There’s not doubt that over the past several years phones have changed our lives. While there are apps out there for fun and games, there’s also some incredibly useful apps that can help us become stronger, eat healthier, run more efficiently and live an overall healthier life.
Here I’m highlighting my favorite 25 health and fitness apps- all based on uniqueness, fun and how beneficial they appear to be:
What It Is: When it comes to health and fitness tracking, MyFitnessPal is one of the biggest names in the game. With a database of more two million (that’s right, million) food items, the platform makes it easy for users to keep track of calories and so much more.
Why It’s Cool: The platform can be used with all diets, whether you’re going low-carb, high-protein, or just trying to eat healthier.
Cost: Free. Available for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry
What It Is: Run for your life! This action-packed app turns a jog in the park, or a run on the treadmill into a thrilling game (and the ability to turn it into a zombie chase).
Why It’s Cool: Fitness turns into a real-live video game — save your base, and avoid the hordes of zombies while walking to work. Create custom playlists so the story unfolds through your favorite songs.
Cost: $3.99. ($1.99 for the 5k training app). Available for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.
What It Is: UP takes a holistic approach to living healthy. With a wristband that tracks movement and sleep, the app displays the data, and allows users to input meals and mood. The app also provides feedback to keep users motivated.
Why It’s Cool: The wristband is one of the most asthetically pleasing fitness trackers on the market. The band itself is simple, but the app allows an easy to understand daily picture of your own progress (as well as your friends).
Cost: Free (wristband required). Available for iOS and Android.
What It Is: No long-distance trucking here! Locavore hunts down nearby markets and farms featuring local, in-season food. Find out what’s in season in your ‘hood, where to buy it, and how to prepare and store it. Who knew farming was so high-tech?
Why It’s Cool: Besides a map of local markets and a frequently-changing list of seasonal fruits and veggies, the app allows customers to interact with each other and food producers. Find contact information for farms and share info on new produce or markets on Facebook. Plus, there’s a section of recipes featuring seasonal food you’re likely to find at the market.
Cost: Free. Available for iOS and Android.
What It Is: This simple app helps make eating like a locavore easier by telling users what’s in season locally, where to find a nearby farmers market, and check out seasonal recipes.
Why It’s Cool: This app is great because it combines two super-useful features — a local produce locator and recipe suggestions — into one. Plus, it’s perfect for finding healthy items when traveling in an unfamilar location.
Cost: Free. Available for iOS.
What It Is: Skipping a workout is a lot harder with money on the line. GymPact lets users ante up and tie a monetary incentive to working out.
Why It’s Cool: Users who check in at their gym with the GymPact app get to keep the money they put up, while those who miss a workout lose a predetermined chunk of change. GymPact also features integration with RunKeeper and at-home workout options.
Cost: Free. Available for iOS and Android.
What It Is: Who said working out had to be so much “work”? Certainly not the developers at Teemo. This app turns fitness into a game that doesn’t require a gym, exercise equipment, or even running shoes. Invite Facebook friends to a “virtual challenge” in a specific environment, like a jungle, mountain, or desert. Participants win by doing expert-approved cardio, strength, and flexibility exercises which range from easy to difficult. Teemo makes exercising a social event and gets people to incorporate movement into their daily lives.
Why It’s Cool: It’s like being inside a video game!
Cost: Free. Available for iOS.
What It Is: Sportaneous lets users find and book fitness classes in a snap. Yoga? Pilates? Kickboxing? Users can find what’s close and get moving in no time.
Why It’s Cool: The app encourages discovery, pushing users to try new classes and new routines. The app also lets users sign up together so you won’t have to sweat by yourself.
Cost: Free. Available for iOS.
What It Is: Feel free to leave the workout journal at home. This app lets users log workouts, body stats, sleep, and more.
Why It’s Cool: Logging workouts is especially accurate thanks to the ability to add custom exercises (not already in the library) and specifiy supersets when performing exercises back-to-back. Need a little boost? Set target reps and sets, and use the customizable rest timer to keep things moving.
Cost: $1.99. Available for iOS.
What It Is: For people who want a personal trainer but can’t afford it… there’s an app for that. Based on fitness goals and personal preferences, GAIN Fitness will build a custom fitness plan culled from their network of professional trainers and athletes. A calendar keeps track of workouts completed and calories consumed. It’s like having a trainer in your pocket!
Why It’s Cool: Confused about a certain move? Watch a video of the trainer or athlete performing the exercise. Feeling sluggish? A real person’s voice is there encouraging you to keep working.
Cost: Free. Available for iOS.
What It Is: With nearly 800 workouts, 5,000-plus exercises, and access to a live personal trainer, consider this app a complete fitness experience.
Why It’s Cool: FitnessBuilder puts personalization first by carefully tracking users’ strength and cardiovascular fitness, weight, and other body stats (including BMI and BMR). Users can also post workouts and progress graphs to Facebook and Twitter, and schedule workouts in advance to stay organized and accountable.
Cost: First month free, then $9.99 per month for Plus Access. Available for iOS and Android.
What It Is: We make moves every day, so why not track them? Moves is a smart pedometer that records everything from steps taken in a day to miles cycled.
Why It’s Cool: The app’s daily maps and “storylines” give users a new way to easily record and analyze their movement thoroughout the day — without any extra costly equipment.
Cost: Free. Available for iOS.
What It Is: Endomondo puts the “social” back in fitness tracking. The app is a GPS-system which tracks how far users walk, run, bike, or travel during physical activity.
Why It’s Cool: Endomondo uses all that fancy tracking info to help connect on social platforms like Facebook, inspiring friendly competition or a digital boost of encouragement.
Cost: Free. Available for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and SymbianOS.
What It Is: This grocery-store navigator aims to help people better analyze food labels and get key information without swimming through unnecessary details.
Why It’s Cool: The app allows users to scan items right in the store and will highlight the product’s positive and negative attributes. It grades each item based on its “healthiness,” and will even offer up a healthier alternative if one is available.
Cost: Free (“Plus” version, $3.99). Available for iOS and Android.
What It Is: Search through more than 30,000 professionally-created recipes, save your favorites, and create shopping lists with this essential kitchen app.
Why It’s Cool: On top of the basic recipes and shopping lists, the app offers step-by-step instructions to help even novice cooks navigate more complicated recipes.
Cost: Free. Available for iOS and Android.
What It Is: Build a healthier grocery list with Shopwell, which ranks each item on your list with a number between 1 and 100 based on how healthy it is.
Why It’s Cool: The app aims to improve your eating (and buying habits) buy offering users “trade-ups” when they enter less healthy options.
Cost: Free. Available for iOS.
What It Is: This is the food tracker for people who hate counting calories and care more about how the food we eat makes us feel.
Why It’s Cool: Thryve is a stress-free approach to tracking meals and how your body reacts to those foods. Break down meals into individual ingredients, and a pie chart tells you visually what fraction of your meal was grains, veggies, dairy, fruit, etc. It’ll also suggest what food groups you may need more of!
Cost: Free. Available for iOS.
What It Is: True to its name, Calm is designed to reduce stress and bring a little more calm into users’ lives. The app offers a seven-step program designed to give users the tools they need to become calmer, in addition to seven guided relaxation sessions (ranging from two to 30 minutes) and 10 beautiful nature scenes from which users can choose a calming background for their phone.
Why It’s Cool: The guided relaxation sessions allow users to bring some zen into their life at any time throughout the day, and the two-minute option pretty much eliminates all excuses not to chill out. In a world where most signs scream “More! More! More!,” it’s great to have an app reminding us all that we can be happy right now, even with less.
Cost: Free. Available for iOS.
What It Is: This app is a no brainer. Create a plan from common wellness goals — drink water, take the stairs, call mom — then join a community, and share your journey with friends.
Why It’s Cool: Users can invite friends to join a goal. Listed side effects: more happiness, deeper friendships, and additional physical vitality. With so many apps out there centered just on diet and exercise, Fig takes a more holistic approach.
Cost: Free. Available for iOS and Android.
What It Is: Launched last year, Charity Miles is an app that tracks every mile you run, bike, or walk, and donates the results to charity on your behalf. Thanks to corporate sponsors, users don’t have to open their wallet, they just need to get moving.
Why It’s Cool: The app has partnered with big-name companies and causes to donate money on behalf of its users, as if they were sponsoring your run. Users just have to pick a cause and get going, no credit cards necessary.
Cost: Free. Available for iOS and Android.
What It Is: Leave your circuit-training routine up to Sworkit, an app that provides both customized and randomized circuit workouts for various muscle groups and lengths of time.
Why It’s Cool: Users choose either strength training routines or yoga and stretching sequences. Detailed illustrations of each exercise help ensure proper form. People can also track their progress and set weekly goals.
Cost: Free. Available for iOS and Android
What It Is: Here’s a tool to help you cope with stressful situations, without having to trek all the way to a therapist’s office. The app draws on strategies from the school of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, an approach that focuses on shifting our thought patterns to be more positive.
Why It’s Cool: This app is easy to use: All we have to do is input what happened and how it made us feel, and the app guides us through a process of thinking about how we could have reacted differently. The techniques users learn from using the app can supposedly help relieve anxiety, depression, and anger in the long term.
Cost: $1.99. Available for iOS.
What It Is: The idea behind Expereal is to track your mood and see how it changes over time. The app sends reminders for users to rate how they’re feeling on a scale of 1 to 10 and creates a graph showing the progression of their mood over the course of time.
Why It’s Cool: Since humans are notoriously poor judges of how they felt just yesterday, this app is designed to give an accurate representation of our emotional state over time. There’s an option to add text and pictures to every rating, so users can track patterns in what makes them feel swell, and what brings on a sour mood.
Cost: Free. Available for iOS.
What It Is: This fun little app is a cubicle-friendly guide to zen out the workplace.
Why It’s Cool: Need a yoga break without putting on stretchy pants? With super-simple and relevant instruction, Office Yoga is a perfect resource for cubicle-bound yogis who need a zen break before checking their email. (Seriously, aside from seriously stellar desk stretches, Office Yoga also offers an email meditation to clear the mind before tackling the inbox).
Cost: $0.99. Available for iOS.
What It Is: Want to drop some pounds? Lose It! users get a customized weight loss plan and then use the app to track food, measure activity levels, and connect with peers for group support to reach their goals.
Why It’s Cool: Lose It! can sync up with most of the popular fitness tracking devices and wireless scales on the market. It also has a large food database for easy reference.
Cost: Free. Available for iOS, Android, Kindle, and Nook.
DietBet
What is it? DietBet is a game where you’ve got four weeks to lose 4% of your starting weight. To begin, everyone puts money into the pot. After four weeks, whoever’s hit their 4% goal is a winner and splits the pot.
Why It’s Cool: You can join your own group or create your own among friends. It keeps you motivated and at the end, if you lose 4% of your body weight, you get paid! There is one group that currently has about 6,000 players and the pot is more than $140,000!
Cost: It’s free, but when you win, a small percentage of your winnings will go to the website. Still, it’s a fantastic idea! (Thank you Jeanette for this info)
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When we are on the subject of skin & beauty, there are literally thousands of products out there.
1. Get yourself a little container of Vaseline
3. Replace your makeup remover.
5. Lather up for Less
7. Ditch the clarifying Shampoo
10. Hydrogen Peroxide can equal to pearly whites
There is no doubt that having a tan makes us feel better about ourselves. It makes us feel healthier, gives us a new sense of confidence (especially when wearing shorts) and can even make us appear a tad thinner.
Sometimes it can be challenging to find the right clothes that will flatter your figure. I mean, there are a lot of cute stylish clothing options out there…but not everything is perfect for your specific body type.