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Summary
On episode 82 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan runs through the smartphone health and fitness apps he and his listeners actually use, built partly from suggestions gathered in the show’s Facebook group.
He covers food and activity tracking, running and mileage apps, HIIT timers, workout-builder apps, meditation, white noise, and wearables like the Fitbit and Withings, weighing what each one is good for and where it falls short.
Allan’s closing point is the real filter for any app: health and fitness tools should make your life better, and if one is not doing that, it is fine to drop it.
Links
- https://40plusfitness.com
Key Takeaways
- MyFitnessPal is Allan’s pick for tracking food, activity, and measurements. Its large user base means crowdsourced food data tends to be more reliable, and it has a built-in community, though Allan warns the advice in its forums is not always well researched.
- Running and mileage apps like RunKeeper and MapMyFitness track distance and add social sharing. Allan also flags Charity Miles, an app that donates to a charity of your choice based on the miles you log.
- Repeat Timer is Allan’s go-to for HIIT and Tabata training. It gives a configurable countdown and repeat timer so you can run interval workouts, like 20 seconds of work and 60 seconds of rest, without watching a clock.
- JEFIT can act like a personal trainer in your pocket. It designs and tracks workouts across free and paid tiers, useful if you want to get into split training or detailed progress reporting, though Allan notes the paid tier is pricey for what it offers.
- Headspace is Allan’s recommendation for starting a meditation practice. The base app comes with 10 guided 10-minute sessions, with longer sessions and topic-specific meditations available as you progress.
- A white noise app is essential for sleeping in unfamiliar places. Allan uses one on the road to mask elevator noise, hallway traffic, and other sounds so his body can settle into real sleep.
- Wearables like Fitbit and Withings are useful for basic tracking, not obsession. Fitbit tracks steps and movement (10,000 steps is maintenance, not improvement, in Allan’s view), while the Withings blood pressure cuff lets him share real readings with his doctor over time.
- Quantified data can backfire for some people. A listener shared an article about a woman with a history of eating disorders whose compulsive tendencies were made worse by tracking data, a reminder that self-tracking is not risk-free for everyone.
- The purpose of any app is a better life, not the app itself. Allan’s closing rule: health and fitness are not the end goal, a better life is, so if a tool is not contributing to that, stop using it.
