We all aspire to be fitter and healthier at the start of each new year. We all make New Year’s resolutions that reveal our truly ambitious plans for self-improvement, but keeping them… Well, let’s just say it is no easy matter.
Luckily we can do something about it to stay committed: we can use our phones. The App Store is filled with apps that are created to help us better our health, both physically and mentally. In this article we’ve compiled a list of five apps designed to help you stay true to your health resolutions for 2018.
ActivityTracker: Improve your Physical Activity Level
We start off with an activity tracker app developed to accurately monitor your all-day movement. ActivityTracker by Bits&Coffee is able to track a wide range of metrics, from the steps taken and distance covered to the amount of calories burned and the total active time during a day.
The app quantifies your physical activity and motivates you to remain active by allowing you to set clear fitness goals for yourself, such as for instance walking 10.000 steps a day. To keep you driven till you reach your goals, the app can show your progress on a monthly, weekly, daily and even hourly basis. For a quick outlook at your progress you can visualize the steps taken in the nicely designed Today widget.
It’s important to mention that ActivityTracker has a minimum impact on your battery’s life, because it uses the motion processor instead of GPS.
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- Price: Free ($2.99 Pro Version)
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- Requirements: iOS 9.0 or later
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- Apple Watch Compatibility: Yes
- Download Link: App Store
Freeletics: How to Exercise with Intensity
Freeletics Bodyweight is a workout app that doesn’t require using any fitness equipment. In order to get in shape you’ll be using your body exclusively, which means you can work out in the comfort and privacy of your own home. Before beginning your training program, the app will have you test your current fitness level and, based on the results, will create a plan customized to your needs.
Freeletics provides a massive variety of exercises which cover all your muscle groups. To that effect you’ll be following an intensive training program, ranging from sprawl exercises and jump squats to burpees and pull-ups. The app offers tutorial videos for every exercise to make sure you’ll be executing them correctly and also has a social component where you can join a large community of fitness lovers.
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- Price: Free ($34.99 Coach Subscription)
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- Requirements: iOS 10.0 or later
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- Apple Watch Compatibility: No
- Download Link: App Store
SparkRecipes: Start Eating Healthy to Lose Weight
SparkRecipes is the app to try if one of your New Year’s resolutions is to eat healthy, nutritious meals. With over 500,000 recipes in its database, tested by home cooks, the app allows you to find with ease the right ones for you. To that effect you can search by type of meal, preparation time, ethnic cuisine, course and other criteria.
With SparkRecipes you can discover recipes that fulfill your dietary needs. No matter if you’re a vegetarian, if you’re on a strict sugar free or gluten free diet or perhaps you want to eat low fat foods, you’ll be able to easily find what you need. To help you make smart nutrition decisions, the app also provides insight into how many calories, proteins, carbs or fibers each recipe has.
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- Price: Free
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- Requirements: iOS 8.0 or later
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- Apple Watch Compatibility: No
- Download Link: AppStore
Yoga Studio: Embrace a Peaceful Experience
Yoga Studio: Mind & Body addresses yoga enthusiasts, no matter if you’re a beginner or expert. The app offers more than 80 yoga and meditation classes already created for you with clear and easy to follow instructions, but also gives you the opportunity to design your own HD video classes.
With Yoga Studio you can choose classes in complete accordance with your yoga level, the intensity desired, ability or duration. The app also has special classes to match your physical and mental state: for back pain, runners, prenatal or relaxation. In addition to that you can also find over 280 poses with teacher commentaries and relevant details about their benefits.
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- Price: Free ($4.99 Pro Version)
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- Requirements: iOS 9.0 or later
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- Apple Watch Compatibility: No
- Download Link: AppStore
Pillow: Sleep Monitoring App for Better Rest
Do you want to have a great sleep during the night and wake up truly rested? Well, in this case you should definitely give Pillow a try. This is an app designed to accurately measure and monitor your sleep quality and make sure the hours of sleep you require match the hours you’re actually getting.
Pillow uses an algorithm to detect your motion and sound patterns during the night and converts them into an easy to read graph, which displays all the stages of your sleep: awake, REM, light sleep and deep sleep. The app also tracks your sleep cycles and, based on that analysis, chooses when is the perfect time for you to get up.
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- Price: Free ($4.99 Premium)
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- Requirements: iOS 9.0 or later
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- Apple Watch Compatibility: Yes
- Download Link: AppStore
We hope these apps will help you improve yourself and develop a healthy body and mind in 2018. If you are already using some of these apps or have other recommendations, you can let us know in the comments below.
