How are you doing on those New Year’s resolutions?
Perhaps you wanted to shed holiday pounds through diet and exercise and have a healthier lifestyle?
If your motivation has taken a hit, these apps for self-coaching provide options for measuring your health-related activities. This type of self-observation delivers invaluable feedback and has been labeled the “quantified self” movement.
While I have not applied all of these to my life, I have seen firsthand how much impact logging your behavior can have. You can no longer hide behind approximations, but discover the truth behind your perceptions of your behavior. By getting data feedback you gain support and accountability. This increases your chances of success in much the same way as life coaching. Any new objective now has additional knowledge behind it that will allow you to make more realistic commitments.
Below, I describe the main features of health apps for self-coaching that will help you establish new habits.
1. Runkeeper:
This free app for iPhone or Android enables you to map your fitness activities by time, distance, speed, pace, calories, and route. Planning, music, progress feedback, and running history also increase engagement.
2. MyFitnessPal:
This free web app uses databases of foods and exercises to track calorie intake and output.
3. 80 Bites:
This iPhone/iPad app makes you conscious of your food consumption. The number of mouthfuls of food we need to consume each day to feel full is supposed to be 80 – who knew? You can test this out by tapping the screen for each bite eaten.
4. Loseit:
Track both your food and your exercise with this free web app. It includes goal creation, progress sharing, and friendly accountability.
5. Waterlogged:
With this free iPhone/iPad app you can record your intake by clicking on the image of the water container you are drinking. You can easily monitor how much water you consume and meet your hydration goals.
6. RECaf caffeine recorder:
Zing! This free iPhone/iPad app tracks caffeine levels according to your coffee, chocolate, or energy drink intake. It gives you stats on your caffeine consumption over time.
7. Sleepcycle:
This alarm clock app for iPhone and Android analyzes your sleep patterns and wakes you during your lightest sleep phase. It also detects other behaviors like snoring, and sleep-talking, and tracks overall time asleep.
8. Moodscope:
This free web app uses a card game to measure and track your mood. The data can be used to identify what could be causing your ups and downs. You can learn how much your mood varies over time and optimize your behaviors to boost your emotional well-being.
9. Calm:
One of many meditation apps, Calm for the iPhone or Android has a range of guided meditation and breathing exercises to increase emotional regulation.
10. Headspace:
This app for every device is a digital mental health platform that provides resources and support for stress relief including guided meditations, mindfulness exercises, and therapeutic support.
Bonus app
11. FocusKeeper:
A time management app for iPhone and Android that focuses on the Pomodoro technique for focused work and downtime.
If any of these apps for self-coaching align with your health goals, you might be a few clicks away from maintaining a healthier and happier you.
Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay
