Wellness consists of more than just good physical health, it is a state where you feel comfortable, happy, and safe. These apps will turn your phone into a tool that you can use to help support your best self. Here are my 5 favourite free apps that I wouldn’t be able to live without.
1. Flipd
Flipd is my favourite study tool as a university student! It combines productivity with social media to create a community that holds you accountable for your goals. You are able to track your work and break times while setting goal tasks. This app provides free lo-fi study music and even allows you to join live study rooms so you never have to study alone again! My favourite part about this app is that I am able to visualize the time I am spending on school work on a daily and weekly basis, and this motivates me to make every day a productive one!
2. Yuka
This app scans food and cosmetic products to tell you everything you need to know about the ingredients that you are putting on and in your body. Through its analysis of the impact on the health of your body, this app rates items on a scale of 0-100 to let you know how safe the products are that you consume. Checking the quality of the products I use and the foods I eat has been a game-changer, and Yuka’s ability to break down the harmful additives and explain their impact on health allows me to make better decisions on a day-to-day basis.
3. Kindara
Kindara is a fully customizable period-charting app that tracks your period against your day-to-day mood, cervical fluid, and any other habit that you may want to track. Personally, this app is the most important one on my phone. I like to track my daily vitamin intake, moods, motivation levels, workouts, acne, food habits and more to see monthly trends in how my cycle affects my life. This app is also largely useful for women who use the Symptothermal Method or Fertility Awareness Method of birth control (as this app gives you options to chart flow, cervical fluid, vaginal sensation, cervix position, basal body temperature, and more).
4. Goodreads
This website and app is another that I use frequently. It allows you to organize an online “bookshelf” where you can save books that you’ve read and books that you want to read. Not only will Goodreads give you recommendations based on your personal “Want to Read” booklist, but this app also allows you to see reviews on books before you go out to the store and spend your money on them. I particularly like the feature of this app that allows you to set challenges for yourself, as this makes me motivated to start new books and succeed in my reading goals.
5. AllTrails
Finally, AllTrails is an app for adventurers! This app allows you to see and follow hiking and walking trails near your geographical location. When the weather is warmer, I use this app to plan hiking trips with my dog. The app makes it easy as I can filter by elevation, kilometres, or difficulty. After your walk is complete, you also have the option to rate, review, and post photos of your hike to keep track of spots that you may want to return to!
Not only is your phone a great way to promote wellness through communication with others, but these apps create more opportunities to promote your best self.