My Favourite Free Wellness Apps (Updated April 2020)

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Jun 17

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Technology has become such an integral part of our day-to-day lives. With that comes so many amazing apps to help with our wellness journey. The best part is, that most of them are free and make it easy to track different aspects of our health.

There are apps for fitness, nutrition, meditation, sleep, cycle tracking and everything in between. Here are some of my favourite ones!

Exercise

Nike Running
- I love running, and this app has been my tried and true running for many years now.
- I like it because it tracks real-time speed, distance, splits, pace and looks at your mapped route as well.
- It also has an option to listen to guided runs (narrated by celebrities and athletes like Kevin Hart) if you need some extra inspiration to get going.
Nike+ Training Club
- This is my favourite app for strength training workouts because you can choose specific workouts based on your equipment, the time you have available and difficulty level.
- It has options for strength based workouts, HIIT workouts, stretching and more.
- They're offering free premium workouts right now.
7 Minute Workout
- The 7 Minute Workout app is great when you have just that - only 7 minutes to squeeze in a workout!
- The 7-minutes focus on: 12 high intensity bodyweight exercises, 30 seconds per exercise, 10 seconds rest between exercises.
- The great part is you can repeat the 7 minute workouts for as long as you have time for to get in a longer workout.
Spotify
- I know this isn't a 'fitness' app, but this is essential for me to get pumped up for and stay motivated during a workout. I don't know about you, but good tunes make my workouts so much more enjoyable and help pass the time.
Daily Burn
- Daily burn is an awesome app with a huge variety of workouts—everything from strength training, HIIT, yoga, to kickboxing.
- The app also puts together a personalized fitness plan and keeps you accountable for your goals.
- They are offering 60 days free right now.
Peloton
- Although you may know the brand for their terrible commercial Peloton offers an awesome fitness app.
- It doesn't just have cycling workouts (although those are awesome), they also have a great library of other workouts - strength training, yoga, running, stretching + more.
- Right now they're offering 90 days free.

Stress-Busting

Calm App
- The Calm App is another tried and true app for me.
- It has a database of short and sweet guided meditations (5-7 minutes) that are narrated by calming voices and have natural sounds in the background.
- Throw in some earbuds midday to calm down at work, or try before bed to ease into sleep.
Insight Timer
- This is one I've yet to use but was recommended to me by a lot of people.
- You can choose between guided, silent or timed meditations with a huge directory of meditations to choose from.
Dark Noise
- Dark noise plays ambient noise to help you sleep, focus, or relax.
- It has a variety of sounds that help to promote a soothing sense of calm.
- Dark Noise is offering a free trial right now.
Scribd
- Scribd is a digital library app that has a variety of ebooks and audiobooks available for free 30 days
Free university courses
- Not an app but I love to hear that 200+ universities have made 600 courses free!
- There are courses on everything from business to languages to computer science.
- Check it out here: https://www.classcentral.com/

Nutrition

MyFitnessPal
- MyFitnessPal is the most popular nutrition tracking apps. With more than 5-million foods in it's database, it's easy-to-use calorie counter lets users quickly track their meals, snacks and liquid intake throughout the day.
- It also has nutrition facts for many restaurants and brand name foods.
- You can save time by saving meals that you eat often so you don't have to keep inputting individual ingredients.
Fitocracy Macros
- Fitocracy Macros allows you to track your macronutrients (fat, protein and carbs) in addition to caloric intake.
- This is helpful if you're looking to follow specific macro percentages (ie low carb etc).
- What I like about this app, is that macros are the focus, not the calorie counts, so you can focus on the nutrition that is right for you.

Sleep

Sleep Cycle
- Sleep is so important (if you don't believe me, check out this article).
- Sleep Cycle tracks how long you sleep and sleep quality, time went to bed, in bed and woke up, if you snore, difference in sleep with the mood, air pressure, best sleep quality per day of week and sleep quality affected by activity.
- This insight can be used to make sure you are getting the best sleep you can every night.
- Try these tips as well.

Cycle Tracking Apps

Flo
- Flo app is a great free app to track your cycles.
- What I like about Flo is you can see a calendar view of with the dates for upcoming periods and your fertile window (days where ovulation is most likely to occur and you're most likely to get pregnant).
- This is great if you are either trying to become pregnant or avoiding it.
- You can also track how you're feeling, your PMS symptoms, sex drive, and menstrual flow, sleep, water consumption, and physical activity.
- Tracking your cycle along with symptoms is really helpful when we're taking a deep dive into your hormones.
Clue
- Clue is another free cycle tracking app where you can track your symptoms and see a calendar view of your cycle.

Healthy Living

EWG Healthy Living App
- Looking for a cleaner foundation, laundry detergent, or body lotion? EWG is one of my favourite apps/sites.
- It helps you make better choices with products for your health and the environment.
- It has ratings for more than 120,000 food and personal care products and rates them based off of their overall hazard, cancer risk, developmental + reproductive toxicity, allergies & immunotoxicity and breaks it down into each ingredient.
- The Skin Deep section of their website allows you to look up different cosmetics and body care products specifically.

If you are interested in optimizing your hormonal health, energy, weight, or overall health I am a Naturopathic Doctor in Toronto, Mississauga and Vaughan and would love to help you reach your health goals. Feel free to reach out and check out available appointments here!

In health,