Fitness apps: Keep your good intentions on track

How are your fitness intentions holding up? If you are struggling, we are here to help with these motivating and sometimes amusing fitness and health apps.

Last week’s picks involved financial penalties and zombies. Here are two more that will help to keep you healthy as the evenings get brighter.

Carrot Hunger

iOS, Android

If you need a bit of motivation sticking to your healthy eating plan, Carrot may provide that gentle push in the right direction. Actually, less of a gentle push and more of a shove. A shove with attitude. Carrot doesn’t pull any punches.

It makes sarcastic remarks, it judges you on your bad food choices and it tries to keep you on the straight and narrow with a dose of humour alongside the sensible healthy stuff.

It works the same as any other food tracker. You put what you eat in your food diary and it tracks them over the day. Not only does it watch how close you are to your goal, but it also tells you how long you’ll have to exercise to get rid of the calories.

That pizza slice doesn’t taste quite as good when you’re told you will have to run for 29 minutes to burn it off. Or cycle for more than two hours to cancel out the ice cream.

You start each new day with an avatar that is little more than a skeleton. As you record your calories, it puts on a bit of weight, filling out to normal proportions until you hit your target. Go too much over your allowance and your avatar starts to take on rotund proportions.

If you have a huge blowout and go over your calorie limit for the day, the app will warn you, along with showing you your sobbing avatar – just so you know exactly what you’re doing. It also offers you the chance to cheat, logging the item in your diary but not counting it towards your final calorie total – for 99 cent.

It begs the question why anyone would bother with that feature; the easier thing to do would be pretend you didn't scoff half a cheesecake and put the 99 cent towards your next McDonalds Eurosaver meal.

Verdict: If a calorie counter with attitude helps your healthy eating plan, who are we to judge?

Seven

iOS

“Got seven minutes?” The plaintive message pops up on my smartphone. It kicks off an internal tussle. “It’s only seven minutes, I can cut short my channel hopping to a respectable 20 minutes, grab some water and exercise, all while preparing for my

Netflix

binge later.

Seven is an app that offers short workouts that you can cram into seven minutes, everything from a total body workout to ones that concentrate on core or lower body muscles.

And there are paid-for workouts to unlock too, such as cardio, fat-burning and stretching. The idea is that you do the exercises for 30 seconds at a high intensity, resting for 10 seconds in between.

After seven minutes, you are finished. There are achievements to unlock, such as continuing on the programme for a few days or months, or working out early in the morning.

To complete it you need only a chair, a wall and your own body weight ... and seven minutes. Your calendar stores your workouts, colour-coded so you can see how you have done in the past.

Those reminders can be set to pop up every day to keep you on track, or just pop up when the app considers you’re being lazy or losing heart.

Verdict: Sometimes the answer to the question is "No, actually, I don't have seven minutes." But more often than not you'll find yourself grabbing your trainers. Sometimes it's just easier to give in.