Hey everyone, welcome back to my blog about physical fitness. If you haven’t been here before, please check out my first, second, third, and fourth blog posts. These blog posts talk about problems that physical inactivity can cause, how good and bad sources of information available to you can impact your learning, how the Internet has affected our creativity and an outcome that comes from your search history, and debunking certain myths about physical activity. In this blog post, we will talk about apps that you can use to help you on your fitness journey. The 3 apps that I will recommend for you guys today will be Nike Run Club, MyFitnessPal, and Shopwell.
Application #1: Nike Run Club
This free app that is available for iOS and Android is called the Nike Run Club app. This app by Nike helps users track their runs, provides guided runs with a voice that gives motivation, and lets you compare and compete against your friends. Having used this app in the past, I would highly recommend this app due to its simplicity and ease of use. The interface has 5 different tabs. These tabs are the “feed” which provides different running tips and posts, “activity” which tracks your runs, “run” which is the main feature that you will be using while you run, “club” which lets you take part in different challenges and shows leaderboards, and the “running shop” which gives personalized recommendations for shoes and apparel to suit your running needs. This app is super useful because of these features. By being able to track your progress in real time and having the ability to look back on your progress, users are able to track their runs and hopefully see improvement. Despite the functionality of the app, looking at the icon, it does not give you the most extensive information about what the app does. Attached below is an image of the icon.
This app currently has 298,557 ratings with an average rating of 4.8 out of 5. This app is definitely high on my recommendation list and if you are ever interested in running, you should definitely download this app!
Application #2: MyFitnessPal
This free app by Under Armour lets users track their personal diet and exercise. Users can track their diet using different methods like using a manual search to find the different types of food you are eating, or even just taking a picture of the barcode of the food item. After finding the food, users can put it into a log that tracks what they have been eating. After using this app in the past, it gave me many different uses like providing information about the food I’m eating, teaching me about healthier ways to eat, and giving me an opportunity to make my own meals within the app. The last great thing about this app that will help users who are tracking their caloric intake is that after finding the food in their database, the application will give you the calories and macronutrients of the food which saves you time and gives very in-depth information about what you are eating. For some users however, these features may not be enough. Luckily for them, this app also has a premium version that gives more features like specific macro and micronutrient tracking. Looking at the icon, it gives you an idea of what the app does. For me, when I look at it, I get the sense that it is some sort of health application, but it does not provide me with anything specific about what it does. Attached below is an image of the icon so you guys can see what I am talking about.
Additionally, an added bonus of the app is it’s availability for iOS and Android with a high rating of 4.7 out of 5 and over 935,000 ratings. For an average user who just wants to know more about their diet and how to plan it, this app does a great job of being user friendly while also providing good information about what they are eating. As a result, if you want to learn more about your diet, this app would be my recommendation!
App #3: Shopwell
The last app that I want you guys to check out is called Shopwell. This free app made by Innit is available on both iOS and Android that helps users of all levels of fitness and health maintain a healthy diet. Shopwell helps users learn more about nutrition labels and helps them find new foods that are a potentially better fit for their goals. In the app, users are given personalized nutrition scores where they can create a food profile with their health goals, issues, and food dislikes. After making this profile, the next time the user goes out to buy groceries, they can scan an item’s barcode and they will be given simplified nutrition facts and also alternative options to help them reach the goals listed in their profile. Below is a picture of the icon.
Lastly, this app has an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 with over 1.1 thousand reviews. If you are trying to promote a healthier lifestyle, I think this app is for you. By being able to take control over your nutrition, it will tremendously boost you on your fitness journey and this is one of the apps that I would recommend for you to do that with.
With technology becoming such an integral part of our society’s advancement, we should take advantage of all that it has to offer us and use it to help us along our fitness journey. Although people may be overwhelmed just by the sheer number of available apps, in today’s blog post I gave you guys three applications that I think will be helpful to starting and advancing your fitness journeys. Hopefully, after reading these blogs, you will become more motivated and have a better idea of how to start and maintain your fitness grind.
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