The apps to give your health and fitness a helping hand

The physical wellness apps that help keep business owners in the pink.

Physical health and wellbeing are often overlooked but maintaining and improving your health as a business owner is important in order to be able to drive the growth of your business. However, given the demands and the workload owners face in running their businesses day after day, many tend to neglect their health, albeit often inadvertently.

It is with these considerations in mind that we have compiled a list of free physical health and wellness apps that are designed to provide information and activities in just a few minutes to keep you healthy and fit each day.

MyFitnessPal

Eating healthily is a critical element of one’s health and MyFitnessPal helps you make the right diet decisions to get the nutrients you need to stay healthy. It offers a comprehensive database of more than six million foods, providing a breakdown of the amount of protein, carbohydrates and fat available in every food you eat, plus nutritional information from more than half a million restaurants. If you have a target weight, the app will suggest the type and quantity of food you need to consume.

Sworkit

Sworkit, which is short for “simply work it”, is an easy-to-use personal trainer app designed to get you into the best shape of your life and help you achieve goals such as weight loss, muscle building or improved endurance. The app makes it fast and simple to workout at home or on the go, without the need of a gym membership or special equipment. Certified fitness trainers are also available to answer your fitness and nutrition questions.

7 Minute Workout

The 7 Minute Workout App provides a fast, simple, science-based way to work out anywhere, anytime – perfect for people with a busy lifestyle. The app features 72 exercises and 22 additional workouts that can be customised and modified to create more than 1000 variations that help keep you motivated and moving. It also features Smart Workout, which gauges your fitness and motivation level and recommends different workout programs with varying degrees of intensity, depending on your fitness needs and goals.

Fitbit

The Fitbit app is an all-in-one personalised app that lets you track your fitness activity, such as the number of steps you’ve made, distance walked or run, minutes exercised, and hydration. You can also set fitness goals like target weight or carbohydrate intake, and it will ensure you reach those milestones. While the app is designed to work with its namesake fitness smartwatches, the Fitbit app does not require one to have a Fitbit device and is available to use on any platform.

WebMD

WebMD has long been a popular and reliable medical resource, offering a repository of information on different ailments and diseases and their corresponding symptoms. It is an invaluable resource for answers to different health concerns across hundreds of thousands of topics. Such information is provided thanks to the contributions of real doctors who are experts in the different fields of medicine.

Instant Consult

Instant Consult is a telehealth app that allows you to connect and chat instantly with an Australian-registered and experienced doctor via video call, regardless of where in Australia you are calling from. You can also upload photos for the doctor to examine and get official correspondence sent straight to your app’s dedicated inbox while ensuring user privacy.

In the next issue, we’ll look at some free apps that will help ensure that other vital aspect of wellness – your mental health.

This article first appeared in issue 43 of the Inside Small Business quarterly magazine