Your smartphone can deliver a big dose of motivation via health apps that offer advice and track your progress.

FitBit: Track your activity all day long, including your steps taken, calories eaten, calories burned, distance moved and weight changes with the FitBit app. The platform makes it easy to set your individual fitness goals and work towards them, and you can compete with your friends in a calorie race for some extra incentive.

PocketYoga: This app is a qualified yoga instructor in your pocket. With 27 sessions to choose from, and a range of difficulty levels, learn new poses with explanations more detailed than you’d gain from behind 30 heads at the back of a yoga class. Enjoy yoga in the privacy of your living room with no one to judge your downward dog.
Instant Heartrate: Place the pad of your index finger over your phone’s camera and get your heartrate within seconds.

Hot5: Exercise like a celebrity by watching short, effective workout videos from some of the world’s top personal trainers. Build yourself a personalised playlist and connect with your MyFitnessPal, a calorie and activity logging app, to include your Hot5 workout in your daily tally. The latest update lets you talk to a personal trainer live for customised advice.

Pact: Exercise becomes a whole lot more interesting with Pact, an app that pays you for reaching your fitness goals and hitting target weights. Put your money where your mouth is and bet other Pact users you’ll achieve a certain level of fitness by a specified date, if you fail, you pay up, but if you succeed, you can reap the rewards.

Map My Run: Get a GPS-tracked map of your cardio with Map My Run, along with an analysis of your speed and the elevation of the terrain covered during your workout.

Carrot Fit: If your exercise enthusiasm is lacking and you need a little bit of tough love to get you motivated, Carrot Fit is the app for you. High intensity workouts are made into an incredibly fun time with Mt. Doom Climbs, Celebrity Face Punches and Dragon Mating Dances, and a personal trainer named Carrot who tends to get abusive if you’re not achieving your goals.

MyFitnessPal: With a massive database of over 5 million foods, MyFitnessPal makes it easy for you to track your diet. Enter anything you’ve eaten and the app will track the calories, and add them to your daily quota, while subtracting any calories lost recorded by its step counting software.

Charity Miles: This app is focused on how far the benefits of your fitness can go. Donate 25 cents to charity for every mile you run or walk and feel really good about yourself after you exercise, inside, and out.

From the editors of Simply You Body & Beauty.