Happy Monday! I’m back from partying it up at my best friend’s wedding, and took today off from work. This is the only day for the entire summer that I’ve taken off with a “vacation” mindset … so I won’t be doing a thing today. I’ll be back on the blog tomorrow, but until then, here’s a GREAT post from one of my fave bloggers!

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Hello Yellow Haired Girl readers! My name is Kammie and I am a healthy living blogger over at Sensual Appeal where I blog about food, health, and fitness. Today I wanted to take a break from the regular healthy recipe or health tip posting and take a different look at wellness… in terms of technology. Namely, the iPhone!

There’s no hiding the fact that this Apple product is hugely popular. I’ve had mine for some 2 and half years and still love it. I have fallen in love with the ease of use and the big variety of applications that are available. And that is exactly what I wanted to talk about today. Apps for iPhone! I know I’m always on the look out for some cool apps to add to my collection, and I know many others think the same so I’m sure a lot of you will benefit from this little list I have compiled.

 Health/Fitness Apps:

• MyFitnessPal is a free app (and a website) that I use daily to record what and how much I eat to make sure I stay within the calorie range as well as keeping track of all of the macros. It also allows you to record the physical activity you do, while calculating approximate calories burned, although I don’t use the activity option since it messes with the calorie allowance a bit. Anyway, I find this app the best of all food trackers because it seems to contain a lot more products than other apps (like Lose it!) does.
• Gym Pact is another free app which I use regularly. It’s awesome because it gives you monetary incentives to work out! If that doesn’t do it, I don’t know what will. You get money for reaching a pact you set for yourself (mine is to go to a gym 4 times a week even though I      go 5-6 times but I want to make sure I have wiggle room in case I forget to check in once). If you don’t meet the pact, you get charged a certain amount of money as well. So it’s hugely motivating. Get your ass into the gym and get paid, or pay to lazy it out.
• Nike Training is a cool free app which has a whole lot of different workouts ready for you to do; you can choose the intensity, length, and goal of the workout and you will be given a prepared workout.
• Tabata Timer is a simple free app that acts as a tabata timer. I haven’t had any problems with it so far so I think it’s a good one.
• GAIN Fitness is another free workout app with various pre-programmed workouts for you to do based on the factors you set out you want to work on.
• Daily Ab workout (free) is a free version of an app which gives you an ab workout of different length of choosing. The workouts come with videos in the beginning to make sure you do them right. The only down side is that it’s all crunch-based.
• Seconds is an app I use for interval training. I haven’t had much luck finding good interval training apps but I haven’t had any problems with this one yet. I use the free version with the only downside being unable to save your interval timers.
• RunKeeper is a free GPS running app. I started using this app very recently because it joined forces with Gym Pact and it’s awesome. It tells you how far you’ve ran and your pace every 5 minutes while it quiets the music down a bit to say it. It’s a nice way to stay on track without constantly checking your phone (which is what I was doing before) while running outside.

Other apps:

• ShopKick -  it’s a rewards app in which you get points for visiting various stores and scanning products while you’re there. The points go toward cool rewards such as gift cards to Target, Starbucks,Coach, and many many others.
• Pandora -  I think that’s self explanatory; it’s an awesome music radio app. I love their pre-programmed workout stations. Rap Strength training FTW
• Dropbox - It’s cool to use if you use Dropbox to store files online; I often put pdf files of e-books to read on my dropbox so that I can easily access them through my phone or iPad later.
• Pinterest -  It’s a mobile version of Pinterest that we love. I check it sometimes before bed when I don’t feel like reading or doing anything too mentally exhausting. Looking at pictures is pretty easy going for the sleepy brain haha.
• MyRadar - it shows you the current weather situation at your location (and others) with a live doppler so it’s pretty cool. I like seeing if there’s any storms coming my way without an objective opinion of a weatherman.

Games:

• Fruit Ninja - you slice fruit like a ninja to get points while making sure to avoid bombs. It is ridiculously addicting. So addicting that I had to buy the full version.
• Pogo Games - has a fun little compilation of their most popular games that they have on the Pogo website. Yes, I am a nerd and I sometimes go on game websites… haha.
• Words with Friends - it’s like scrabble and you get to play with your social media friends or randoms.
• Matching with Friends - it’s a new game by Zynga in which you play with your social media friends or randoms to get color blocks of three to get points. It’s fun but sometimes not engaging enough.
• Shape Shift - I was obsessed with this one for a while, you shift blocks around to form 4 of the same color. It’s easy to get but harder to perfect. Very addicting.
• Yeti Town - it’s a cute game where you build a yeti town by placing matching scenery, three or more together. It’s pretty addicting.
  Thanks again for having me do the guest post, YHG! You rock!

- Kammie @ Sensual Appeal