Habits matter. Whether you wake up with your 5 am alarm every morning to make an early run or reach for chips in your pantry when you’re stressed. Those are habits and believe it or not, they have the capacity to run your life. Forming new habits can be challenging, especially if you have already pre-existing ones that are pretty hard to change.
Luckily, most people have the habit of carrying with them every day something they can’t live a day without such as a smartphone. The good news is, you can use it to download essential apps that could help form new habits that can change your life.
17 Best Health & Fitness Apps (for iPhone & Android)
Arranged in no particular order, here are some of the best apps to help your health in life:
1) Runkeeper
What is it for?
For people who wanted to kickstart the habit of running as well as efficiently tracking their runs.
What does it do:
Runkeeper is a great app tracking your runs, helping you start the running habit with specific cues as well as particular rewards. It comes with a digital diary that shows you the factors that impacts your run (both measurable and unquantifiable). The app gives you a brief overview of your past runs, and how much you’ve progressed.
2) MyFitnessPal
What is it for? A calorie counter and diet tracker that follows what you eat.
What does it do:
If you want to start eating healthy, this app can track what you eat for a day and even for the whole week with a user-friendly format. It works like a food journal helping you make smart food choices daily and also helps you understand why you have specific cravings. With its database of over one million foods, you’ll be able to count all the calories you’ve eaten for the day without breaking a sweat.
3) Headspace
What is it for? An application for people who find it difficult to slow things down and take a breather. Headspace works for even the busiest people out there who can’t seem to slow down.
What does it do:
It gives one a sense of clarity and peace. People are aware of the range of benefits of meditation both in the mind and body- however, they can never seem to get started.
This guided meditation prompts what you can do with your mind and body and can last even as short as ten minutes. Going through this even for a couple of minutes of your day or during short breaks can make you feel more centered, focused, and re-energized, and ready to take on the tasks for the day.
4) Pacifica
What is it for? For people struggling with mood disorders, particularly depression, anxiety, and those who have high-stress levels.
What does it do:
Pacifica employs several tools that could help you manage negative thought patterns, bad moods, anxiety, and depression. Even if you’re not clinically diagnosed yet, tracking how you feel will help you cope with stress and help you deal with your emotions more healthily. It enables you to understand more clearly specific behavioral patterns and habits that you often miss.
It has a feature wherein you can record or write down your thoughts so that you can be more aware of how you feel. For example, there are negative thoughts that flood your mind, upon recognizing it, can instead replace it with positive ones.
5) Sleep Bot
What is it for? Specifically designed for people who have trouble sleeping, for example- having insomnia.
What does it do:
We all know how sleep is important. It recharges your body from the day’s exhausting activities. Having a quality sleep is as vital as exercise and eating healthy. Do you know that skipping sleep can severely impact your health in the long run? An app created to track your sleeping habits it makes you create logs of the intervals of times you woke up during the night as well as record the ones that you slept straight without interruption.
Aside from features wherein you can easily customize the amount of sleep you want to get, you can also have an advanced setting such as sound and motion sensitivity. However, what’s so great about it is that is has a smart alarm feature wherein it wakes you up at the optimal time for your sleep cycle.
6) Human
What is it for? People who want a daily activity tracker and know how many calories they are burning.
What does it do: This app tracks all your movement from walking, running, or cycling. It motivates you to move regularly as well as keeps a record of how many calories you burn while doing it. Furthermore, it ranks you with the other app users based on the specific activity that you did for the day.
7) Seven
What is it for? Fitness newbies, people who have a hard time going to the gym due to a busy schedule or other personal reasons
What does it do: A quick work-out that needs no equipment, just your bodyweight, that you can do anywhere. These high-intensity workouts in short bursts of time can help you lose all those extra calories- even if you have at least 10 minutes to spare. It has a step by step guide on your phone which you can easily follow through with just a touch of a button, and your circuit begins. You can also add several courses if you have some more time to spare.
8) Habitbull
What is it for? For people who want to keep track of their habits on a more personal level.
What does it do: Habitbull is an app could help you form necessary habits on a more personal level like, skip the alcohol if you’re ever going for the happy hour, take the stairs rather than the elevator, or don’t reach out for chips when you’re stressed, grab a banana instead. With lots of cool analytics and digital rewards, you find it’s easy to break such bad habits as you start with healthier ones.
9) Edo
What is it for? For health-conscious individuals who want to choose their food carefully by understanding labs
What does it do: Edo is an app where it allows you to scan food labels directly; through its barcode enabling, you to see the nutritional value of each food item making it easier to weigh the pros and cons of each one. Furthermore, it shows how healthy a particular food is and suggests healthier alternatives.
10) Shopwell
What is it for? For people who want healthier grocery shopping.
What does it do: It allows you to scan food labels so that you can manage your health conditions better as well as find the best options for weight loss as well as maintaining a healthy diet. What makes this app great is that it can even find better, alternative options that are being sold nearest you as well as how much they cost.
11) Lifesum
What is it for? People looking for an app that combines both diet and exercise
What does it do: It makes the user follow some basic guidelines as well as ask you vital information such as gender, weight, height as well as fitness goals. From there, it gives you personal recommendations based on the info you’ve provided. It also gives feedback on the quality of food that you eat, drink more water, and even helpful tips to get you through difficult days. Overall, it helps the user have better food choices as well as improve exercise habits.
12) Calm
What is it for? People who wanted to destress and unplug.
What does it do: Calm has been named as the “App of the Year” by Apple. It’s mindfulness and meditation produce relaxing sounds and visuals to creates a sense of calm for the user. It has three options to choose from- sleep, meditate or relax. Each category offers the different programs all designed to calm you down.
13) Floperiod and Ovulation Tracker
What is it for? Women who want to predict their menstruation or ovulation.
What does it do: This app can be used for pill planning, contraceptives as well as give accurate predictions with ovulation and when they will have the next period. By helping to track cycles and symptoms, it carefully integrates menstruation with a woman’s lifestyle- exercise, hydration, and sleep. It also works well with those who are trying to conceive.
14) Sworkit
What is it for? For fitness geeks and buffs, as well as people who have busy schedules who hardly are able to make time for the gym.
What does it do: A shortened version of the phrase, “simply work it,” it offers users several helpful exercise videos that are demonstrated by personal trainers and fitness coaches. This app is extremely versatile in that it has over 200 types of functional exercises- from standard ones to customized routines. You have the option to choose how long your workout will take, work on specific areas you want to target, as well as add limitations or special conditions if any. To maximize the overall effectiveness of the workout, it incorporates randomized exercises with interval training, letting you adapt to a specific routine in the process.
15) Yoga Studio
What is it for? Great for anyone who wanted to try yoga as a tool for meditation, calming the body and mind, achieving clarity and decreasing overall stress levels.
What does it do: For years, beginners and long-time practitioners all turn to yoga to reap its numerous health benefits. What’s great about it is that is that it is for both a mind and a body work-out. You can improve overall stretchability and balance, at the same time, being a form of meditative exercise as it decreases overall stress and anxiety by a combination of meditation and breathing exercises. The app lets you choose which level you are at: beginner, intermediate, or advanced. It also allows you to customize the time and makes you pick which areas you like to focus- for strength, flexibility, balance, relaxation, or a combination of them? It also comes in an HD video with commentaries and instructors ready to guide you through each pose you make.
16) Spotify
What is it for? Great for anyone who needs pick-me-up music to boost their mood or upbeat tunes to fuel their workouts.
What does it do: Music is food for the soul. You need a mood booster when you’re feeling a bit down, something inspiring to listen to on your way to work, or upbeat tunes on your workout. Spotify has a custom playlist that can match your tempo, style, or mood perfectly. You can quickly select a genre browsing through your favorite songs and even music you have yet to discover. The premium version allows you to skip songs, create your customized playlist as well as save these tracks to be played even if you’re offline.
17) Blinkist
What is it for? For people who can’t seem to finish reading awesome books because it’s too long or for extremely busy people who love learning.
What does it do: Too many books, yet too little time? Blinkist’s team reads the excellent non-fiction book titles ranging from self-improvement to autobiographies. They give you key insights and put it in an easy to read, digestible content that mainly covers everything. Want to soak yourself with five top self-help book titles in a day? No problem!
The takeaway
In a rising, digital age that’s continually evolving, you can take the opportunity to make use of the best apps to help your health in life. It can help you overcome specific barriers as you become the best version of yourself. Small habits can lead to significant changes. What we will become of the future is a cumulation of small, consistent habits we put together each day. However, if you find you’re having issues or you’ve been medically wronged with your health, it may be useful to click here for some information on what to do.
