The Best Free Health “Apps”
New smartphone applications (or apps) are constantly being introduced with the aim of keeping us
healthy, happy and organized. These days, apps can measure distance and pace, provide weight training
and flexibility routines, report restaurant nutritional information, offer daily healthy recipes and food
ideas, predict exercise calories expended, plan daily exercise and diet, and even measure your heart rate.
Some single apps combine exercise, diet, motivational tools and other information, so you don’t have to
juggle multiple apps.
Here are the goods on the top free apps that will help you achieve a healthy lifestyle, whether your goal is
to stay in shape, lose weight or just feel better. They have been reviewed by trusted professionals:
Healthy Lifestyle Apps
MyFitnessPal Calorie Counter and Diet Tracker
Food from Canadian companies such as President’s Choice, Longo’s, Sobey’s,
M&M Meat Shops and Tim Horton’s—they’re all included within
MyFitnessPal’s extensive database. Simple to use, this app serves as a food diary,
exercise tracker and diet coach all in one. Record your meals and workouts, then
watch the automatic calculation of calories consumed. If losing weight is your
goal, this app will flag how many calories you have remaining in order to meet
your daily requirements. Plus, there’s a website component so you can
conveniently add or review information online as well.
Cost: Free
Available here for: iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, and Windows Phone
Calorie Counter
Tracks food, exercise, weight and all the nutrients listed on a Nutrition Facts
label. Includes daily inspirational articles, healthy recipes and an easy-tounderstand help section.
Cost: Free
Available here for: iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry
Calorie Counter: Diets & Activities
Features a classic food diary that tracks calories, water, fitness and the time each
food item is consumed and an option to create your own diet and physical activity
plan and an Integrated Body Tracker.
Cost: Free
Available here for: iPhone and iPad
Distance/GPS Fitness Apps
RunKeeper
Using your phone’s GPS, RunKeeper tracks walkers’/runners’ time, distance,
pace and calories burned. The app shows your path on a virtual map and stores all
your workout data, including from past sessions. Users also have access to a
preloaded database of training and running routines and can design custom
interval workouts, which they can follow via audio cues from the app that remind
walkers and runners to pick up their pace. The app also lets walkers or runners
listen to music while they work out, a strategy that’s been shown to increase
speed and endurance.
Cost: Free
Available here for: iPhone and Android
Map my Fitness/Map my Walk
MapMyFitness has apps for walkers, runners, hikers and more. Many of them
have a free version. All of them allow you to map and measure your route, see
your speed and calories burned, and save and share your routes. By paying the
$0.99 for the "+" version, you can geotag photos to add to your routes.
Cost: Free
Available here for: iPhone, Android and Blackberry
Healthy Eating
eaTipster
Created by the Dietitians of Canada, eaTipster delivers daily healthy eating tips to your
mobile devices.
Cost: Free
Available here for: iPhone, Android and Blackberry
Diabetes Management
Glucose Buddy – Diabetes logbook
Users can manually enter blood glucose numbers, carbohydrate intake, insulin dosage
and activities. The app has been described as the data storage utility for diabetics. It even
syncs this data to GlucoseBuddy.com if you wish. After you have captured all of the
“data” you can then analyze it with beautiful graphs and charts.
Cost: Free
Available here for: iPhone, iPad
Bant
Designed to easily capture blood glucose readings and supply trend data for up to 90
days.
Cost: Free
Available here for: iPhone, iPad