Get healthy. Get happy. And you can use the apps to do it. Photo: Shutterstock
If you’re like me, you’re about a month into your New Year’s Resolution to get healthy for 2015, and that means you’re starting to hit a couple of speed bumps. Be it a big slice of birthday cake or the decision to sleep in instead of work out, your zeal for fitness might be wearing off as we approach the middle of February. While you may have slipped a couple times by now (I know I have), these apps are chock full of tools you need for fitness success. Featuring everything from workouts to weight tracking and motivational threats, these apps are your best bet for achieving your 2015 fitness goals.
1. Argus
Argus transforms your phone into your personal health tracker. 24/7 it monitors everything: activities, workouts, sleep, weight, hydration, and vitals. It includes a step counter, calorie counter, GPS mapping of running/cycling/driving, records caffeine and water intake, and allows you to snap photos of meals in one click.
2. Nike + Training Club
Nike + Training club offers over 100 workouts accessible directly from your phone. Workouts can be selected based on level of difficulty and desired program. Lead by professional trainers and Nike’s elite athletes, NTC workouts never fail to motivate. Additionally, the app allows you to train with friends and share your workouts.
3. Every Move
Every Move combines all your other fitness apps together, and it allows you to record all your activities in one place. As you work out you earn points based on your total impact toward your long-lasting health. Employers and health plans can sponsor challenges to get a whole community moving.
4. Zombies, Run!
They say you never run faster than when you’re being chased. Well, Zombies, Run! operates pretty much on this principle only. The app turns your run into an epic adventure. The app immerses you in a zombie apocalypse in which you run to collect supplies, avoid hoards of zombies, and rebuild your base. Who knew your afternoon jog could help save civilization?
5. Fooducate
Fooducate allows you to scan barcodes to grade the quality of your food. Based on the nutrients, ingredients, processing, fortification, and other factors, Fooducate gives a letter grade that helps educate you as you shop. The app also tracks your progress over time as you make healthier choices.
6. Carrot fit
Carrot fit basically insults you until you work out harder. The snarky app will do whatever it takes to get you in shape, and its not afraid to hurl threats, insults, and bribes at you. The hilarious app keeps fitness entertaining and fresh.
7. HealthyOut
HealthyOut helps you find restaurants nearby that align with whatever diet you’re trying to maintain. Whether you’re trying to cut calories or live vegan, the app lets you customize your preferences, and it suggests restaurants and dishes that will hit the spot.
8. Daily Yoga
Daily Yoga is your own personal yoga studio. The app provides dozens of sequences and poses illustrated in HD video. The app also includes soothing music and a social community to share your success with your friends.
9. Sleep Cycle
Although we sometimes forget it, health doesn’t end when the day does. Sleep makes a huge impact on how our bodies function and recover. Sleep cycle helps you maximize the quality of your night’s sleep by finding the optimum time to wake you up. It tracks your sleep phases throughout the night, and it wakes you in the morning when you are in your lightest sleep phase. This ensures that you have the easiest and most rewarding sleep to wake transition possible.
10. Cody
Cody strives to not only be your one stop for all kinds of workouts, but to truly be your own personal fitness community. The app features of a feed of your friends posting photos and sharing workouts. It’s the Facebook of fitness. Additionally, Cody features a wide variety of workout plans from the industry’s best coaches.
11. Pact
Pact uses money to motivate you to work out. Each week, you make a pact with yourself to eat healthier or exercise more. Should you fail to meet your goal, you are charged for your shortcomings. The money charged is transferred to those users who do meet their goals, and these users earn nice cash rewards for their efforts.
12. Spring Moves
Spring Moves makes your workout as fun as possible by building ideal playlists for whatever activity you engage in. By setting the ideal pace you would like to maintain–be it for biking, running, power walking, or exercising–Spring Moves builds a playlist of songs that help keep your body in rhythm to stay on pace. The app is designed to maximize your performance while minimizing your perceived effort.
13. Health Mate
Health Mate tracks your everyday activity and heart rate using sensors in your iPhone–your weight, activity, heart rate, and sleep. It helps you reach your ideal weight by turning your long term goals into shorter, weekly goals, so you won’t feel overwhelmed when you realize you have to lose 200 pounds. It counts your steps, how many calories you’ve burned, how far you’ve travelled all day every day, and measures your heart rate using your phone’s camera. It even has a sleep-cycle analysis so you can figure out just how to fall asleep and stay asleep.
14. UP Coffee
UP Coffee helps you regulate and track the effects of caffeine intake on your body. Ideally paired with the UP band for optimal results, the app also works without the band to approximate how your caffeine levels will affect your readiness for sleep. After seven days, the app determines your Caffeine Persona, which is used to help you uncover the relationship between what time and how much caffeine you consume, and how it affect the quality of your sleep.
15. Noom Weight
Noom Weight helps coach you through healthy and effective weight loss. The app helps you not only track your calorie intake and weight, but it offers personalized daily plans that include suggestions of what to eat to lose weight without feeling hungry. Additionally, the app includes a support community and encouraging feedback to help give you the motivation you need to drop a couple pounds.
