Wakeout! Break the Sit Habit

I wish I found this sooner. Didn’t realize it’s been in existence since early COVID days. As someone with a history of all-or-nothing thinking problems, I’d exercise a bunch and then not at all. As part of my intuitive eating journey and healing my relationship with food, I’ve also had to heal my relationship with movement. I’d be so extreme about it but now I am more nuanced about it and this app is so perfectly aligned with where I want to be with daily movement. I’d say this app is also very ADHD friendly! I was diagnosed this year and now understand where my novelty seeking, easily bored, and overstimulated brain comes from. This app lowers the barrier of entry to move more often. As someone who works remotely and sits much of the day, this app is truly a life saver. And it’s fun too! Earning Wakeout watts which feels like imaginary points in a game is oddly so rewarding. I love the variety of workouts and that you can even do as short as 30 seconds if you’re really struggling. I have a lot of fun with it and just went for the annual subscription after 2 months of consistent and daily use. I pause on the weekends so I don’t stress about it but love it during the week to get me going. I also love that perfection isn’t the goal - you may have long meetings that go past an hour and you can’t get away from but you can still meet your movement goals later. There’s not prize for moving every hour since you just need to move enough (both in volume and frequency) to hit your goal each day. I love the stretch goal too for added motivation. I feel like I’m always winning with this app and appreciate the developers so much!! Thank you for making this app and continuing to update it so thoughtfully with new moves.

When I got this app, I was doing the little free trial. I was enjoying the app and was into it. I wasn’t going to extend my subscription, because of my lack of motivation to actually get up, and do a quick little energizing movement when the app would periodically tell me to throughout the day. BUT when they updated the app, and introduced the ‘Active Pass App Rewards’ as a new feature, I decided to keep the app, and pay the subscription. Since I already enjoyed the app… and let me say that Wakeout, for real, has TONS of different types of exercises, stretches, cardio, yoga, etc. It also doesn’t matter if you’re only able to do these ‘energy boost’ movements/exercises/stretches while you’re in your car, sitting at your desk, have very little space, whatever… Wakeout has got you covered! And for however much time you want to commit to, whether it be 30 seconds or 30 minutes….. when I read about the new ‘Active Pass’ feature being added, I figured I’d give Wakeout a shot. I wasn’t previously using the app as it was intended, not because I didn’t enjoy the the app… I’d just end up sticking to whatever else I ‘had to get done,’ or ‘needed to do right now,’ during my busy day. I hope I’ve made sense throughout my review (lol), because Wakeout really is a great app! Especially for those of us that need that little extra ‘message’ to get our attention. Thank you so much to all who have put their time and effort into creating such a neat, and effective, app! I appreciate each of you.😊

Very excited to try this app, but so annoying trying to set it up. Tried to schedule my Weekdays and Weekends with Activity Reminders and Activity Timers. Each time I navigated away from the Weekdays/Weekends Scheduling screen, I’d lose what I had input and have to start again — no Save button and obviously no automatic capture, either. Nowhere does it explain the difference between Activity Reminders and Activity Timers either, or show you what’s included in various exercise packs so you can determine which ones are appropriate to schedule at what times. A lot of this app is “figure it out for yourself” — even the FAQ has more about payments and subscriptions than instructions on settings, and there’s no Help. If I’m busy enough to need an app to tell me to get up and move, I’m busy enough that a few solid instructions on settings would be better than wasting time in trial and error. The only thing that keeps me from canceling subscription and demanding my money back is that I know I *have* to make this effort to be more healthy. But if the app continues to frustrate instead of help, I will cancel — stress is just as lack of movement. P.S. A word to this and other developers: not all users are under 40 or whatever your target demographic is. If you’re going to have an “intuitive” app rather than provide instructions, then make your UI/UX crystal clear with icons understandable across age groups. At my age, a heart with a lightning bolt makes me think of a heart attack or updating my DNR order, not my personal settings for exercise.