These Apps Make It Easy To Actually Stick To Your New Year Resolutions

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Don't just use technology for social media -- it's a great way to record and track your goals.

Whether you're a conscious goal setter or not, most people have one or two things in mind they'd like to improve on in the new year. Maybe you want to learn to save a bit better, or vow to get out and travel more.

Whatever it is, it's much easier to keep track of those goals when you record them. Instead of using the old pen ad paper, download an app and keep your goals right there with you in your pocket.

If you want to be mindful

Insight Timer

With a dynamic worldwide community, Insight Timer is a fun and connected way to support your meditation practice. If you're new to meditation you'll find more than 2,000 free guided meditations and a community you can chat to to get started. If you're an experienced meditator you'll enjoy the sound of the beautiful Tibetan singing bowls and guided meditations by experienced teachers that you know and respect.

Smiling Mind

Smiling Mind is a meditation app program developed by psychologists and educators. Just as we eat well and stay fit to keep our body healthy, Smiling Mind believes that meditation is about mental health and looking after the mind.

If you want to save money

Budget Wiz

Ever wonder where the hell all your money goes each month? Budget Wiz keeps your money well managed, and well spent. Use it to monitor your habits so you can learn where savings can be made.

Pocketbook

This app is one of Kochie's favourites, so it must be good. It is the only popular personal finance app that gives you the option to synchronise with Australian Banks -- so no more manual entry.

If you want to break bad habits

Streaks

A to-do list app that helps you form good habits, Streaks let you rack up to six tasks you want to complete every day. Kinda like a game, your goal is to build a streak of consecutive days. Streaks also works with the Apple Health app to help you achieve your fitness goals.

Lifesum

Who doesn't want their own personalised health and lifestyle guide? Lifesum takes your lifestyle goals and health data and creates a plan to help you realistically reach those goals.

If you want to take up running

Nike+ Run Club

This app gives you everything you need to learn to be a better runner, even if you're a beginner -- including GPS tracking details of your run, customised coaching plans which fit your goals and adapt to your progress, and motivation from your friends who also use the app.

If you want to learn a language

Duolingo

This app is completely free and totally makes learning a language fun. There's a cute little owl called Duo who keeps you on track and an option to compete with your friends.

If you want to curb your sweet tooth

Hippie Lane

This recipe app is designed to empower health-conscious people to make thoughtful recipe choices. Featuring recipes that are 100 percent vegan and free of gluten, refined sugar, dairy and genetically modified ingredients.

Recipes by The Healthy Chef

The Healthy Chef app is full of nourishing juices, beautiful breakfasts, whole food mains, fermented foods, purely delicious desserts and lots more yummy extras. The recipes taste delicious and are simple to make.

If you want to be more creative

Paper by Fifty Three

When inspiration happens, put it on Paper. Paper is the best way to capture and connect your notes, photos, and sketches. Create checklists, spotlight details in photos, and sketch diagrams -- Paper is like a wall of sticky notes for everything that inspires you.

Procreate

This app boasts a complete artist's toolbox to help you create beautiful sketches, inspiring paintings, and stunning illustrations anywhere you are. Create a canvas and start painting with any of Procreate's brushes. With Procreate's incredibly high-resolution canvases you can print your artwork at massive sizes.

If you want to travel more

Guides by Lonely Planet

Get to the heart of the destination you're traveling to with Guides by Lonely Planet. Packed with Offline Maps (genius when you dont have acess to Wi-Fi), Phrasebooks, Currency Converters and advice from on-the-ground experts, the city guides are the ultimate resource before and during your trip.

Airbnb

Find adventures in faraway places or your own hometown. Access unique homes, experiences, and places anywhere around the choose from over 2.5 million homes in over 191 countries. They make it easy, so you can search by price, neighbourhood or amenities.

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This Was The Most Googled Diet Of 2016

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New year, new diet?

When we look back on a year of diet trends -- new and used -- 2016 has been confusing to say the least.

We've ridden the wave of Paleo controversies, __gluten sensitivities and 5:2 diets -- and have reached the shoreline feeling slightly battered.

Amid all the rumble, what have we been googling this year?

According to data picked up from Google Trends, among vegan, paleo, sugar-free, gluten-free and 5:2 diets, Aussies are most interested in veganism in 2016.

'Gluten-free' took out second place, followed by 'paleo', with 'sugar-free' dieting surprisingly coming in last place.

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Making the vegan switch is now far more commonplace.

Across the world, 'vegan' remains the most searched diet-related term in the last twelve months as messages against animal-based products continue to gain global prominence.

Back on a local stage, Melbourne's 'Match Mylkbar' has been all the rage...

YUUUMMM an incredible spread of pure NOOOMSS with @yanyqing and co!!😱😍 Smoothie bowls, matcha pancakes, matcha burgers and iced matcha lattes?!! Now THAT'S what we call BRUNCH GOALS 💚

A photo posted by M A T C H A // M Y L K B A R (@matcha_mylkbar) on Dec 28, 2016 at 8:46pm PST

As has boxer Nate Diaz's vegan switch. And the rest.

The top vegan-related queries in 2016 were:

• Matcha mylkbar
• Nate Diaz vegan
• Vegan restaurants newtown
• Vegan anzac biscuits
• Vegan ramen

If this is you, read on for tips on making a healthy vego or vegan switch.

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MORE: 5:2 Diet Diet Diet Trends Fad Diets Food __gluten Free Paleo Society Vegan

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Would you eat canary seed? Health Canada says it’s safe

TORONTO – Move over, feathered friends: canary seed has been approved for human consumption by Health Canada and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The high-protein, gluten-free grain — similar in size to flax seed and sesame seed — can now be incorporated whole into energy and snack bars and sprinkled on hamburger buns and bagels. It can also be ground into flour for use in cookies, muffins, crackers, breads, tortillas and pasta.

It’s good news for farmers in Saskatchewan, where the bulk of the world’s canary seed crop is grown and exported.

It’s hoped the approval for human consumption will broaden the market, says Kevin Hursh, executive director of the Canaryseed Development Commission of Saskatchewan.

Carol Ann Patterson, a food scientist with The Pathfinders Research and Management Ltd., in Saskatoon, had been working with the commission since about 2006 as regulatory approval was sought for the seed to be used as a cereal grain, similar to oats, wheat, barley and rye.

“From a protein perspective, compared to other cereals, canary seed ranks up there,” says Patterson.

“And that’s why it’s so good for gluten-free applications because right now a lot of the flours that are used … don’t have the same nutrient composition as canary seed would have in terms of fatty acids, in terms of the vitamins, in terms of fibre and in terms of protein content.”

Roasted canary seed has a nutty flavour with a pleasant aroma, she says, and many baking trials were carried out using the grain because of its gluten-free quality.

“It provides a bit more taste than some of the other products that go into gluten-free foods. If you’re using it with tapioca starch or whatever other starch types we think that it will probably have an application in the gluten-free market because that has been a growth area,” says Hursh, who grows canary seed at his farm near Cabri northwest of Swift Current.

Another bonus is canary seed can be substituted for imported sesame seed. Sesame has been identified as one of 10 priority food allergens by Health Canada.

However, canary seed may not be suitable for consumers with a wheat allergy because there’s one protein that wheat and canary seed have in common. Canary seed for human consumption will need to be labelled with an allergy warning while research is done to see if the restriction can be removed, Hursh says.

The cereal grain originated in the Canary Islands — hence the name — and has been used to feed tame birds for centuries. It’s also been consumed by mainly Spanish and Hispanic cultures in the Mediterranean basin. In recent years, some health-food markets in North America have ground the seed, hull included, and used it in smoothies or soaked it in hot water for a tea, says Hursh.

In Canada, canary seed started being grown in the late 1800s near Indian Head, 70 kilometres east of Regina. It fell out of favour, then was revived in the 1970s and ’80s, says Patterson.

The human food approval in Canada and the U.S. covers hairless (glabrous) canary seed varieties, with both brown and yellow seeds.

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Have high pain tolerance? Don’t ignore these signs of a ‘silent’ heart attack

If you tend to have a high tolerance for pain, doctors warn that you could be missing the telltale signs of a heart attack.

By working through the pain and ignoring the warning signs of a heart attack, you could be damaging your heart and worsening your odds of a strong recovery, Norwegian scientists say.

Typical heart attack symptoms include chest pain, shortness of breath and cold sweats but that’s not always the case. Sometimes a “silent” heart attack can strike – it’s called a silent ischemia when lack of oxygen gets to the heart muscle.

“It is unknown why some people experience heart attacks without symptoms. One possible explanation for the absence of chest pain is high pain tolerance. To our knowledge, no previous study has examined the relationship between pain sensitivity and recognition of heart attacks,” Dr. Andrea Ohrn, the study’s lead author, said in a university statement.

Ohrn’s team out of the University of Tromso in Norway looked at nearly 5,000 people. They went through a cold pressor pain tolerance test, which is when you place your hand in ice cold water for as long as possible. After that, they underwent electrocardiograms.

The researchers combed through the study participants’ ECG results and their hospital records to look at their heart health.

Turns out:

• Eight per cent of the group had a “silent” heart attack in their past, and 4.7 per cent had recognized heart attacks
• Those who had a silent heart attack fared the best at the cold pressor test – they kept their hand in the cold water longer and were less likely to quit than their peers who acknowledged right away that they had encountered a heart attack in the past
• Women had fewer heart attacks than men, but they tended to have silent heart attacks more

With these findings in tow, the researchers say doctors need to ask their patients about their sensitivity to pain. They shouldn’t ignore the warning signs of a heart attack just because patients don’t have chest pain either.

Signs of a “silent” heart attack include heavy breathing and swollen legs. These are hallmark signs of a heart failure because of a previous heart attack.

This isn’t the first time doctors are shedding light on heart attack symptoms to pay attention to.

At the start of 2016, the American Heart Association said that men and women encounter very different signs of heart attack.

While men feel their chest tighten, a shooting pain in the arm or shortness of breath, women’s symptoms are much more subtle. They feel nauseous, they vomit or they encounter back or jaw pain, for example.

Read the full Norwegian report published this week in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

carmen.chai@globalnews.ca
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