Healthy living has evolved into some sort of modern-day religion. You have healthy living gurus and lifestyle coaches all out there trying to help you live your best life. You then have all manner of different diets and exercise plans you can follow and a whole host of books, videos, guides, and tutorials out there trying to help you fine-tune the decisions you make on a daily basis in search of a healthy lifestyle that will make you feel better and live longer. We now have a new pillar that supports us in our quest to live a healthy lifestyle, the trusty mobile app.
That’s right, apps are now fantastic tools for helping us stay healthy in many different ways. There are now apps for tracking what we eat and recommending healthy meal plans, recording our activity and promoting suitable exercises to boost our bodies and even apps that track lots of different biometric health data giving us greater insight into how our bodies are working than we’ve ever had before.
Best health apps
MyFitnessPal
The first app we’re featuring today is a fantastic food tracking app that will help with weight loss. MyFitnessPal has a huge database of known foods and tries to make logging what you eat easier than ever. All foods in the database have nutritional information attached and there are literally millions of different foods and dishes here, with even common restaurant meals also in the list and ready for you to track. What’s also great about MyFitnessPal is that it will offer you macro-nutrient guidelines based on the individual nutritional needs of your diet. If you’re looking to eat more carbs or protein, for example, then MyFitnessPal will analyze the foods you’re eating and let you know whether you need to eat more or less of any particular foods.
Home Workout
So, you’re tracking your calorie and macro-nutrient intake using MyFitnessPal and now you want to add fitness goals to your daily routine. For this, there is no better app for Apple iPhones or Android smartphones than Home Workout, which makes it easy to start working out at home without the need for any specialist equipment at all. This app is like having your own personal trainer.
Once you’ve downloaded Home Workout you won’t need a gym membership or your own weights or home equipment. The app will give you routines including weight training and strength training. You’ll also get warm-up routines and cool-down stretches as well a wide range of analytics tools including tracking charts and graphs, and drink reminders and period trackers if you want to go that far.
Headspace
Now that you have your diet taken care of and a decent home workout routine set up the next step should be taking care of your mental health and well-being. This is what the app Headspace is about, helping you stay calm and relaxed and maintaining strong mental health. Eating well and regular exercise will help you stay on top of your mental health, but Headspace will help you take control of it.
Headspace, which is available for iOS and Android phones offers guided meditation sessions, help with sleep patterns, and many different ways to try and deal with stress and anxiety. There’s also access to emergency stress releasing sessions for people dealing with intense levels of stress or personal distress. There’s a free version of headspace but a lot of the features remain behind a monthly subscription.
Lumosity
Another great app to keep you feeling sharp and clear-minded is Lumosity. This free app sends you daily brain games and puzzles designed to both test your mental dexterity and expands it. Lumosity offers great quizzes, puzzles, and teasers that will require critical thinking, memory, and deep problem-solving skills to solve. This app is like a gym routine for your brain. It will get your synapses firing and keep your mental dexterity fresh and ready for a challenge.
Runtastic
Runtastic has been one of the best apps for tracking runs for quite some time now. As well as the regular run tracking app, Runtastic has also expanded to track many other types of activities such as bodyweight training and daily steps. Runtastic offers you stats and graphs on your performance and progression and also works seamlessly with other wearable devices like Android smartwatches and even shoe trackers. As well as the free version, which you can sync with other fitness apps such as Google Fit or MyFitnessPal, Runtastic also has a premium plan that you can pay monthly or annually.
Sweatcoin
This app offers a unique spin on getting yourself active. Sweatcoins are a type of crypto coin that you generate when walking. You download the app onto your iPhone or Android smartphone and then allow it to track your steps. For every 1,000 steps, you take you’ll generate 0.95 Sweatcoins, which puts you on just over nine coins a day if you average 10,000 steps. This app should be seen as a novelty, however, rather than a genuine fitness app as the average item, you can get with your Sweatcoins costs 20,000 coins, which will take you around six years to collect, going on the average step rate outlined above.
Sleep Cycle
The final app in our list of healthy living apps is designed to help you get the best night’s sleep possible. Sleep Cycle tracks how deeply you sleep at night and is also able to track your heart rate through the night as you sleep. Another cool feature of the Sleep Cycle app is that it will wake you up during light patches of sleep. Basically, as the app tracks how deeply you’re sleeping, you’ll be able to set a period of time when it will assess your sleep patterns and then wake you when you’re in your lightest sleeping phase. This way you’ll feel fresh when you wake up because you won’t feel like you’ve been disturbed from a deep sleep.
