Our 5 Favorite Apps for Tracking Wellness
There are an abundance of wellness apps in the universe that can help you track everything from food intake and workouts to how much sleep you get each night. But all the options can get overwhelming, and what works great for some doesn’t always work for all.
As we continually search for new ways to live a more well-balanced life, we’ve gathered five of our favorite apps for tracking wellness to get you started:
1. MyFitnessPal
Under Armour’s MyFitnessPal is the mother of all wellness apps: you can track calories, macros, weight, water intake, foods and recipes, exercise and daily steps. If you’re struggling with losing or gaining weight, a great insight is learning what nutritional value you gain from the foods you eat and MyFitnessPal can help with exactly that. Best of all, this is all available with the free version!
Free Features
● Meal tracking
● Exercise tracking
● Water consumption tracking
● Food diary
● Analytics
● Goal Setting
● Reminders
● Step Tracker
● Nutrition breakdown
Premium Features ($79.99/annually, $4.99/monthly)
● Nutrient dashboard
● Food analysis
● File export
● Calorie goals by meal
● Different goals by day
● Exercise calorie settings
● Meal level carbs, protein, and fat
● Quick add carbs, protein, and fat
● Carbs, protein, and fat by gram
● Priority customer support
● Ad-free
● Exclusive content
2. Strong — Workout Tracker Gym Log
We’ve tried a lot of exercise and routine apps. Like, a lot. Some didn’t remember your previous lifts numbers, some didn’t remember custom routines, some didn’t show pictures with exercises for those of us who don’t have a degree in exercise science, but Strong checks all these boxes.
It’s simple, easy to log and track, and doesn’t bloat the app with unnecessary extras — it does its one thing really well. You can create your own routines with a long list of exercises native to the app, but you can also create your own exercise if you don’t find the one you’re looking for. It keeps track of your progress and gives you praise every time you finish a workout.
Free Features
● Track workouts
● Track weight
● Create custom routines
Premium Features ($99.99/one-time, $29.99/annually, $19.99/monthly)
● Unlimited routines (as opposed to three)
● Access to charts and graphs
● Measurement capability
● Plate calculator
● Warm-up calculator
3. Sleep Cycle — Smart Alarm Clock
Ever since we started using Sleep Cycle, we’ve noticed better sleep and more energy when waking up. The wonderful thing about Sleep Cycle is that it wakes you up in the perfect window of your light sleep — you simply set an alarm, for instance, 7:00 am, and it will wake you up sometime between 6:50-7:00 am (though you can adjust the window it wakes you up to your liking).
The app does this by analyzing your sleep while your phone is on your nightstand or under your pillow. It listens for snoring or movement and calculates when you are in your REM sleep. And if you sleep with another person, it can intelligently distinguish between you and your partner.
Free Features
● Intelligent wake-up
● Sleep analysis
● Nightly sleep graph
● Alarm melodies
● Snooze
● Apple Health integration (iPhone only)
● Database export (iPhone only)
Premium Features ($29.99/annually)
● Online back-up with SleepSecure
● Sleep aid
● Snore detection
● Sleep notes
● Wake-up mood
● Wake-up weather report (iPhone only)
● Heart rate tracking (iPhone only)
● Philips Hue integration (iPhone only)
● More alarm sounds
● Choose you own alarm sound from your music library
4. Insight Timer — Meditation App
The benefits of meditation are well-known, but what many of us struggle with is how to meditate. Insight Timer offers 35,000 FREE meditations for sleep, anxiety, one-minute sessions, hour-long sessions, ones with music, guided meditations, for beginners, experts, people in between, everything. And with a user base of 10 million, the community and content only continues to grow.
Free Features
● 35,000 meditations
● Free timer
● Free course
● Help with sleep
● Free charts
● Courses in 30 different languages
Premium Features ($59.99/annually)
● Insight courses - over 300 10- and 30-day courses to choose from
● Listen offline (download guided meditations to your device)
● Advanced player (repeat mode, fast forward and rewind, pick up where you left off)
5. Journey — Diary, Journal
Sticking to journaling is tough — you forget a day, then a week, then a month, then you turn 32, and you realize you haven’t journaled in 15 years. Journey is the answer to the forgetful journalers because there’s a daily reminder and a clean, simple user experience. You can use Journey in a browser or app (or both — there’s free syncing between devices!) where you can write, upload images, rate your mood, and tag your posts for easy searching.
Free Features
● Sync to cloud
● Web access
● Android and iOS app
● Limited coach program
Premium Options
Membership Option ($29.99/annually, $3.99/monthly)
● Unlock all journal coaching sessions
● Rich text editor on web
● Send daily reminder and inspiration quotes to your e-mail inbox
● Write and attach photo from email
● Connect to Zapier Automation
● Complimentary access to Premium content on Android, iOS, Mac, PC and Linux app
Lifetime Premium Option ($8.99/one-time)
● Markdown Preview & Syntax Highlighting
● Remove PDF watermark
● Export/Backup/Print multiple entries
● Export to .docx
● Dark theme
● Themes and lockscreen wallpaper
● Throwback to past entries
● Connect to Apple Health
● Add Audio file
● Record audio via Microphone
