Mood trackers

A mood tracker can give you a lot of insight on any patterns your mood has, which can be key to getting the right help. I personally struggle with a few mood disorders and ADHD. With winter coming seasonal affective disorder is on its way for many of us. I have recently been having more issues with my moods, so I decided to start tracking them again.

In the past I've used an app called Daylio. It is a wonderful simple tracker that gives a lot of insight. My only stumbling block with it was the journal tags. Journal tags can be used to find correlations between your mood and whatever tags you use. They say to use them as ways to find what makes you happiest. The problem for me is I know what makes me happy and I know often when I'm depressed those things don't make me happy. What I found I need to ask myself is what makes me sad and what effects my mood? I just started this up again, so my tags are just their suggested plus pain levels and weather conditions. I know weather has at least some effect on my mood, but it will be interesting to see how much.

My favorite aspect of Daylio though, is the mood chart. A simple line graph that shows you how your average mood is going. The more often you log, the more accurate it is. You can see various timelines to compare as you go along. 

When I opened up my app store to download Daylio again, I found a new app to try. I love seeing new apps to see if they work even better for me. I found Tochi, available on google play or the apple store. It is an absolutely adorable tracker with some lovely journaling prompts. Tochi is your pet hedgehog, or other animals if you buy the premium package. Tochi sits on a big orb, where your mood orbs collect. You can have mood orbs in various colors with various meanings. You rate each mood orb on a 1-5 heart scale, so there is a way for them to make a mood tracker. Said mood tracker is currently waiting to be deployed however. Another lovely feature is Tochi's diet tracker. It asks how full you were, if the meal was healthy, normal, or junk food, and gives you a place to journal about your meal. There is a similar exercise tracker and emotional trigger tracker. This is a very new app having been released July 28, 2021, but its already a wonderful one, with almost everything I could want.

 

So which one is my favorite? I think only time will tell. For the mean time I'm going to continue to use both. If My Fitness Pal had the journaling prompts like Tochi did I would simply use Daylio because I love the simplicity of that idea. However, MFP doesn't have that feature, so Tochi might win out. One big factor for other people might be that Tochi does require you to purchase it once, while Daylio is completely free. Daylio does have a premium option, but it is by no means necessary for use.