Smarter Living: 5 cheap(ish) wellness items you didn't know you needed

Tim Herrera

Smarter Living Editor

Thursday, August 31, 2017


I belong to a certain cult fitness class called SoulCycle. It’s often the most fun part of my day, but it sometimes leaves my quads and hamstrings a little sore. Stretching tends to help (especially yoga), but it took me a while to learn a secret that trainers and professional athletes have known forever: foam rolling.
Click here for a little background on it, but it pretty much is what it sounds like: rolling parts of your body over a foam cylinder to relieve post-workout soreness and tightness. Your mileage may vary, but it’s been a godsend for my recovery routine. (Here’s a little more on the science behind foam rolling, if you’re interested.)
My foam roller of choice is this one from AmazonBasics, which our friends at The Wirecutter — a New York Times company — also recommend. It’s just the right density, and you can pick up one for under $20 (or much less, depending on the size you want).
In collaboration with The Wirecutter, here are four other items that can help you live a healthier, more balanced life.
A Good Food-Tracking App
On my fitness journey this year (a New Year’s resolution of sorts), I realized that I could work out plenty but that more measurable changes came when I started tracking my food intake.
For me that meant using an app called Lose It!, my favorite of the many, many food-trackers out there. Other great apps I’ve been recommended include MyFitnessPal and MyPlate. Most of these work on a freemium model: Some features are free, but you can upgrade to a paid version with more features.
These aren’t just for weight loss; simply tracking what goes into your body can show you ways to cut out or add foods to your overall diet. (There can be other benefits to food tracking, too.) For me this was revelatory. For instance, I never really realized how much pizza I ate until I wrote it down every single time. (It was ... a lot.) Now five months into using a tracker, my overall diet is better than it has ever been.
Light Therapy Lamp
Winter is coming! (Groan, sorry, I’m having “Game of Thrones” withdrawals already.) With it comes seasonal affective disorder, or SAD. It’s a real thing!
For some people, light therapy lamps can help stave off some of the symptoms. How? Quoth The Wirecutter, “Far from being a fringe or ‘alternative’ purported remedy for SAD, light therapy has been clinically shown to work to alleviate symptoms in over 60 studies in serious scientific publications” by helping our bodies stay on a more natural sleep-wake cycle.
The Wirecutter’s pick is the Carex Day-Light Classic Plus.
White Noise Machine
Eagle-eyed readers will recognize this from a previous list, and I’m including it again for good measure. The thing just works, and it can help you get the most restful sleep possible. As I wrote last time, these little devices can make it easier to fall asleep and stay asleep by fighting noise with noise: “The white noise basically creates a wall of sound defense, protecting you from intruding noises that could engage your brain during sleep.”
Wirecutter’s pick is the LectroFan by ASTI.
Spiralizer
Making your own meals is the surest path to better eating, and one of my favorite ways to do that is to make veggies more interesting. There’s no better way to do that than spiralizing them.
Zoodles — a longtime favorite meal of mine — will change how you think about veggies. They’re noodle substitutes that generally take on the flavor of whatever meal you throw them in (how about some of these?), and they’re an easy way to get more greens in your diet.
The OXO Good Grips Spiralizer is The Wirecutter’s favorite.
What’s a cheap-ish item that has helped you live a little healthier? Let me know! Write me at tim@nytimes.com and put “My item” in the subject line, or tweet me @timherrera.
Have a great week!
— Tim