If you're busy, it doesn't mean that you should stop prioritizing your health and well-being. It's essential to eat healthy meals, get enough sleep, and check in on your mental health from time to time. You'll often find that you start building these habits, but fall off track due to a lack of discipline and low motivation.
While the first step is fixing and building the right mindset, the second one is always to equip and solidify healthy habits. Nothing can help you in strengthening your healthy goals better than your mobile with the right apps. With health apps like calorie counters to sleep trackers, you can ensure that you're able to plan and execute your healthy lifestyle.
1. MyFitnessPal
If you're looking for an app to help you eat healthier and build a consistent workout routine, this is the one. MyFitnessPal is popular mainly because of its gigantic database of different foods. You simply enter what you've eaten for each meal and the app will tell you about the calories, macros, and other nutritional information.
MyFitnessPal is great for goal setting: you can create custom plans for personal goals such as weight loss and weight gain. Then, it can also track your physical activity such as workouts and daily steps. It even features workout and diet plans to help you reach your fitness goals.
Download: MyFitnessPal for iOS | Android (Free, subscription available)
2. Eat This Much
Eat This Much takes a personalized approach to healthy living by generating customized meal plans for the entire week. You can set your dietary restrictions, preferred cuisine, and calorie goals to receive personalized meal suggestions. The app simplifies grocery shopping by automatically generating grocery lists based on the selected meal plans.
It's a great app for tracking your progress and managing your meals throughout the week, too. You get a comprehensive breakdown of each meal with nutritional information. A pie chart on the dashboard visually displays the number of calories and nutrients consumed throughout the day.
Download: Eat This Much for iOS | Android (Free, subscription available)
3. Lose It!
Lose It is very similar to MyFitnessPal, and both apps let you track calories, physical workouts, and your daily steps. Lose It also has a similar food database that you can use to track your daily meals. You can quickly and easily log each meal and get nutritional information on it along the way.
The goal-setting and tracking features are where the apps start to differ. Lose It focuses more on personalized goals and insights on how to achieve them. It often reminds you to stay motivated and provides guidance when you think about giving up. The dashboard gives you a detailed overview of your progress and helps you stay motivated.
Download: Lose It! for iOS | Android (Free, subscription available)
4. Endel
Endel is an app that provides soulful sounds to help you relax, sleep, and improve your focus. A disrupted sleep schedule can cause fatigue throughout the day, which can negatively impact your overall health. Endel provides soundscapes for multiple scenarios, and each sounds vastly different from the others.
You can set a timer to customize your session according to your needs. Endel also integrates with Apple Health, allowing you to track your heart rate during sessions. It uses AI to adapt sounds to your circadian rhythm, location, weather, and heart rate.
Download: Endel for iOS | Android (Free, subscription available)
5. Nike Run Club
With the Nike Run Club app, you can turn into a mindful runner. What sets this app apart is the extensive collection of guided runs that function like a personal running coach. The app offers various training plans, including those geared toward achieving marathon distances.
The app does a great job of tracking your distance, times, and running pace. Nike Run Club also enables you to connect with other runners and friends through social leaderboards, and it works perfectly with the Apple Watch, as well.
Download: Nike Run Club for iOS | Android (Free)
6. Habitica
Habitica is a habit-tracking and task-manager app that takes a gamified approach to building discipline. You can set up habits that you want to build, and the game treats them as daily challenges. Every time you complete those daily challenges, you'll get an in-game reward to help you level up your character.
It also penalizes you when you mess up. If you miss a challenge or don't complete a task in the given amount of time, it takes away some points from you. You use these points to get new quests, pets, and better equipment. And, if you invite your friends, you can even turn it into a sort of online role-playing game.
Download: Habitica for iOS | Android (Free, in-app purchases available)
7. Glucose Buddy
If you're living with diabetes and aiming to maintain healthy blood glucose levels, this app is a must-have. It easily lets you record your daily glucose levels, time of measurement, blood pressure, and even physical activity. The app takes all of that into account and gives you a helpful daily summary.
It also syncs with Dexcom's glucose monitoring devices for accurate tracking. A separate insight section within the app offers informative charts and graphs to visualize your health trends and patterns, which can be useful in tracking your progress.
Download: Glucose Buddy for iOS | Android (Free, subscription available)
8. Insight Timer
If you want to get started with mindful meditation, go with Insight Timer. The core features of this app include sleep programs, yoga classes, and breath-work exercises. It also features specific meditation courses to help you deal with stress and anxiety.
Insight Timer provides a variety of music for meditation, such as nature sounds and chanting. With this app, you can learn how to meditate with audio therapy and connect with a supportive community of people with similar interests. It's a versatile app that can help you retain focus, decompress after a long day, or build a simple meditation habit.
Download: Insight Timer for iOS | Android (Free, in-app purchases available)
9. Sleepzy
Sleepzy is one of the best apps for tracking and improving your sleep quality. It uses your phone's sensors to track how well you sleep and wakes you up during a light sleep phase. This makes it easier for you to get up in the morning and feel refreshed.
You can set your own wake-up window, choose from various alarm tones, and get insights on factors such as sleep debt and sleep quality. It also features soothing music that you can play to doze off to each night and provides helpful tips and insights on improving your sleep.
Download: Sleepzy for iOS | Android (Free, subscription available)
10. BetterHelp
If you want to get therapy within the comfort of your home, BetterHelp is the safest bet. It pairs you with a therapist that you can talk to over a video call or text. The platform features certified therapists from all over the world.
When you sign up for the app, you'll be asked several questions about your situation and the goals you hope to achieve through therapy. This information helps the app match you with the right therapist who can help you with your specific concerns. The sessions are usually very insightful, and it's a super-convenient, cost-effective alternative to in-person therapy.
Download: BetterHelp for iOS | Android (Free)
Embrace a Healthier Lifestyle With Apps
It's easy to talk about maintaining a healthy lifestyle, but going through with it is not. However, it's doable as long as you stay dedicated and use the right tools. We've highlighted the best of the best health apps in this guide. Though they do not promise discipline (which you'll have to bring from within yourself), they do promise to make things easier for you to manage.