6 Apps for Boosting Your Health and Wellness
Intro
More and more users are tapping into technology as a tool to improve their health and wellness. In fact, Healthline’s Future of Wellness report found that an overwhelming majority (91%) of Americans are optimistic about the intersections between health and technology across the key categories of nutrition, fitness, sleep, and mental health. However, 69% of those surveyed also agreed that most wellness technologies are expensive, which is why they turn to smartphone apps as low-cost yet effective solutions.
While these health and wellness apps are more accessible, the number of apps available on the market can make it hard to choose just one. As such, we’ve rounded up the six best apps that can help promote healthy habits and boost your overall well-being.
1. Calm
According to the CDC, more than a third (35.2%) of adults in the US do not get the rest they need, with many getting less than seven hours of sleep per night. Whether sleep deficiency is caused by work stressors, family stressors, or underlying medical conditions, it needs to be addressed so as not to put your personal health and performance at risk.
In this light, the Calm app helps promote better sleep through an extensive library of content that offers everything from mindfulness to movement. Calm works with science and health experts to ensure that its sleep aids, guided meditation sessions, and relaxation exercises are all evidence-based. Aside from the freedom to select how long you want to meditate, another exciting feature of Calm is the Sleep Stories, which are bedtime stories narrated by celebrities like Harry Styles.
2. Wakeout
Meeting the recommended levels of physical activity provides a ton of physical and mental health benefits, from relieving stress to lowering the risk for chronic conditions. However, working adults may find it next to impossible to set aside time for workouts. Fortunately, Wakeout provides a library of more than 300 exercises that you can do from the comfort of your own desk or while waiting for your coffee to brew. You can customize your exercise routine not only according to length (from 30 to 90 seconds) but also according to four moods (relaxing, energizing, intense, and fun).
3. WeightWatchers
Just like exercise, being busy with work and other daily responsibilities can make it difficult to pay better attention to what you eat, thus leading to unhealthy weight gain. But unlike restrictive diets or pre-packaged meals, the weight management app WeightWatchers works towards building a healthy and sustainable relationship with food. Its new medical weight loss service promotes eating habits and prescription weight loss medication that align with your nutritional needs, weight goals, and overall lifestyle all at once.
It also has customized meal plans that can help you find the right options and portion sizes based on the specific nutritional value of foods. Whether you’re managing weight for medical reasons like diabetes or simply trying to prevent obesity, WeightWatchers allows you to lose weight healthily and keep it off in the long term.
4. quitStart
Improving your health and wellness can be challenging when there are just some habits you can’t kick. Among these habits is smoking, which has adverse consequences on heart and lung health that, based on the latest data from the CDC, can potentially affect nearly 40 million adults in the US. That said, the smoking cessation app quitStart provides access to resources for managing your cravings and withdrawal symptoms throughout your quitting journey. Through quitStart, you can also monitor your progress and earn achievements from reaching smoke-free milestones. And don't worry about the risk of slip-ups or relapses — the app has tailored tips and strategies to help get you back on track.
5. Streaks
There’s a popular saying that it takes 21 days to form a new habit. But whether it takes you shorter or longer than that, the to-do list app Streaks offers great support for creating healthy habits and properly integrating them into your daily life. You can add up to 24 tasks that can cover everything from work deliverables to personal appointments. You can also specify which days you need to do a task so that you don’t break the chain. Lastly, you can integrate Streaks with your iOS Health app to track your daily step count, heart rate, blood pressure, and more.
6. Forest
Getting overwhelmed with daily tasks and failing to finish them on time can quickly take a toll on your mental health. Fortunately, productivity and organization app Forest gamifies the process of task completion by letting you set a timer and grow a virtual tree by staying focused. It can be used in conjunction with the Pomodoro technique, which involves working for about 25 minutes without distractions, followed by a 5-minute break. Forest also has a feature that restricts you from using certain apps or social media while the timer is running, therefore reinforcing your concentration and helping you finish your to-do lists faster and more efficiently.
Overall, health and wellness apps can cover various aspects of your lifestyle — from what you eat and how you exercise to how you form healthy habits and maintain them over time. But remember that these apps are simply tools at the end of the day; you still need drive and determination on your end if you want to boost your physical and mental health. If you're looking for other resources on health, productivity, and lifestyle, you can check out the rest of our blog.