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What are the Best Health Apps to Help You Achieve Success?

I have put together a few of my favourite and best health apps that I use for myself and with my clients.

My Favourite and Best Health Apps

Sometimes don’t you feel like you just need a little bit of extra help to keep you organized and on task?  Everyone has that moment when they are tired or feel they aren’t making the right choices to live a healthy lifestyle. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I wish I had a personal assistant.

This is where technology can be utilized to keep you on task. Check the App store, and you will find an abundance of health apps that are designed to amalgamate all of your healthy lifestyle choices in one place so you can stay on track.

These health apps will help you do anything from tracking calorie and nutrient intake, to recording activity and workouts.  They also help to monitor your sleep patterns, provide you with running programs to increase endurance or even show you how to increase flexibility with basic yoga moves!

I have found, just like anything else on the internet, you need to check the source and ensure the information it is providing is reliable. With that in mind I have put together a few of my favourite and best health apps that I use for myself and with my clients.

MyFitnessPal

I have personally been using this health app for tracking my nutrition and calorie intake. MyFitnessPal has been around since 2005 and has proven its accuracy and worth. MyFitnessPal was purchased in 2015 by athletic Under Armour, for $475 million. This heath app had 80 million users at the time.

The app includes a calorie counter and detailed fitness journal allowing you to add in your personal information.  I like the mobile version as it has a barcode scanner that you can use to record your food, so you don’t have to type in the information. Instant information is a key selling point with my clients that have a busy life.

Keeping track of calories going in, compared to calories going out, is an essential component to increasing muscle mass and leaning out.

MyFitnessPal also has an excellent section that tracks your workouts. The developers have a section to input your exercise for the day, and it will give you an estimation of the number of calories burnt. You can manually go in and change those values to make it more accurate when used in conjunction with a Polar Heart Rate Monitor that records your calorie output based on age, gender, weight and heart rate during your workout.

All in all, I have found this to be one of the best health apps and very successful for me both personally and professionally.

Strava

Strava is an app tracks athletic activity via GPS. Its slogan is “The Social Network for Athletes”. Strava combines tracking activity with social media to take fitness to the next level. It offers people new to exercise a good support system with its ability to post your successes on social media. Strava also allows you to add friends to the app so you can share what you are doing and see what they are doing. Anyone that struggles with self-motivation can find a community to help give you that extra push of having peers watching! Working out with friends lets you stay motivated and get inspired with a community.

Strava includes the ability to plan routes, track elevation (net and unidirectional), speed (average, min/max), timing (total and moving time), and power/energy. Strava then allows you ways to analyze your performance. Once you have analyzed your success, then you can decide on your next goal with the app’s segments, routes, clubs and challenges. Strava is a wealth of inspiring routes, tips and information for the beginner to the seasoned athlete.

Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock

Do you have trouble getting up in the morning? Sleep Cycle alarm clock believes waking up feeling naturally rested is about waking up during the right part of your sleep patterns.

The Sleep Cycle is also one of the best health apps, it tracks your cycles of sleep states, a full cycle lasts approximately 90 minutes and is repeated several times during the night. The first state in a sleep cycle is light sleep, followed by deep sleep and a dream state referred to as REM-sleep. Your movements change with each sleep phase, so Sleep Cycle uses sound analysis to identify when you are entering a wake-up phase of your sleep patterns to wake you gently when you are in the lightest sleep state. Waking you during a light sleep state allows you to wake up feeling rested and ready for your the day!

Down Dog

Today we are busy and with the advent of web-based work, stepping out to a yoga studio isn’t always possible. Many people are searching out yoga routines on YouTube, but keep going back to the same video time and again.

Shake it up with Down Dogs customization features that allow you to create a program based on your preferences. This app freshens up your routine by providing you with a unique yoga flow sequence every time you use it. Down Dog lets you choose the pace of your routine along with the level of difficulty and time. The app then uses these guidelines to develop new sequences tailored for you. Down Dog comes with music and specific instructions for each pose.

Aura

We all get wrapped up in our daily lives with a million different tech products out there to distract us. Aura reminds you to “Put yourself first” with its mindfulness app.

Mindfulness is the new buzz word in today’s society, it claims to relieve stress and anxiety, plus it helps us to focus, thus being more productive. Aura’s free meditation platform was created by top meditation teachers and therapists.

Over time, Aura tracks your daily habits and then uses an algorithm to select the best daily exercise for you. These daily “Micro-Meditations” help you to become more mindful with 3-minute guided meditations. It will also provide you with 30-second mindful timeouts to help you recharge throughout the day.

The app provides you with the ability to create a gratitude journal, mood tracker to help you learn more about your patterns so you can generate change and lets you relax and meditate to the sound of nature.

There are many more reputable apps out there on the market just make sure you check them out and see if your friends or personal trainer have used them. Would they recommend them? Check out the reviews!

Hire a Professional to Create Change

Remember while these apps are useful for keeping you on track, there is nothing like having the true expertise of a health professional. Many of these apps provide fantastic general information, but for more detailed information about you, it is always best to seek out an expert in the field that you are trying to create change.

Hiring an elite personal trainer is always an excellent idea as they will have a host of other health professionals in their network that work with them and can coordinate true change in your life!

Use my best health apps to keep you on track and hire a professional to help you change your world! Good luck and happy training!

Cathie Glennon – BCRPA\SFL

References:

  1. https://www.active.com/fitness/articles/17-best-health-and-fitness-apps-of-2017
  2. https://www.activationproducts.com/blog/19-best-apps-tools-staying-healthy-busy-schedule/
  3. https://www.strava.com/
  4. https://www.myfitnesspal.com/
  5. https://www.sleepcycle.com/how-it-works/
  6. https://www.downdogapp.com/