Monday, December 26, 2011

mobile apps to help with New Year resolutions

I, by no means, am an expert on what mobile apps are available but here are a few that are helpful in supporting our resolutions.

First looking at weight loss and healthy eating:
The Daily Burn has several apps that provide a daily fitness plan, a tracker that keeps a day to day health profile, and two iOS apps that make use of the iPhone camera; Meal Snap (.99) (you take a picture of your plate and it tells you what food is on your plate and a rough estimate of calories, and a Food Scanner app.

A very highly rated calorie counter made by MyFitness Pal (free) has superlative reviews

Other strong apps in the health & wellness category are the Nike+ GPS and Fooducate (free calorie and nutritional value program).
There are so many excellent exercise apps - pedometers, Couch to 5k (a program to help you run your first 5k),the popular P90x exercise program, yoga, and personalized training programs that a short search on iTunes or the Android Market will get you what you need for your specific goals.

Want to quit smoking? Quitter or Quit Smoking Pro (.99) may help.

Another popular area for resolutions is around finance. Once again there are apps that can help you save money, such as Gas Buddy which locates the cheapest gas in a designated area, and barcode scanners that identify the best price for an item (online and locally) One of my favorites of the latter is an Amazon.com app, I can scan the barcode and it tells me the cost and options at Amazon as well as product reviews.

There is BillMinder BillMinder simplifies your life by bringing all your bills into one manageable place. You will know at a glance which bills need your attention. You can also track your expenses with comprehensive charts and graphs.
BillMinder works in collaboration with DebtMinder. Simply link your accounts and any payment you add in either app will be mirrored in the other.

I could go on and on about individual apps but the real point is that if you are trying to lose weight, quit smoking, reduce debt, learn a language, run a marathon, get organized, etc., there is a multitude of apps that can support you in what you choose to do.
The best part of any of these apps is that they work as a personal reminder to stick with it. They help you to improve your performance by keeping track of your best times or distances in running, they offer information on what foods are healthy and which are not, help you count calories, they send alerts when to pay your bills so you eliminate late fees, and much more.

So choose your goals, write them down, plan for achieving them, get an app to support you in your journey to success.

If you know of others that you highly recommend I would appreciate it if you let me know about them!

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