Varsha Khatri In our piece on ‘10 Small Steps to Improve Your Health’ we mentioned a number of valuable tips that can help you prevent illnesses and overall feel better. You may have noticed that most of our recommendations revolved around food, and this is not a coincidence. No matter how much you work out, it’s impossible to achieve a healthy lifestyle without the proper diet.
Having said that, eating healthy and, more importantly, developing good eating habits it’s not an easy task. It requires a lot of effort, and most people frequently end up breaking their diets. The good news is that developers and health professionals have been working together to provide us with some surprisingly effective tools. Let’s take a look at some nutrition apps worthy of your time.
MyPlate
MyPlate provides a template for the proportion in which protein, vegetables, fruits, grain, and dairy should form part of our daily diet. Users can choose which way to progressively move towards this dietary ideal, by selecting from different ways to improve certain food groups while reducing others. For example, the app may recommend adding fruits to your breakfast, or trying a new type of grain.
The state-sponsored app also provides additional information so that users can learn about the nutritional properties of products they haven’t used before, and how to insert them on their diet. It also provides detailed challenges that make the experience more rewarding in the long term.
Mighty Health
There are some fantastic apps out there that can effectively help people start a healthier lifestyle. The common perception though is that older adults, for whom these apps would be the most useful, don’t have the desire to use them. However this is not true. Telehealth platform Wheel observed that nearly 9 out of 10 Americans over 40 would be comfortable using at least one type of telemedicine. This means that more apps need to be aimed at this demographic.
Mighty Health tries to solve this problem by taking into consideration multiple issues that emerge later in life, like joint problems and mobility restrictions. Through the app older adults can find relevant nutritional content, get access to live coaches, and let their loved ones know about their progress.
Yummly
Probably one of the most effective ways to lose weight is by preparing a detailed dietary program listing what we should eat every day to achieve the exact amount of nutrients and calories we need. This usually requires working with a nutritionist, as trying to prepare a diet on your own can lead to developing overly restrictive or permissive eating habits.
In a way, Yummly works as an excellent guide when a nutritionist is not available, offering users millions of recipes. As a result, people trying to start a diet are more likely to find healthy recipes that match their particular taste, but also their nutritional needs. Yummly also offers interactive content for families trying to develop healthier eating habits together.
Lifesum
One of the main issues with starting a healthy diet is that it adds a bit of complexity to the task of buying ingredients and preparing meals. It may not seem like much, but the additional work adds up and this can sometimes be enough to interrupt our diet.
Lifesum approaches the challenge of eating healthy with a focus on making the task a lot easier. It achieves this by offering a great variety of recipes that contain five ingredients or less. It also helps the user track the amount of water they drink, while also being able to sync with most fitness trackers.
Anyone who has started a diet or an exercise routine with the intention of becoming a healthier person will tell you that, while it’s one of the biggest challenges they have to face, it’s definitely worthy given the benefits they bring to their lives. So, naturally, any kind of tool that will make choosing our meals and track our progress while adapting to our needs should be welcomed. In fact, it might be exactly what we need to achieve the goals we have been chasing for so long.
