Five Cool Health + Fitness Start-Ups

Greatist released its round-up of The Top 50 Most Innovative Health & Fitness Start-Ups last week, and lots of the usual suspects made the list (including Runkeeper, Strava (the fitness tracker I use), LoseIt!, Gympact, and Basis (waiting for this watch to get back in stock to snap one up).  It’s worth looking at the whole list, but if you’re short on time (or long on my opinion), here are five cool ones to keep an eye on!

EXERCISE:

Charity Miles: Charity Miles makes everyone a sponsored athlete!  Through the app you can automatically donate every run, walk or bike ride to charity (you can choose one of their partner charities).  Charity miles donates $0.25 for every mile walked/run and $0.10 for every mile biked.  (Thanks also to Jeff Miller for letting me know about this app!)

EAT:

Nature Box: Founded to “help people eat healthier and live better” Nature Box delivers a box full of healthy snacks to your doorstop once a month for $19.95.  The items in every box are carefully selected by their team and approved by a nutritionist.  And, for every box sold, Nature Box donates one meal to help hungry children.  The February box included blueberry baked goods, dark cocoa almonds, vanilla macaroon granola, honeycomb sunflower kernels, and trail mix.  If you’re a snacker, this might be a good way to mix up your diet while keeping it whole and healthy!

READ:

Well + Good: I was happy to see this blog on the list, and it’s one of my daily reads and a great inspiration to me.  The content is NYC centric (and geared to women), but fresh and snappy and cutting-edge.  They have a feature I love where they survey an exercise/diet/health guru’s fridge, including photos.  Worth checking out (in addition to Wellfesto, of course)!

BOOK CLASSES:

FitIST: Piggybacking on the boutique fitness trend, FITist allows users to book an take classes from a wide range of studios and gyms, simplifying sign-ups and saving cash.  It looks like it’s only in LA and NYC right now, but I’m sure it will expand (assuming they have relationships with enough boutique gyms).  I’ve been wondering when someone would build this!

SPREAD LOVE:

More Love Letters: If you read this blog even semi-regularly, you know I love letters…and particularly love letters.  So it’ll come as no surprise that I LOVE LOVE LOVE the spirit of this site.  They write and mail handwritten love letters to strangers in need all over the world.  You can write love letters to add to the mix and request one for someone who needs one.  According to their site, at the core…”It’s not about stamps.  Not about stationary.  It’s. About.  Your.  Neighbor.”  Total awesomeness.  I just signed up to write a few love letters.

Have you discovered any new sites, apps, or products recently that you think are amazing?  Please share!