Do you (a) wish you had more energy and (b) subscribe to the theory that the quantified self is the best way to discover paths to self-improvement? Or do you simply enjoy using health and fitness apps to discover new ways to improve upon your life? In either case, Juice may be the app you didn’t know you needed.
Juice is brought to you by Mindbloom and uses a cartoony design to make tracking your energy level fun. Literally and figuratively playing on the “juice” moniker, Juice features an easy-to-use primary interface that looks like a juice bottle. Users simply add life’s “ingredients” – sleep, exercise, nutrition, etc. – in the amounts appropriate for them. Then each week, users get a report that tracks overall energy levels and also offers ways to dig deeper and pinpoint what might be causing problems.
If your daily recipe is filled with “awful” ingredients, it’s easy to assume your overall Juice will be pretty bad. What if only your sleep is bad? Or, your sleep is OK, but your nutrition on Tuesday was awful? The weekly report reflects these day-to-day changes with a series of charts that shows recorded energy levels in relationship to individual ingredients.
With a self-imposed mantra of being “the world’s funnest energy tracker,” Juice offers a super-easy and quick means of entering data for tracking. Users simply enter applicable ratings from awful to great as they pertain to each category. The three default categories – sleep, nutrition and exercise – seem the most relevant to energy levels, but you can also “unlock” additional ones – balance, mood and stress – with the use of “credits.” Credits are earned by using the app and build up over time.
Juice uses somewhat kitschy art work to depict sleep, nutrition and exercise. There’s a sheep in various stages of jumping over a fence to represent sleep, while exercise is depicted in stages ranging from a man armchair surfing to marathon running. In addition to the whimsically pictorial rating system for categories, users can also make their own notes within each category for viewing later. Juice also provides loads of tips, relevant to each category that can be saved and viewed when you need a bit of inspiration. Even if you don’t save any favorites, there’s an option to browse the tips as well.
The report that is compiled at the end of each 7-day period is designed to help users identify what may be sapping their energy. Perhaps it’s a lack of sleep, or maybe it can be attributed to poor diet choices or high levels of stress. In a nutshell, this is the purpose of Juice – to track and analyze the effects of the big picture on the user’s over-all energy level. Whether or not the quantified self-style app works for you probably depends on the kind of person you are, but the tips are useful and the correlation between exercise, nutrition, sleep and energy levels certainly exists – just ask your doctor.
As a free app, compatible with iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, Juice is a pretty nifty alternative to a health journal and might be able to provide users with a bit of bodily insight. The biggest issue with these types of apps is to remember to input the info each day. To help with that, Juice has the option to set a reminder and you can always go back and add a day if you forget. Plus, it’s a pretty quick and painless entry process that takes less than a minute. If you find yourself wondering why you never feel fully juiced, then Mindbloom’s Juice might be just the app to help you find out.
