An App a Day Can Keep the Doctor Away: Our Favorite Health and Wellness Mobile Apps
- Published: Friday, October 18th 2013
- in Fitness
When Apple said, “there’s an app for that,” they weren’t kidding. You’d be amazed by how many apps exist in the mobile world; some of which can actually be very constructive and life-changing. Today, there are millions of mobile apps that assist us in our everyday lives whether we recognize it or not. To keep you informed on some of the beauties of what certain apps have to offer, we’ve compiled a list of go-to apps that will lead you in the right direction towards ultimate wellbeing. Whether it’s instructing you on how to stay fit, get fit, relax, get motivated, or eat the right foods based on your body, these health and wellness apps will easily and successfully benefit you.
Fitness:
You receive the best results with yoga when it’s performed on a daily basis. Luckily, with Pocket Yoga, you can practice at your own rate and in your own home, too! All you have to do is set your iPhone in front of your yoga mat, begin your session, and allow Pocket Yoga to guide you through it. The app enables you to choose from a variety of practices, difficulty levels, and durations and it even stores a continuing log of your yoga sessions so that you can track and regulate your progress.
This app is crucial to helping you get fit and teaching you the proper exercises for your personal workout plans, whether you’re training at the gym or in your own home. This innovative app highlights 30- to 45-minute workouts, all of which are completely constructed based on your fitness level and set goals. You have the opportunity to insert your fitness level and goals and then choose from an endless variety of workouts that are most suitable for your own training needs. The app visually and verbally instructs you on how to execute each exercise properly, while keeping you focused and motivated during the process. Additionally, there are some step-by-step directions as well as how-to videos for all exercises. As a fun incentive, users can earn rewards such as celebrity training videos by finishing their targeted goals.
If you’re looking to chart your runs and get a detailed description about your running speed and distance, then this is the app for you. Rated one of Time’s Top 10 iPhone Apps of 2009, RunKeeper uses your phone’s GPS to map out your runs, and you can set a goal frequency so that the app will coach you while you’re running in order to keep you on a steady pace. By using your headphones with this app as you run, you can get RunKeeper’s audio updates telling you your distance and time while simultaneously listening to some motivating tunes along the way.
Some people dread the thought of exercising. Luckily, this app is an awesome way to add some creative excitement to your workout. This app is basically an interactive zombie apocalypse running game that will help you lose weight in the real world while virtually running for your life from a crowd of the undead. Zombies, Run! tracks your running distance and even allows you to listen to your music while the story unfolds throughout the game. What could be cooler (and spookier) than that?
Skimble’s Workout Trainer will help you get fit and stay fit with its numerous free workouts that are virtually instructed by expert personal trainers. Whether you’re training at the gym or in your own home, this app will guide you through each exercise with a timed, step-by-step instruction equipped with audio, video, and visual elements. All you have to do is choose which workout is most suitable for you based on the area of the body in which you wish to focus on. What’s so great about this app is that you can use it for an endless amount of exercises including weight loss, yoga, weightlifting, or running.
Spa and Wellness:
Not to toot our own horn or anything, but our Spafinder Wellness 365 app is certainly the must-have app for searching for and booking the ideal spa appointment or fitness class to lead you towards your path to personal wellness. Our app is equipped with over 20,000 spa and wellness locations, and with the touch of the finger you can automatically locate nearby spas, yoga and fitness studios, and even salons. Read descriptions, reviews, and browse the location’s services and once you’re satisfied, schedule a spa appointment, yoga session, or a fitness class. Even better, the app allows you to discover awesome deals and special offers at participating wellness locations.
Success Wizard – Life Coaching, Goal Setting, Personal Development Coach and Productivity Tools
Success Wizard is an influential life management app that will help you reach complete wellbeing through planning, focusing, and achieving lasting results of your choice. The app offers a distinctive set of operative tools that will keep you motivated, increase your productivity and enable you to accomplish any of your desired goals or dreams. With the app’s Life Commitments scheduler, you can list and prioritize so that you can concentrate on the things that matter most in your life. The app also offers coaching advice, daily reminders, and end-of-the-day reflections. This virtual life coach will help you take over your life and steer it in the right direction while enabling you to work towards creating a happy, gratifying lifestyle along the process.
Meditation is performed in several different ways, but its underlying goal is to allow the body to find its sanctuary and achieve inner peace. With the Meditation app, there are 80 different sounds that you can choose from and use while meditating (because after all, different types of meditation call for different types of soothing background noises!). All sounds can be used for a variety of practices including concentration, relaxation, sleep, reducing stress and anxiety, providing happiness and wellness, as well as assisting you during a post-operative healing process.
Healthy Eating:
An important part of eating healthy is choosing the right foods to buy at the grocery store. With Fooducate as your right-hand man (and personal grocery shopping buddy), you can learn how to make the healthiest choices while shopping for food. The app is equipped with a barcode scanner so that you can get immediate information on any food item you’re considering buying. What’s even greater about this app is that it gives you a letter grade (A, B, C, etc.) for each food that you browse, informing you about the pros and cons of that particular food item. Of course, the goal of the app is to stray you away from those C-graded and below items, and instead, encourage you to stick to those that are at levels A or B.
True Food is an app that’s key in keeping you “in the know” with anything and everything related to food safety. Nowadays, so many products on grocery shelves are made with ingredients from genetically-modified foods. As a consumer, you now have the power to go behind closed doors and get the true facts on genetically-modified foods with this informative app. The True Food Shoppers Guide app provides you with vital information on typical genetically-modified ingredients, as well as brands to look for—and look out for. The app also offers some tips to keep you informed and assist you in finding clean foods (those that are free of any genetically-modified ingredients) in your nearby grocery stores.
Rated one of Time’s Top 10 iPhone Apps of 2009, Locavore uses GPS activity to search for local, in-season foods that you can purchase. The app pinpoints the greatest farms, farmer’s markets, and Community-Supported Agriculture near you and you can even get recipes to make scrumptious and wholesome dishes with the local produce that you find through the app.
Calorie Counter and Diet Tracker by MyFitnessPal
With this fast and easy-to-use calorie counter, you’ll be losing weight in no time. Containing over 3 million food options, this app allows you to log your daily food intake. You can add many foods at once, save your favorites, and add entire meals. Even better, MyFitnessPal’s Calorie Counter and Diet Tracker app assists you in creating your own personalized meals and exercises, while tracking and reporting your dietary-intake (calories, fat, protein, carbs, sugar, fiber, cholesterol, etc.) and exercise progression. The app will also set up customized goals for you based on your fitness and dietary needs that you insert into your profile. You can even provide your own recipe ideas and the app will do all the dirty work by giving you a detailed description of the nutritional contents of the recipe. Pretty sweet, huh?
Not all of us have time to cook healthy meals at home each day. But just because we go out to eat, doesn’t mean we have to risk losing the “health” factor in the meals we eat at restaurants, and HealthyOut proves it. With this app, you simply enter your specific diet or dietary restrictions and the app will conveniently use your location in order to recommend specific, healthy dishes at neighboring eateries.
Learn more about the basics of getting fit and healthy here.
