20 Apps To Make You Healthier

Living a healthy lifestyle in today’s fast-paced world can be either extremely difficult or very easy. From fast food to sugary drinks, temptations are everywhere, and sometimes it seems that every TV commercial is ultimately about instant gratification. But living in the 21st century has its advantages too. Our bodies may not be sinuous and well-muscled from a day spent breaking our backs with an iron plough, but on the other hand … well, we don’t have to plough.

Today, entire industries are devoted to healthy living. There are countless books, diets and technologies that can help us get to where we want to be, and all we’ve got to do is select our tools and get serious. You’ll need plenty of fresh fruits and veggies, so if you care about how to keep food fresh, make sure you have The Ozonator. Then get out your smartphone and head over to your favorite app store. To get you motivated, we’re about to review our top 20 favorite health and fitness apps. Ready?

How to Make Better Food Choices

Though our phones can do a whole lot these days, they still don’t know how to keep food fresh. So when you’re on the go and don’t have the benefit of a fridge full of fruits and veggies kept super fresh by the Ozonator, it’s easy to just stuff your face with junk food. But don’t do that – there are some apps that teach you how to eat healthier and how to save money on food too.

1. Lose It! Lose It! helps you lose weight by keeping tabs on the foods you’re consuming. The coolest feature is probably the barcode scanner – just scan the barcode of an item at the store, and it’ll log the calories and nutritional info for you. (iPhone and Android, free)

2. MealSnap. The next time one your friends makes a snarky comment about your habit of uploading food pics to Instagram all the time, tell him about MealSnap. When you take a photo of your food, the MealSnap app will give you a rough estimate of the calories and nutritional value. It’ll then post the picture to social media, of course. (iPhone and Android, $2.99)

3. Restaurant Nutrition. Many restaurants include nutritional information on their menus now, but many still don’t – and those are usually the ones to watch out for. Luckily, the Restaurant Nutrition app has just about all the major restaurant chains covered. (iPhone and Android, free)

4. iDrinkulator LITE. Liquid calories are often the sneakiest, but iDrinkulator LITE will translate an alcoholic beverage into a food equivalent so that you can see just how everything adds up. For example, drink three beers and a glass of wine and you’ve basically consumed two burgers and a slice of cheesecake. Yikes. (iPhone, free)

5. Fooducate. Fooducate will help making educated choices about food easier. The app gives food items a letter grade from A to D based on an algorithm created by nutritionists and dieticians. (iPhone and Android, free)

6. Is My Food Safe? The Is My Food Safe? app can help you answer the age old question of whether the takeout you left in your car all evening is still okay to eat. It won’t teach you how to keep food fresh, but it will teach you how to tell when your food is sufficiently cooked, when you need to bust out the kitchen cleaning products and when to toss stuff from the fridge. But don’t take the results too seriously. With your ozone machine from Ozonator, your food will last longer than ever before. (iPhone and Android, free)

How to Stay in Shape

Inconvenience is no longer a valid excuse for being out of shape. Sure, the gym might be several miles away, and maybe it’s way too cold outside, but buy one of these apps and you’ll have a personal trainer in your pocket at all times. With the help of fitness apps like these (and all the fresh fruits and veggies you’ll have in your fridge thanks to your Ozonator ozone machine), pretty soon you’ll be looking and feeling better than ever.

7. Workout Trainer. Skimble’s Workout Trainer offers hundreds of workouts you can do on your own at home. It lets you view prerecorded videos by fitness coaches, and you can even create your own workout plans and add them to a database so that other people can try them too. ($25/year, iPhone and Android)

8. Zombies, Run! If the idea of working out bores you, Zombies, Run! might be just the thing to get your butt in gear. With this app, your real-life workout becomes a game. As you run, virtual zombies chase you. There are missions to complete, and the adventure is delivered to you right through your headphones. It’s perfect training for doomsday preppers. (iPhone and Android, $3.99)

9. Pocket Yoga. Curious about yoga but don’t want the public watching your awkward contortions through a large plate glass window? If so, Pocket Yoga is the perfect solution. It’s got visual and audio instructions as well as a dictionary of yoga terms so that you can give it a go at home. Namaste! (iPhone and Android, $2.99)

How to Be an All-Around Better Person

Your health doesn’t just depend on what you eat and how often you exercise. To be a truly healthy individual, you’ve got to take a holistic approach.

15. Lift. Lift will help you achieve just about any goal, whether it’s to eat better, read more or stop biting your nails. Just select the good habit you want to adopt and set your goals. When you meet your daily goal, tell the app. All this info is public, but that’s a good thing: other members will cheer you on and help motivate you. (iPhone, free)

16. Beeminder. While Lift uses positive reinforcement as a way to motivate, Beeminder uses the ultimate motivator: money. If you don’t meet your daily goals, the app will charge you a sum that you agree to upon registration. If you keep missing your goals, your fees keep going up. You can also use the app for free if you prefer. (iPhone and Android, free to download)

17. Stress Check. Stress Check does exactly what its name implies – it tells you how stressed you are! Simply open the app, touch your finger to the screen and get your heart rate. The app keeps track of your heart rate over time, which can help you figure out what exactly is causing stress in your life. (iPhone and Android, $0.99)

18. Keas. A few years ago, Whole Foods caused a stir when they started offering better employee discounts to workers who met certain health criteria, including healthy BMI scores. Perhaps a less controversial way to encourage employee health, however, is to use the Keas app. Keas aims to reduce the cost of healthcare for companies by turning healthy living into a competitive sport. Employees play against each other in teams to meet health goals and win prizes. The app is great for both team-building and for weight loss. (iPhone and Android, Free)

19. My Last Cigarette. Smoking is one of the least healthy things you can do – so cut it out. Enter your smoking habits into My Last Cigarette and it’ll predict your nicotine cravings and send you scary stats to keep you from giving into them. It’ll also tell you how just how much your health is improving with each passing day. (iPhone, $0.99)

20. Awesome Eats. Kids who eat healthy grow into adults who eat healthy. Get your kids on the right track by showing them how fun fruits and veggies can be with the Awesome Eats app. Kids play games with cartoon produce in this adorable and educational app. (iPhone, free)

Staying healthy in the 21st century is actually easier than ever. From how to save money on food to how to keep food fresh and how to quit smoking, there’s an app for that. Lots of apps, actually. We’ve listed the 20 that we use to keep ourselves healthy at The Ozonator, but we certainly haven’t covered them all. Do you have a favorite health-related app that we missed? Let us know in the comments.