Working out is hard. Maybe you used to be an athlete in high school, maybe you’ve never been in a gym outside of phys.Ed. Either way your years at university have been taxing on you, the doctor suggests you excersise more, and it’s good for your mental and physical health but it’s hard.
Where do you start? What are you capable of? These apps can give you a head start.
Zombies, Run!
This app simulates a zombie apocalypse that ties together your music and the app’s podcast-like format to motivate you to run harder and farther than you ever have before. The story curated by the app creators has multiple seasons and each episode lasts about 5km straight of running or 30 minutes. You can customize how many hoardes of zombies will come after you and while you run, you automatically collect items to build your base in app.
The app comes across with a game-like vibe that makes running feel more like a survival situation than a chore. You can also set the app for interval training or just straight running. It follows your pace and tracks your distance. The best part about this is that the story motivates you to continue because you want to know what happens next.
Carrot Rewards
This is great for people who just don’t want to run. It’s perfect for those who love to walk or want to walk more. The app tracks your steps by accessing your phone’s built in step counter.
You set your daily step goal and every day you achieve it you get points that are added to your SCENE card.
Having a SCENE card that collects points allows you to see movies for free. It’s a great motivator and a money saver, all-in-one.
Calorie Counters
This isn’t a specific app, more of a genre suggestion. I’m not a nutritionist and I am in no way advising you to only eat a specific amount of food per day. However, apps that act as food diaries increase our mindfulness towards food.
You become more considerate of the food choices you make and you can have a physical record of food you put into your body, good or not. Some apps also count nutrition facts so that you can make sure you hit the Canadian Government recommendeds for things like B12, iron, and other vitamins.
Built-in Health Apps
iPhones have the Health app, androids have their own specific health apps depending on the maker. All-in-all, they can be super useful if you use them right. These apps include things like step counters, stair counters, sleep data, nutrition counters, etc.
If you download multiple counters for things like sleep, steps, and food, tit can be extremely useful because they will accumlate all data into one place making it a lot easier for you to look at a bigger picture without getting flustered.
There are other apps out there that are helpful to get you back into physical health like habit trackers or branded workout apps. You just have to do what feels best for you and your body. What’s most important is that you try and walk, move, or stretch for at least 30 minutes a day.
