Wellness Wednesday: our favorite health and fitness apps
October 26, 2016
April 10, 2023
At Bandwidth, we love our workout lunches! And we love a good challenge. From the company wide challenges, to races like the Tuna Run, we take pride in setting aside time to decompress and exercise.
But sometimes, you need more than just a free hour to kick start the process – or help you along the way. I’ll admit, I did not always use lunchtime to workout – and when I finally decided to get serious about it, I needed a little help to get started. I was looking to implement diet and fitness changes and found quite a few helpful apps along the way.
So, here are our top seven health and fitness apps to kickstart your own personal health challenge.
A Step Tracker
Okay, so this isn’t just one app. Because there are so many. Most phones have a built in step tracker, or you can get a wearable, like a fitbit. The point is to become aware of how much you are moving each day – and aim to increase that. The fact that most of these can be on your phone or a wearable device is a huge bonus and makes it hard not to start using one.
Weight Watchers
This was the biggest one for me. No, it’s not free. No, I didn’t go to the meetings. But having an app that can track your food choices and exercise goals made it so much easier for me to set and stick to goals. If you don’t use this app, find a calorie tracker and a way to track all of your activity – beyond your daily steps.
7 Minute Workout
There are tons of fitness apps that provide pretty good instruction for at-home workouts. There are days when making it to the gym isn’t an option, and this was a great free option for having a plan in place that I could do at home or when travelling. Find the app that’s right for your fitness level and use it on those crazy, busy days. Seriously, you can do it for longer, but you get a pretty good workout in the first seven minutes!
Your Gym’s App
Most large gyms have rolled out an app and many offer great tips – ideas for new workouts- basics – like gym hours and many have internal social communities for motivation along the way. I use the Planet Fitness app – if that’s not your gym, see if yours has one available!
Based on the number of gym pics I have unintentionally photo bombed, instragram must be a great motivator for many! If a little outside encouragement helps to make sure you get to the gym, go for it. We certainly do this as a group from time to time – be sure to follow all of our Wellness Wednesday fun on the Bandwidth Instagram page!
5K Runner
I have started various “couch to 5K” apps more times than I would like to admit. But this one I liked and stuck to. You know what? They work! If you’re trying to get to a goal of more running than walking, doing this free app was surprisingly easy – as long as I stuck to it!
AllTrails
Tired of the gym? This is a great app for finding hiking trails, wherever you are. Use it to find new areas to explore while you get out and move!
Happy exercising! And of course, make sure any diet and exercise changes you make are with physician approval and right for you!