Travel can be a complicated thing. From flights to hotel accommodations to activity scheduling, planning the essentials can easily drain a person’s mental capacity. That leaves considerations of health and productivity as afterthoughts.
But what if there were resources to easily find diet-friendly restaurants, optimize your plans for productivity, and schedule exercise breaks? With the recent explosion of AI technology, there is no shortage of apps that claim to make travel a breeze. However, some apps are definitely miles ahead in terms of customization, accuracy, and ease of use. Here are the 7 best apps to use if you want to maximize productivity and hit your health goals while traveling.
1. Foodie
Few companies understand how to stay healthy and productive during travel like Flykitt, the creators of a scientifically backed jet lag solution developed in collaboration with Navy SEALs and used by top business executives and dozens of professional sports teams to sleep well and feel great on every trip. The company’s new AI-powered nutrition app, Foodie, was designed on the idea that travel shouldn’t ruin your diet either. By expertly analyzing the menus of all the restaurants in the area you select, accounting for ingredients and food preparation methods, and considering dietary preferences and restrictions, the app recommends the best restaurants and menu items tailored to your personal dietary needs, wherever you go.
A Foodie search for high-protein meals finds you not only meals packed with protein, but also the highest quality proteins like grass-fed meat and wild-caught fish. Searching for dairy-free restaurants can help you find all the available meals near you that are free of milk products. And if you’re a vegan or vegetarian, Foodie can help you find plant-forward meals that are actually free of animal products. Its database knows which foods are truly plant-based and which restaurants are quietly using hidden animal products, such as broths or cooking fats. Flykitt also alerts you to any inflammatory ingredients and triggers, such as seed oils, hidden sugars, or gluten.
With Foodie, you can quickly find restaurants that align with your wellness priorities, keeping your body feeling great and allowing you to enjoy your travel activities.
2. MacroFactor
Trying to lose weight while traveling can still be a headache, even if you’re eating all the right things at all the right places. Shedding pounds often requires detailed calorie tracking, which can be especially challenging when you’re on the road. Many people choose to use free versions of popular food tracking apps, but these can be frustrating when you’re short on time. What sets MacroFactor apart is its ultra-fast interface, which minimizes the number of taps required to track food.
The MacroFactor app is designed to be the most efficient food logger, letting you input a meal in significantly less time than other apps. That means you can quickly and discreetly log calories at the conference buffet, the team lunch, or even in the airport taxi. The app’s algorithm also makes adjustments and estimates in case you forget, don’t have time, or don’t know how to log a given meal. Its label scanner, AI tools, and huge food database make tracking on the go even easier.
3. TrainAway
You already know that a break in your fitness routine can sap your energy and hinder your progress when you’re traveling. Unfortunately, not every hotel or Airbnb has a decent gym, and bodyweight workouts at home can get boring quickly. For longer stays, it may be worthwhile to explore local gyms on Google Maps and reach out to see if they offer day passes. However, sometimes you just don’t have the time or energy to do all that research.
Enter TrainAway, an app that helps you find nearby gyms all over the world and book a day pass right on your phone. Then, you just head to the gym, show your pass to the staff, and start working out, with no sign-ups or sales appointments required. With locations from Budapest to Johannesburg to Mumbai, you’ll always find a place to keep pumping iron. The app also lists services and amenities at each location, including classes, personal trainers, showers, and air conditioning.
4. Headspace
Travel is stressful and comes with a million and one distractions that can make it especially hard to get centered and stay focused. That’s why the Headspace app offers a suite of different solutions to help you beat stress, sleep better, and stay mindful. Known best for its progressive guided meditations, Headspace helps beginners (and refreshers) ease into a meditation routine. The app also offers interactive mindfulness resources and connections to online therapists.
A new program rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy helps users fight anxiety and depression via the app. Meanwhile, a new AI companion — Ebb — helps users find gratitude or process thoughts and emotions on the road. A host of sleep resources, like specialized meditations, exercises, and relaxing sounds, can help with plane sleep, jet lag, and hotel nights. There are also specialized resources available for organizations, in case your employer wants to cover the costs.
5. Wanderlog
Wanderlog helps take the headache out of travel by consolidating all your travel planning details in a single app. It’s a place to stash all your itineraries, check out travel guides, and manage flight and hotel bookings all in one central location. It also features detailed, pre-existing guides to many cities, allowing you to skip some of the research. Much of the app’s functionality works both online and offline. So, you can still use it even when you’re not connected to WiFi.
With Wanderlog, you can view your plans for the day, including maps and reservations, without needing to close the app. For example, you don’t have to toggle back and forth from hotel confirmation to your Google Maps while you’re trying to order that Uber from the airport. The app is also great for road trips, since it optimizes routes to save time and money on gas. It even gives you live flight updates, tracks expenses, and helps you split costs with travel companions.
6. WeCroak
Admittedly, WeCroak is an unconventional choice, but it’s an important one when it comes to genuine wellbeing. Inspired by a Bhutanese folk saying, the app’s philosophy is that contemplating death five times a day is the key to happiness. Each day, WeCroak sends you five randomly timed reminders to stop and think for a moment about your own inevitable death. Each reminder also includes the option to view a quote about death from a poet or philosopher.
The idea behind the app is that contemplating your own mortality reminds you what’s important in life. Therefore, it serves as a reminder on how to truly prioritize your time. It’s an invitation to pause for a moment, breathe deeply, meditate, and reflect on what truly matters most to you. The simple app has been around since 2018, when Wired, the New York Times, and The Atlantic reviewed it. It might just help you stay more present on the road and actually enjoy the travel experience.
7. Waterllama
If being reminded of your own death isn’t your thing, what about just being reminded to drink water? Waterllama is a fun little Apple Design Award finalist that helps you stay hydrated at home or on the go. This is important, since travel — especially air travel — can cause serious dehydration. Low humidity in the flight cabin causes your body to lose moisture. This is why forgetting to drink water (or drinking alcohol) can make it even worse.
It’s not just on the plane, though: for long road, bus, and train trips, you might be tempted to skip the sips. It’s certainly easier to keep your bladder empty than look for a bathroom on the go (though there are apps for that, too). Fortunately, Waterllama’s gorgeous, colorful animations and soothing haptics encourage you to make the healthier choice. The app also includes challenges to get or stay sober, reduce caffeine intake, and even self-diagnose lactose intolerance.
Conclusion
Staying healthy and productive on the go requires striking a balance between fitness, nutrition, and mental clarity. These apps can help you reduce stress and improve your sleep. Essentially, they can help you stay on track no matter where in the world you go. They aren’t enough on their own, though; the most important piece of the wellness puzzle is your own mindset. To stay healthy anywhere, know your worth enough, and prioritize your own self-care regardless of your latitude or longitude.
Featured Image Credit: Cottonbro Studio; Pexels; Thanks!
Deanna Ritchie
Editor-in-Chief at Calendar. Former Editor-in-Chief and writer at Startup Grind. Freelance editor at Entrepreneur.com. Deanna loves to help build startups, and guide them to discover the business value of their online content and social media marketing.