Health/Fitness App Review

Health/Fitness App #1: Calm

Calm is an app that helps promote sleep and meditation. This app includes guided meditations, sleep stories, breathing programs, masterclasses, and relaxing music. When opening the app you are given options of what you hope to get out of this app. Options include: calming anxiety, lowering stress, happiness, self-esteem, gratitude, and so on. Calm is an easy to navigate app that has many features. The sleep stories have especially been my favorite because they are so calming and descriptive. I’ve never been a meditation type person, but this app offers so many different options that one is able to find something that they like. I could not find any weaknesses in the app. It worked very smoothly and was user-friendly. One way to improve the app would be for it to be free. This week I used the seven-day free trial that was offered but if I wanted to continue, I would be charged $59.99 each year. The app is great, but I do not feel that it is worth paying for. I feel that using this app each day could be used for long term health behavior change for some people. I believe that there are other ways to reduce stress that work better for me. Therefore, if this app works for you, it can really impact your life when used often. 

Health/Fitness App #2: Mealime

The second app I decided to check out this week was a meal planning app called Mealime. This app allows you to choose your meals for the week and then it compiles a grocery list for you. This makes it easy to get everything you need from the grocery store in one trip. When opening the app, you select your diet (keto, low carb, vegan, vegetarian, etc.) and you can select any ingredients you do not like to personalize the meals. The app then gives you meal options for the week! The app is great because it lists all the ingredients, cookware needed, and the cooking instructions. The one con to this app would be that it does not give any nutritional information and that would be the one thing I would like to change about this app. The app is free but if you want more perks it costs $5.99 a month or $49.99 a year but you do receive more recipes, the nutritional information, advanced recipe filters, and much more. This is an app that I could see myself paying for because it is so simple, and you have the meal choices, ingredients, recipe, and grocery list all in one place. This app helps you create simple healthy dinners and, therefore, could be responsible for a long-term behavior change. The app will even remind you to choose your meals for the week each Sunday! I’m a big fan.