Having a bariatric surgery is a lifechanging experience. It accomplishes significant weight loss in a very short period of time and, at the same time, it improves your health and wellbeing. But having bariatric surgery is just the start of the journey. To get the best possible outcomes out of your surgery, you need to maintain certain habits such as:
- Following a healthy and balanced diet
- Doing regular exercise and keeping physically active
- Taking prescribed medications for postsurgical recovery
- Taking prescribed vitamins and dietary supplements
- Keeping yourself properly hydrated
- Tracking your weight loss and milestones
- Monitoring your different health levels
- Keeping yourself focused and relaxed
- Committing and attending your follow-up consultations
Maintaining these habits will set your journey to success for a better health and will keep you from regaining weight.
It sounds like a lot to handle and a lot to have in one’s mind, but nowadays, there are many practical and convenient ways to stay on track of all these different resolutions. One of them is using mobile apps on your phone.
There are many eHealth apps out there, designed by many different developers and done with many different purposes. For instance, more than 90,000 new health apps were released during the year 2020. Considering this, it is estimated that more than 350,000 health apps are currently available for consumers worldwide[1].
With so many different health apps available, how do we know which ones are more appropriate and efficient to use during an obesity treatment and after a bariatric surgery? In what follows, we will show you a list of apps that can make your life easier during your bariatric treatment.
At LIMARP International Center of Excellence for obesity, located in Tijuana, Mexico, we offer an integrative bariatric plan that treat obesity from a multidisciplinary approach. We provide surgical and non-surgical treatments for obesity, along with psychological counselling, nutritional guidance, a personalized fitness plan and long-term follow-up. If you are interested in knowing ore about out obesity treatments, please call our clinic today.
LIMARP – FollowUp
At LIMARP, an important part of our commitment to your health is making sure you have the best conditions and resources available so you can stick to your follow-up treatment and maintain on a course for a healthier life. This is one of the reasons why our team of experts at LIMARP have developed a bariatric surgery follow-up app, designed especially for our patients.
The LIMARP – FollowUp app is a tool meant to guide you through every phase of your treatment, both before and after your bariatric surgery. The app will remind you what to expect during your process, it will help you track if you are reaching every milestone, it will notify your surgeon and our team if you are showing any adverse symptom and it will assist you on scheduling and remembering your follow-up appointments.
This app is available both at Google Play and the Apple’s App Store, in English and in Spanish.
Baritastic
If you’re looking for an all-in-one app that encompasses weight tracking but also the monitoring of biometric levels, the registering of different type of journals, reminders and checklists regarding medication, vitamins, water intake, and exercise, this is the app for you. This app also features checklists meant to prepare you for the different stages of your surgery. As such, it is a very robust and complete app that tries to cover all possible aspects of an obesity treatment.
The Baritastic app is available both for iPhone and Android phones.
MyFitnessPal
My FitnessPal is an app that might be useful for patients who underwent bariatric surgery or for anyone who wants to lose weight and carry a healthier lifestyle. My FitnesPal makes it easy for you to monitor your calorie intake and to reach your nutrition goals.
With this app, you’ll get access to different recipes, and will be able to register everything you eat in the most convenient ways, either manually or scanning barcodes of your food.
The MyFitnessPal app is available both in Apple devices and in Google Play.
Plant Nanny
An important part of staying healthy, specially after the first weeks and months of your bariatric surgery, is to keep properly hydrated. And sometimes drinking water is hard to remember when you are busy or focusing in many other different goals. This is why there are many, many different apps out there meant for reminding us to drink water.
However, most of them are just… boring. They do keep register of your water intake and they present your progress in flashy graphs and diagrams, in a very business-like fashion. But what if we just gamify the notion of drinking water? Plant Nanny does just that.
Plant Nanny is a cute app that makes drinking water fun and inspiring. With every glass of water you drink and register, you can adopt and water a cute plant from the app. Your plant will grow and flourish according to your progress. You can collect many different mature plants and grow entire gardens, forests and more. The app’s design is so beautiful and creative that it will keep you motivated to come back and drink more water to keep your plants blooming and happy.
The Plant Nanny app is available in the Apple App Store and in Google Play.
HappyScale
HappyScale is an app that helps you monitor your weight loss in a smarter and friendlier way. This app helps you stay motivated with your diets and exercise by making predictions about when or how fast you’ll be able to reach your weight loss goals. Instead of pointing out to you only your current and past weight, with its constant ups and downs, as most scales apps do, HappyScale helps you see the bigger picture and a more accurate scenario. Of course your weight goes up and down, everybody’s’ does, but that doesn’t mean you’re not making progress! That’s exactly the message that HappyScale brings to its users. A more positive brings and maintains motivation to any bariatric patient or person that wants to lose weight.
The HappyScale app is available only in iPhones.
Headspace
Mental health is as important as physical health, nutrition and fitness. Avoiding stress and anxiety is key to maintain good eating habits. So is having enough sleep. Headspace is one of the leading mindfulness apps available. It offers audio and video guidance for many different activities, such as meditating, sleeping, exercising, staying focused and waking up. The app’s graphic design is very beautiful and engaging, and its content is just extraordinary.
The Headspace app is available both in Apple’s App Store and in Google Play.
Apple Fitness+
If you have an iPhone and an iWatch, you should definitely consider using the Apple Fitness+ app. This app, usually included in the iWatch, helps you track your exercise routines and to estimate the number of calories you burn during each training. The best part of this app is that it sets daily movement, standing and exercise goals to keep yourself active and healthy, depending on your size, weight and personal weight loss goals. If you are in a journey to lose weight and improve your health, tracking your daily activities with a smart watch is definitely a practical and effective strategy. Some smart watches can measure your heart rate, your breathing rhythm, and the number of steps you take each day.
The Apple Fitness app is only available in Apple products.
Contact us
At LIMARP, we are as committed with your weight loss goals as you are. Our integrative bariatric program adapts to your needs in every step of the way. If you are interested in knowing more about bariatric surgery or our obesity treatment, call our clinic today or send us a message through his website our any of our social media pages. Our team of experts will be glad to help.
References
[1] “Consumer Health Apps and Digital Health Tools Proliferate, Improving Quality and Health Outcomes for Patients, Says New Report from IQVIA Institute.” https://www.iqvia.com/newsroom/2021/07/consumer-health-apps-and-digital-health-tools-proliferate-improving-quality-and-health-outcomes-for (accessed Nov. 30, 2021).
