After a year of pandemic-induced stress on top of, you know, regular ol' stress, my brain sometimes feels like a never-ending buzz of nonsense. It's like the Bee Movie in there.
I'm not the only one; plenty of people have spent the last year having trouble focusing at work and during leisure time, struggling to find motivation to exercise and move their bodies, or initiate social activities, whether socially distanced or fully virtual. Keeping ourselves healthy has become a unique struggle.
We all desperately need these things to keep up our overall wellness, but it's safe to say a global pandemic completely changed how we can accomplish these tasks. While a lot of us yearn for the olden days, a year indoors also let a lot of us explore app-based wellness in a way we never would have.
Below, I crowd-sourced a variety of well-loved health and wellness apps, focusing on everything from physical to emotional and mental health. While a lot of these users found the apps during the pandemic, they plan to keep using them even after we can go to yoga studios and meet up mask-less again. And hey, in a perfect world, we can do both. So here's to that future!
Physical wellness encompasses many aspects, including exercise, sleep, food plans, and bodily function tracking, like periods. Depending on your goals for your physical health, each app here focuses on different ways to stay in tune with your body.
Easily the most recommended fitness app that I came across, the Peloton app is the lowest cost entry into the Peloton cult community. The app offers trainer-led, studio-style workouts that users can tune into live or on demand, and watch from various devices, like an Apple TV, Apple Watch, Roku, Chromecast and others. The app can be purchased on its own or comes as part of an all-access membership for those with Peloton bikes.
"[It] offers a whole bunch of different classes and different levels for everybody," said user Seth Nadel. "[It has] great music and you can get really involved in the community of it all, [and] they always have programs that you can follow."
Nike is known in the fitness space for a reason, and the Training app doesn't disappoint. It offers more than 185 free workouts, which includes yoga, HIIT, boxing, strength, endurance, and mobility routines. The app used to have a premium paid version, but Nike eliminated the cost barrier at the start of the pandemic. It can also easily pair with Apple Watch.
"I really like the way you can search by exercise type or focus," said user Syd Stelzer. "There are a variety of lengths/targets for each workout (for example, 5 min yoga warmups, longer yoga with core workouts, or rest and recover), and there are trainer-led exercises as well as pre-loaded ones!"
While Fitbit does let you use the app without a wearable tracker for free, most users prefer the functions that pair with a device. It tracks sleep, steps, heart rate, and exercise minutes, among other metics, through the device or your phone. The app is available on iOS or Android, but Fitbit wearables are designed to optimally pair with Android phones. The free version comes with video and audio workouts, but paying for premium unlocks more than 240 workouts from several brands.
"I'm literally a ho for my Fitbit and the Fitbit app," said user Grace Wade. "I like that it analyzes my sleep and I can track my period and my steps and my heart rate all in one place. [And] I don’t need my texts and apps all connected to it. I wanted it to be solely for health and fitness and sleep tracking and not just another way technology intrudes on my life."
Flo functions primarily as a period tracker and ovulation calculator, but also allows users to log lifestyle and fitness habits, like water intake, physical activity levels, and sex drive.
"The thing I like the most is that you can tailor the experience to you," said user Avery Dawes. "It takes your data over the course of several months to track your cycle and ovulation, so it can better understand what's happening to you, what your hormone levels are at any given time. And I think that's really helpful because most women don't really have a textbook 28-day cycle. It's also really helpful because I can track all the symptoms I have – whether that's headaches, cramps, indigestion – and it gives you specific articles and advice for solutions and how normal it is."
Another period and cycle tracker, Natural Cycles is unique in that it is FDA certified as a form of birth control. The app works with a basal thermometer and self reported metrics to form a holistic view of your cycle, emotions, and other mental and physical health traits.
"I used to use the Apple Health tracker for my cycle," said user Jacquelyn Tepper. "But I like how Natural Cycles is much more active in avoiding pregnancy rather than just tracking your cycle, which is what I was doing with Apple. One of the biggest simple differences is it has a note section at the end of each day and an emotion tracker. I feel like I have a lot of moods and I'm trying to use this to figure out if that's cycle-related, if this is something that repeats and I can plan around that."
