Apps to Help You Stick to Your New Year's Resolutions

We’ve all got great intentions at the start of each year – but sometimes we need a little help to stick to them. There’s an app for that.

1. Monitor your nutrition

I’m not above trying out a cleansing diet or an Atkins diet or the 5:2 diet or any other novel way to keep in a healthy weight range, especially if there’s a special event coming up or if we happen to be in January and I’ve just put on a bit of Christmas pudding (ahem). But there’s one tried and true method of shedding kilos, and that’s to count calories. My favourite app for this is by SparkPeople. It is pretty easy to use – you just enter the food you eat and it calculates the calories for you, letting you know where you need to improve and helping you stay motivated along the way.

Almost all of us are tracking our activity in one way or another these days. At the moment my favourite step counting app is called StepsApp. There is a simple free version which exports your steps to your home screen and also tells you how many calories you’ve burned.

3. Quit smoking

What? You’re still smoking?! If you are, the single biggest thing you can do to improve your health is to quit. There’s a great free app created by the Australian Government called My QuitBuddy which provides lots of ongoing motivation, like telling you how much money you’re saving by not buying cigarettes and all the health benefits you’re getting each day you stay a non-smoker.

4. Read More Books

A worthy resolution and an easy and enjoyable one too. My best tip is to just read anything. Once you get started, even with potboilers or romances (which I happen to love!) you’ll find yourself pacing the house looking for more books to read. Use the Kindle or iBooks app on your smartphone, that way you’ll have a book with you wherever you are.

5. Learn a New Language

Still the best app for language learning is Duolingo, and it’s still free, although there are more ads than when I first started using this app a few years ago. There are now dozens of languages available and the content is fun and game-ified. You won’t even know you’re working.