and exercise correctly or not. The app also allows you to record your repetitions and weight of each exercise for easy workout tracking – that’s right, no more tracking on a ratty old notebook you tote along to the gym with you all the time!

You can also enter your workout and weight loss goals and track your progress in terms of weight or BMI. It’s an all-around full package as a gym companion that even some of the top body builders in the world use and rave about. You get all these features for a mere $3.99 – how can you go wrong, really?

Amy Richards is a freelance writer and avid workout enthusiast. She’s also an expert in gluten free gifts, since she knows and shops for many people who either make the gluten free lifestyle choice as part of their weight loss programs, or suffer from Celiac Disease.