More of us are turning to technology to help make health and lifestyle improvements. But with so many apps available it can be difficult to decide which ones are worth the download. Here are five apps that cover a range of issues including sleep, exercise, healthy eating and meditation that can make a difference to your physical and mental health.
#1 Fitness Buddy Train at Home
Losing weight and improving fitness is a popular goal and there are many apps available that can help you achieve your target. Fitness Buddy Train at Home is a mobile personal trainer to lose weight, gain muscle, stay in shape, eat healthy, create good habits, and live a healthy lifestyle. Just like a real fitness buddy, the app helps you stay on course with workout programs for at home or the gym including thousands of videos and exercise photos.
The app offers a free version as well as one month or 12 month subscriptions.
#2 Headspace
If you’re looking for an app that can help with meditation and sleep, Headspace may be for you.
The Headspace website has a range of articles and short videos on meditation, sleep, mindfulness and stress to get you started. The free resources provide great tips on topics that help with improving your sleep, decreasing procrastination and stress levels, how to get started with meditation and how to be more mindful in different aspects of your life.
The app offers hundreds of meditations, sleep exercises, sleep sounds and a move mode for physical and mental fitness.
With over 70 million downloads and an average 4.9 star rating, Headspace has proven to be a popular app. A free trial is available before signing up for a paid subscription.
#3 Noom Weight Loss Coach
For many people wanting to lose weight, food and exercise logging are important tools. For those who are concerned about their blood glucose levels or blood pressure, the app provides the ability to log these as well. The app includes 1,000 healthy recipes and explains the psychology of why you eat what you do and how to change. A weight loss coach and support group is available to help achieve your goal weight.
Noom reports that 64% of users have lost at least 5% of their body weight and kept the weight off for more than 12 months. The Noom Weight Loss Coach app has a 4.4 star rating and 260,000 downloads.
#4 Calm
Our world can often leave us feeling a little frantic or anxious. The Calm app can help you fall asleep at night with 100 stories, soundscapes and soothing music to choose from. Reduce your stress and anxiety levels and improve your focus through meditation. A 10 minute meditation feature called The Daily Calm is a popular feature of the app.
Calm’s research revealed 84% of people who use the Calm app five or more times per week reported an improvement in their mental health. A study of 200,000 iPhone users found it to be the ‘world’s happiest app’. Being released almost a decade ago, Calm was one of the early health apps and was Google Play’s Editors Choice in 2018.
The Calm app is free to download and trial but a paid subscription is required to access all of the content in the library.
#5 AltiusLife
With hundreds of articles, videos and recipes, there’s no shortage of information to get you inspired to realise your health potential. The app provides contemporary health literacy, lets you set goals and track your progress while the MyRewards section encourages you with badges, excellent offers and discounts. There’s also a range of tools and information to help individuals and organisations with social, physical and mental health. AltiusLife is part of the workplace wellbeing and EAP programs that PeopleSense and Altius Group provide for organisations, their employees and injured workers.
AltiusLife allows employees to personalise wellness so they can balance their interests and responsibilities in their work and home life.
If you require more information about AltiusLife or wellbeing programs in your workplace, call 1800 258 487 or get in contact online.