Fitness and nutrition apps to help your wellbeing

Doing some form of exercise, whether it be walking the dog, going to the gym, or chasing after your children, alongside a nutritional diet, should be something we want to do for our mental health as well as our physical health. Physical activity has been shown to increase your mental alertness, energy and mood, even by just doing ten minutes of brisk walking (1). As we exercise, our brains produce a chemical messenger called ‘endorphins’ that promote a sense of joy after we’ve finished a workout, which helps to reduce stress and pain levels (2).

Nutrition can be tricky, there’s a lot of conflicting advice about what we should and shouldn’t eat, but it’s all about balance. What you eat has been linked to effecting how we feel, so by nourishing our bodies with healthy foods, we’ll also be contributing to healthy wellbeing. Enjoying food with other people also has a positive impact on your wellbeing, by taking the time to talk and listen to one another over a meal helps to form emotional connections and allows you to reflect on the day .

Participating in regular exercise, combined with a healthy diet will also boost your self-esteem and make you feel more confident, reducing anxiety and improving your quality of life. ‘I don’t have time’, ‘healthy eating is expensive’ or simply, ‘I can’t be bothered’, are all common excuses for disregarding a healthy lifestyle, but we want to help you. As part of Mental Health Awareness Week, we want to share with you some of our favourite fitness and nutrition apps, to make it easier for you to implement these changes into your lifestyle.

Help to get moving:

• Couch to 5K – Couch to 5K is a running plan for absolute beginners. It involves three runs a week and a different schedule for each of the nine weeks to help you reach that 5k goal
• Nike Running Club – A library of more than 185 free workouts, from strength and endurance based routines to mobility and yoga sessions, all featuring virtual guidance from Nike Master Trainers
• AllTrails – The app offers more than 100,000 hiking, mountain biking, and trail-running maps alongside reviews and photos from millions of users
• Yoga with Adriene – A YouTube channel by Adriene that has yoga workouts for all ages, abilities, times, goals and moods and they’re all free

Making meals easy:

• MyFitnessPal – An app with an enormous food database, barcode scanner, recipe importer, restaurant logger, food insights, calorie counter and more
• Yummly – Over 2 million recipes, personalised to your taste and dietary needs, step by step recipes, and ideas based on what’s in your fridge, so does the thinking for you
• Water Llama – An app that calculates how much water you need according to your activity level, weight, climate and gender, then sends you reminders and challenges
• One You: Easy Meals – Search over 150 easy, calorie counted recipes across breakfast, lunch, evening meals and puddings. It even makes your shopping list for you

We’re not suggesting running a marathon or cutting out chocolate completely, but implementing a few healthy lifestyle choices will help to improve your overall mental health and get those endorphins flowing.

REF (1): https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/publications/how-to-using-exercise

REF (2): https://www.calmmoment.com/living/why-exercise-is-good-for-your-mental-health-and-wellbeing/