As Fitness Month fades away into the distant horizon, we've looked at apps throughout the month that are focused on helping us get into shape, eat right, get a good night's sleep and basically live a healthier life.
This week's roundup focuses on apps that tackle a wide range of fitness topics from diet to exercise to health related issues. These three apps seem to be more comprehensive than other fitness apps and while the roundup may seem to be a little on the thin side, these three apps cover a lot of territory.
As always, if you have a favorite health or fitness Windows Phone app that you'd like to recommend, sound off in the comments below.
Microsoft HealthVault (free): HealthVault is a feature rich service from Microsoft that covers everything from keeping track of your medical information to charting your blood pressure. Not only for yourself but your family members as well.
You'll need a HealthVault online account (free) and you can create one using your Windows Live ID, Facebook account or Open ID.
The HealthVault Windows app taps into your HealthVault account and pull key bits of information to your Windows Phone. Information such as allergies, medications, insurance, health history, and emergency contacts for any member of your HealthVault account.
The nice thing about the HealthVault environment is the web portal supports a large selection of fitness/health devices and apps. HealthVault can tap into your Fitbit account and import your activity, diet and sleep information into the account. Or it can tap into your CVS Pharmacy account and import any medications.
The downside to all of this is that at the moment, the imported information from these apps and devices aren't reflective in the HealthVault app.
Still... the HealthVault is a very nice app to keep you pertinent medical information handy. The web portal is still the centerpiece of the HealthVault environment but if the app could reflect the app/device information, it would improve by leaps and bounds.
Microsoft's HealthVault app is free and you can find it here in the Windows Phone Store.
Livescape (trial/$4.99): Describing Livescape as a feature rich app might be an understatement. It has a ton of features and just falls short of exercising for you.
Here is a list of the key features of Livescape:
- Live Tile support for activities and conditions
- Reminders for fitness activities
- Support for Fast Application Switching
- Support for the Metric System, as well as, English Units
- GPS tracking and logging for your activities
- Step counting (Pedometer) with estimated distance traveled and calories burned
- Ability to import Nutrition Facts and recipes from the Internet
- Ability to scan Nutrition Facts
- Consumption Tracking (Food, Drinks, Water, Meals, Recipes, and Mixes)
- Special Soft Lock feature for phones that do not allow the pedometer to run under a fully locked screen
- Calculate Body Fat, Lean Mass, and Fat Mass based on Waist, Hip, and Neck measurement
- Weight, Blood Pressure, Mood, Stress, and Measurement Tracking
- Synchronize with a wireless weight scale, body composition reader, or blood pressure cuff using Microsoft® HealthVault®
- BMI and BMR Calculation
- Ability to track ailments such as allergies, headaches, fevers, flues, and cramps
- Fertility calculation
- Chipotle Mexican Grill calculator
Add a hand full of themes, cloud backup, and multiple profile support and Livescape may very well be the ultimate Windows Phone fitness app. The Live Tile support is a nice feature in that you can pin tiles for activities and conditions such as eating, drinking, water consumption and stress to monitor your daily progress at a glance. From the settings menu of Livescape you can set your health and fitness goals that include daily calorie intake, water consumption goals, and weight goals. All in all, Livescape is a feature rich, well laid out fitness app well worth considering.
There is a fourteen day trial version for Livescape that has some limitations (won't sync with HealthVault, backup service not available, etc.). The full version is currently running $4.99 and you can find it all here at the Windows Phone Store.
MyFitnessPal (free): Where Livescape throws everything at you but the kitchen sink, MyFitnessPal isn't too far behind in the amount of features it holds.
MyFitnessPal has a humongous food database to help you track you calories and a respectable exercise listing to help you track the calories you burn.
Adding food is simple. You can search the database of over 1.2 million foods, scan the barcode packaging or if it's not listed add it manually. Same can be said of the exercise database (except for the barcode scanning).
MyFitnessPal allows you to set fitness goals and it will track your progress through charts and displaying any calories left in your daily limit. There's even a notes section to let you add comments, observations and general thoughts on the challenges of staying fit and eating right.
For added support, there's a MyFitnessPal website portal that will give you access to your fitness efforts online. You'll need to create a MyFitnessPal account (free) and along with being able to view your diet and exercise data, you have access to blog pages and a community forums.
MyFitnessPal is a free app for your Windows Phone that you can snatch it up here in the Windows Phone Store.
While the HealthVault service from Microsoft is really nice, the mobile app needs to tap into more of the services data. Livescape and MyFitnessPal seems to cover more fitness oriented data and it may be a coin toss as to which is the better of the two. You may opt to use HealthVault for your medical information and choose another for your fitness needs. Regardless, all three are very nice Windows Phone apps.
Fitness Month is our opportunity to showcase health and fitness apps that will help you get fit, stay fit and live a generally healthy life. While Fitness Month has officially passed, hopefully over the past twenty-eight days you've discovered apps and accessories to help out in your fitness quest.
The Windows Phone Store is packed with health and fitness oriented apps and we've barely scratched the surface on them. If we've missed your favorite health and fitness app over the past few weeks, feel free to share in the comments.
