5 Powerful Apps I'm Using To Transform My Body
5 Apps You Can Use To Build A Healthier Lifestyle
I lost twenty pounds (nine kilograms) in six weeks, but in a bad way.
6 months ago, I returned from a trip halfway across the world. After eating countless desserts (gulab jamun is too good), I knew I had gained weight.
I was wrong.
The day I returned, my weight dipped below 135 pounds. I'm 6'1" (that's 61 kg and 186 cm for my non-American friends).
When I started looking at niche Scandinavian brands to find clothes that fit, I knew something had to change.
Over the past three months, I've slowly been gaining weight. My success so far comes down to seven things: discipline, my friends, and these five apps:
Apple Fitness
Fitness+ was crucial at the start of my fitness journey.
With its vast library of videos, working out felt less overwhelming. I didn't have to worry if I was hitting every muscle group or if I was doing inefficient exercises: following Fitness+'s workouts made it easier to get into the habit of working out.
Over time, I transitioned away from Fitness+. But for beginners (especially those with an Apple Watch), Fitness+ can be a powerful tool to help you ease into the world of at-home exercise.
YouTube
When building any habit, an important step is to integrate yourself into a community.
In my case, I used YouTube to integrate myself into the fitness community. I began following fitness-focused YouTube channels and looked at both educational and entertaining content.
Finding others who started out like me gave me the inspiration to stick with my habits, and joining the online fitness community extinguished the back-of-the-mind temptation to quit.
Notion
Another key part of building a habit is tracking your progress.
Notion gave me a space to journal during the journey. By documenting my thoughts, I could write out any challenges I faced and ways I could address them. If I ever felt demotivated, I could use Notion as a diary to re-ignite my energy.
In that sense, Notion created a space where I could discuss and address my thoughts, ensuring that my mind stuck with the habit.
Streaks
While Notion gave me a way to track my habit with words, Streaks gave me a way to track my habit with numbers.
Streaks is a paid habit-tracking app I recently downloaded. Since then, I've used Streaks to track my habits, and it's been a game-changer. It's a well-designed app with the sole intention of building/breaking habits.
Having the pressure of breaking a streak in the back of my mind and gamifying the process makes it easier for me to continue working out.
While I'd recommend Streaks at $4.99, Pixelist is a free alternative that also lets you track habit streaks.
Apple Notes
Apple Notes and Notion have played similar, yet different roles.
I use both to take notes, but with different intended purposes. While I use Notion to track my progress, I use Apple Notes to take note of new exercises I might add to my routine or exercise tips I hear about online.
Apple Notes is also "the home" of my main fitness routine (where I keep track of the sets I do), and it's perfect for that role: it's simple, easy to access, and syncs across iCloud. While I could use Notion for the same purpose, Apple Notes is a bit quicker to load and is less clogged up (I use Notion for millions of other things).
Final Thoughts
"Long-term consistency beats short-term intensity"—Bruce Lee
Thanks for reading!
Adi