Apps To Keep You Healthy

Changing what you eat is one of the most important ways to become healthier. Whether the goal is to lose weight or eat healthier foods, the first step is to learn more about the food you eat with an app like ShopWell. The app has a large database of ingredient and nutritional information for various foods, along with “food scores” tailored to the information you enter upon registration. Most importantly for an app like this, ShopWell is well-made and easy to use.

If you want to go further with your food, calorie counting with Lose It! is the next logical step. The apps's combination of a large database of foods and a barcode scanner makes it easy to log the food you eat. Once you enter your current body statistics and your goal, Lose It! even tells you how many calories you should eat each day to achieve that goal. It even gives you motivation to exercise, as any exercise you enter into the app is added as negative calories in your daily log. The fact that Lose It! is free also means it's a no-risk app to see if calorie counting is for you.

Don't despair if the information you find makes you reassess your recipes— that just means it's time to find new ones! Dive right in to Good Food Healthy Recipes' collection of healthy and lower calorie dishes. The app includes a calorie count for each recipe, so you know exactly what you're eating. The broad range of recipes for every course means you won't need to go elsewhere to find new favorites. In fact, it even has a few recipes that make over old, higher-calorie favorites into healthier alternatives. The app isn't fancy, but it has everything you need.

Adventurous dieters can go a step further and explore the currently popular paleo diet with Nom Nom Paleo. The app is more than a simple cooking app, as it includes text pages explaining the basics of the diet, the theory behind it, the food and equipment dieters will need, and even a month-long food plan with recipes for all meals. The app itself is slick and packed with information and recipes. That said, Nom Nom Paleo is really only useful for someone on (or considering starting) the Paleo diet.

The next step in total health is exercise. Whether you're a regular at the gym or not, Gorilla Fitness has an exercise routine that should suit your needs. The app is designed to be an all-in-one solution for workouts that you can do anywhere, as the exercises use your own body weight instead of equipment. Gorila Workout includes pre-made workout routines as well as individual exercises, with enough description and videos to ensure that even a novice gets it right!

If you prefer a different kind of workout, try All-in Yoga HD. The app comes packed with activities and audiovisual aids, and even lets you customize workout routines. All-In Yoga HD is designed to be a comprehensive yoga tool for all types of yoga students, with workouts designed to help you center you body and mind. Activities come with specific music or you can select your own iPod music.

When you're done with your workout, you can ease your muscle pain with Muscle Trigger Points. The app is designed to help people ease chronic muscle pain by finding and releasing muscular trigger points. You don't need medical training, but you should be willing to press a spot that hurts!

Tracking your food is essential for weight loss, but for total body health you need more. Enter Track and Share - Analytical Journal for the Quantified Self. With Track and Share, you can track anything you want, with as much or as little detail as you'd like. The app comes with several categories preloaded (e.g., mood, food, water, sleep, and health), each with its own subset of variables. If you're unsure or overwhelmed by the thought of so much tracking, you can try the free lite version first. Then you can see that Track and Share actually makes a complex problem simpler.

Next time you have a medical question, load iTriage instead of doing a Google search. The free Universal app can help you identify symptoms and then find a doctor or facility to treat your symptoms. It also includes information about drugs, procedures, news, and conditions and can link with several online health records. The only way iTriage could be improved is if it synced your data via iCloud.

Whether you have an illness or not, keeping all of your health records in one place can be very helpful. Capzule PHR offers an all-in-one solution that lets you store health records for each member of your family. Capzule is a Universal application that syncs via iCloud, so you can be sure to have your data with you everywhere. The app is makes it easy to store and find immunization and medical records, medications, family history, and any self-monitoring you'd like to do.

The last step in wellness is a good night's sleep. Pzizz sleep is designed to help you fall asleep and also improve the quality and length of your sleep. The app is essentially an audio file, but unlike the traditional CD, it's different every time you use it.