As busy women with jobs and families, it can be difficult to find time to take care of our wellness needs, so we may need an extra push. Wellness apps have become increasingly popular over the last several years and users can find everything from guided meditations to nutritional apps to health individuals reach their weight loss goals.
We've shared our pick for the top apps we believe are essential to reaching your wellness goals and maintaining balance in your life.
Keep scrolling to learn more and get to know the apps for yourself.
1. Best for Beginner Meditation: Headspace
Headspace has become one of the most popular meditation apps over the last five years. Their tagline “Meditation made simple” completely encompasses everything users can take advantage of—from guided meditations to mindfulness exercises focusing on stress, general anxiety, and more. The app provides focus meditations for those who may work from home and includes at-home workouts such as yoga and guided runs to help users stay active and motivated to reach their fitness goals.
While the app does offer a free seven-day trial, users who would like to continue using the app must pay $12.99 per month or $69.99 annually.
2. Best for Sustainable Weight Loss & Tracking: Noom
Noom is designed to help users lose weight through healthy eating and movement based on principles from psychology, technology, and human coaching. App users have access to over 1,000 lessons that discuss weight loss-related topics, complete daily food logs, and receive recommendations for the allotted amount of daily calories based on their weight loss goals. You can even connect it with the Health App on your iPhone (if you're an Apple user) to stay on top of trends in your daily activity progress.
Users are able to start with a four-month subscription billed at $42.25 per month, but those looking for a long-term weight loss plan are able to subscribe for additional months. If you’re only looking to use the app for a short period of time, be sure to cancel prior to the end of the four months, it will renew automatically after the initial subscription period has ended.
3. Best for Tracking Your Menstrual Cycle: Clue Period Tracker and Calendar
While many women have heard of and used Flo to track their menstrual cycles and ovulation, there is another alternative out there for women that strives to protect its users’ data. Clue is an app that is founded and led by women and vows to not sell personal health data or disclose it to third parties. The app allows women to track their menstrual cycles—including providing information on when they may be most fertile—along with pregnancy tracking. Users of the app can track symptoms like cravings, pain, and sex drive along with logging their birth control methods. The app even includes access to tips and advice from fertility experts for those looking to conceive.
Users can access the app for free, but if they would like to have full access to all of Clue’s features, they can sign up for Clue Plus, a monthly subscription for 9.99 a month. Clue Plus provides users with exclusive features such as six months’ worth of cycle predictions, full access to educational articles, assistance from a dedicated team with Premium Customer Care, and more.
4. Best for Self-Help and Mental Health for POC: The Safe Place
The Safe Place is a Minority Mental Health app focused on providing support to the Black community. The creator of the app, Jasmine Pierre, uses the app to provide resources to those in the Black community struggling with mental health and reduce stigma. The app includes several resources such as helpful videos, podcasts, educational articles, self-care tips, a mental health directory as well as a group forum.
The app is currently completely free to use but is seeking donations in order to stay accessible to users in both the App Store and Google Play. Those who are interested in donating can do so via GoFundMe.
5. Best for Emotional Well-Being: Exhale App
Exhale is an emotional well-being app made specifically for Black, Indigenous, Women of Color (BIWOC) by Katara McCarty—a wellness coach, author, and podcast host. The app was created out of the idea that the Black and Brown community needs relief and resources, due to continuously witnessing police brutality and experiencing micro-aggressions as it has a negative impact on the health of those communities.
Users can experience meditations relevant to BIWOC, go through guided visualizations of self-discovery, breathwork techniques, coaching talks, and daily affirmations to provide encouragement.
The app is free with limited access to some of the content, but users can take advantage of all features through a subscription for $4.99 per month.
Our Last Dance
We believe that wellness and self-care should be at the forefront of our daily lives, and that taking the necessary steps to improve yourself, which entails your mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing, is just the start to improving your life daily. These are some of the apps we believe that can help you take charge of your health and wellness journey, but these are purely recommendations and unsponsored. We implore you to research your own and find what apps works best for you as you search to become a better version of yourself.