Developing and maintaining a healthy lifestyle is definitely not an easy task. Work, meetings, appointments, errands.. all these things take a great deal of energy and time. We constantly rush through meals and eat junk food, lay on the couch instead of walking or jogging, or fall short on sleep.
Fortunately, we can make changes for the better. All we need is willpower and the right mobile apps. If you didn’t know it by now, our phones can truly help us make positive changes and improve our health both physically and mentally.
There are numerous apps specially developed to help us embrace healthy habits and guide us towards a happier day-to-day life.
Here’s a list of health apps for Android and iPhone you can reliably use to improve the quality of your life.
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Walk More: ActivityTracker
One of the most beneficial and easiest forms of exercise is walking. Walking can have tremendous effects not only on the body but the mind as well. But there’s a catch: you need to do it regularly, not every once in a while. According to specialists, it’s advisable to walk 10.000 steps each day to rip all the health benefits.
ActivityTracker is a pedometer app for iPhone and Android designed to help you walk more each day and become healthier. The app automatically records your physical activity throughout the day and shows you everything you need to know: how many steps you’ve taken, how many calories you’ve burned, the distance walked, or the total active time.
In order to record your activity, the app uses the built-in motion processor in your device instead of GPS. What this means is that it will have a minimum impact on your phone’s battery.
To motivate you to be more active, ActivityTracker gives you the possibility to set a weekly target and displays a daily goal based on that target. You can set a personal target for the metric that matters the most to you: the steps taken, calories burned, or the distance covered.
You have the option of tracking your activity hour-by-hour and can easily visualize your stats for the past days, weeks, or months. This way, you’ll be able to analyze your results in time and take delight in the progress made.
Download ActivityTracker on iPhone or Android
Eat Healthier: Fooducate
Hippocrates was not wrong at all. “We are what we eat.” To enjoy a healthy lifestyle, we need to start eating more quality food and less junk food. According to statistics, almost 37% of Americans consume fast food regularly.
Fooducate is a nutrition app designed to help us eat healthier, lose that unwanted body fat, and hence stay in better shape. What this app does is track everything you eat during the day and place at your disposal information about the calories, protein, fat, or carbs you consume.
You can manually search for food items or simply scan the barcode of a product. For that purpose, the app provides an impressive food database to let you know about the macros and calorie intake.
One of the useful features of Fooducate is that you can follow a special diet, according to your individual necessities. You can opt for a keto, low-carb, paleo, vegan diet, or a special diet for diabetes, kidney, or heart disease.
The app offers health and diet tips from professionals, as well as weight loss suggestions. You can also add your own recipes and instantly visualize their nutrition value.
Download Fooducate on iPhone or Android
Stay Hydrated: WaterMinder
You may or not be aware of it, but drinking enough water is essential to our health. If we want to stay healthy, we need to make sure we are properly hydrated during the day. Enter WaterMinder.
WaterMinder is a cross-platform water tracker app. What this app does is remind you to drink enough water so that you can reach your goal and keep your body functioning at the right parameters. You can easily check how hydrated you are throughout the day by viewing your water fill or in percent.
The app comes with preset cups to monitor your hydration level, but you can also create your own cups by changing the size, icon, color, or drink type. Of course, WaterMinder enables you to log and track other fluids than water. If you want to analyze your progress over time, the app offers diverse stats and graphs regarding your water intake history.
Download WaterMinder app on iPhone or Android
Sleep Better: Sleep Cycle
In addition to exercising regularly, eating right, and staying hydrated, it’s equally important to be able to get a good night’s rest. Getting enough sleep is essential not only for our physical health but for our emotional and psychological health as well.
Sleep Cycle was developed to monitor your sleeping patterns and wake you up exactly at the right moment: during your lightest sleep phase. Waking up at this stage will allow you to feel completely rested and gain the necessary energy for the rest of the day.
How does Sleep Cycle work? Well, the app uses two different motion-detection tools. One of them is the built-in microphone, and the other one is the accelerometer on your phone. The app uses these tools to analyze your movements while you sleep and to wake you up at the optimal moment with the aid of a customizable alarm.
It’s worth mentioning that you don’t need to place your phone under your pillow during the night. It’s enough to turn on the app and leave your phone on your nightstand or close by on the floor.
Download Sleep Cycle on iPhone or Android
Peace of Mind: Insight Timer
Stress, anxiety, restlessness. They affect us all from time to time. Whether it’s workplace-related or a family matter, sometimes we all feel stressed out.
Insight Timer is a meditation app created to help you effectively cope with difficult situations and find peace of mind. The app places at your disposal a wide array of guided meditations on numerous life topics.
These range from how to deal with anxiety and get through recovery to how to improve focus and concentration at work, how to develop better relationships, or become a better leader.
In addition to guided meditations, Insight Timer provides a large variety of songs and ambient sounds particularly created to clear your mind of negative thoughts, to help you calm down and completely relax.
The app offers useful stats regarding your progress and keeps you updated with the milestones you’ve reached. Additionally, you have the option of joining various discussion groups, ranging from beginners to Christianity and poetry, and share your impressions.
Download Insight Timer on iPhone or Android
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