5 online health monitoring services
Daria Nifontova
The desire to control your life can have both positive and negative consequences. We decided not to dwell on the bad and put together five online platforms that allow you to monitor the state of your body, and do it easily and interestingly.
Health Month
Perhaps, the most "relaxed" service, rather intended for personal motivation and a fairly rough assessment of their own health. At the beginning of the month, all the participants of the “month” choose three items that they vow to fulfill within a month, join interest teams (you can become one of the beginning vegetarians who quit smoking or create your own team) and start the game. According to the rules, every day you are obliged to report on your successes: mark those points of the promise that you have coped with and tell you how you felt. Each "failed" item will cost you one fruit (gamification is now at every step, and you can even drink more water with a twinkle), but if you have a reasonable excuse, members of your team can donate you one or even several fruits. The team spirit really helps a lot: I saw a few examples of how people despaired and decided to quit the game, and after literally a few messages in the inner chat, the teams pondered over and reached the end.
Dacadoo
Perfect platform for those who want to take into account the maximum number of factors: the service allows you to track almost any cell in your body and its intended purpose. Immediately after registration, you will be asked to answer dozens of questions regarding your eating habits, family history and emotional state. The last point, by the way, is taken into account quite ingeniously, and to determine the level of stress you will be asked to send a small voice message (the idea that dubbing the phone in a coffee shop, for example, is already quite a stressful situation, the creators of Dacadoo did not take into account). Then the most interesting begins: the information obtained is used to compile your profile and personalize your tasks, tips and tips & tricks that will be sent to you by mail. The frequency of communication with the service can be adjusted, so that you can almost never get off the phone (Dacadoo applications are free in the App Store and on Google Play), and remember that it would be worthwhile to increase the consumption of complex carbohydrates only once a week. You can personally set your tasks and goals, or you can join the already existing ones; in any case, you will not be allowed to overstate the bar: you can only participate in sporting events for Dacadoo participants by gaining a certain number of points for workouts. To admit that you haven’t reached the gym this year, it can be a shame, but then you don’t have to be covered with frozen peas and moan from pain.
The carrot
Only service on the list, which is aimed not only at personal health, but also at public: The creators of The Carrot offer employers premium accounts that give access not only to the measurement of ordinary indicators, but also allow you to track pressure changes, quit progress and report on approaching to collective goals with beautiful and quite detailed graphs. For ordinary mortals, the rules do not change drastically: you can still report on the workouts done and the meals eaten. Perhaps the only fundamental difference between The Carrot and the rest of the services in the list is that it was created for “zadrotov” (in the best sense of the word). With The Carrot, you can take into account changes in the pulse before and after exercise, you will be forced (or finally get the opportunity, depending on the motivation) to indicate the amount of starch, sodium and fiber in the burger you have eaten and you will get almost a unique opportunity to monitor your lungs - not Many service colleagues consider this point important for people with asthma or other respiratory diseases.
Healbe
Service, created by a team of developers from Moscow and St. Petersburg, has already started in America, but it will reach us only in the spring. Healbe promises not only to monitor the calories and sleep phases that have been spent and that is already able to do Jawbone Up, but also to take into account the owner's pulse, stress level and to report changes in weight in real time. Such a wide list of opportunities is accompanied by a rather high price (the bracelet will cost twice as much as NikeFuel and Jawbone Up), but tell me honestly: how much would you give for the chance to see how the paella pan you just eaten added almost a pound of weight to you, and immediately capture increased stress levels? It is worth noting that several additional opportunities are planned to be added to Healbe, and soon you will be able not only to find out a whole bunch of exciting information about your body, but also to get personalized advice from a trainer, nutritionist and music consultant. The last point was obviously added solely to create the right atmosphere for every look at the bracelet screen - sad news is better absorbed by William Fitzsimmons.
SparkPeople
SparkPeople website similar to the forum of cat owners, yoga lovers and adherents of crossfit at the same time: motivational quotes, quite good lists of exercises for the press and a well-developed structure of the internal forum perfectly coexist on one page. SparkPeople took all the best from all the worlds, and with your account you immediately get access to a virtually bottomless well of knowledge about health - a very detailed questionnaire will help you create a workout plan and menus for the week, the section with audio and video tutorials is quite capable of replacing your personal trainer, The "Community" section will provide an opportunity to discuss the most beautiful sports bra, the recipe for the perfect smoothie for breakfast and heart-to-heart talk. Most likely, such a number of opportunities will cause unprecedented delight in you, but even in this case SparkPeople has the necessary function - right on the site you can start a blog and cheerfully report on your progress. Think carefully: perhaps this is your chance to lead a healthy lifestyle, not looking up from the monitor.