It’s that time again – New Year’s Resolution season. Let’s admit it: we always start off strong with motivation and enthusiasm to eat healthier, exercise more, get more sleep and take better care of ourselves, but come mid-January, that enthusiasm starts to wain. Sometimes we just need that little extra spark to keep the fires of motivation burning, and we’ve got some super-handy tech gadgets to add some fuel to your smart health and wellness fire.
Eat Better
Prep It: Of course preparing your own meals is far healthier than take-out or pre-packaged food, but cooking at home takes extra time and creativity that we don’t always have. Luckily, The Panasonic Steam Microwave will make your meal prep even easier with easy, oil-free dishes that taste great. The steam function can also be combined with microwave, grill, and convection cooking to give you limitless options for making “healthy” synonymous with “delicious.”
Kick Sugar: Everyone snacks. It’s inevitable—that yawning chasm of time between lunch and dinner will find you eventually. In fact, healthy snacking can actually be good for you, as it fends off swings in blood sugar and prevents binge eating when you’re reaaally hungry. Unfortunately, most store-bought snack foods have a shocking amount of sugar in them, so we’ve got some easy tips for cutting down on sugary snacks here.
Move More
Pump It: The perfect playlist can make or break an intense workout. If you’re addicted to the energy that music gives you, make sure you’re taking full advantage of your tunes with a great set of headphones. Skullcandy’s XTFree Wireless Sport Headphones eliminates the hassle of cords and and keeps you free to pump it up. The lightweight buds have a tight comfortable fit, and you’ll get up to six hours of battery life on a charge to keep you going longer.
Get Up: New studies have shown that there’s a direct relationship between time spent sitting and your risk of early mortality. Doctors suggest that for every 30 consecutive minutes of sitting, standing up and moving or walking for five minutes at brisk pace will reduce the health risks from sitting. If you work at a sedentary job, a standing desk is a great way to avoid sitting for long periods of time. Our Certified Data Standing Desk easily changes from sitting to standing position and has a large surface area to accommodate all of your work activities.
Get Down: Fitness is more fun when it’s a family affair! Get the whole gang grooving with Just Dance, available for Nintendo Switch, PS3 & PS4, Wii & Wii U, and Xbox One and 360.
Track It: Some people need a little bossing around to stay on track with their fitness. If you don’t want to hire an expensive personal trainer, go for some wearable tech to keep you accountable. London Drugs has a wide range of Fitbit fitness trackers in lots of different styles and price ranges that can help you reach your goals. With the Fitbit app, you can track your daily steps, caloric intake and output, heart rate, sleep habits–all while looking sleek and stylish.
Get more sleep
Light It: Everyone knows that getting enough sleep is essential support for good health: it helps our bodies repair damage, clean out waste products, balance hormones, renew cells, and so much more. New studies have even shown that a good amount of sleep helps you form memories, solidify learning, reduces your risk of depression, increases fitness levels, and helps to avoid weight gain. If the thought of trying to get more sleep seems intimidating, there is some great technology available to help create optimal conditions for a good night’s rest, like the Sleepace Nox Music Smart Sleep Light. It can help you fall asleep easily with soothing light and sound and wakes you up naturally with a smart light alarm. It also collects data from your bedroom environment that impacts your sleep quality and makes smart suggestions on how to improve your sleeping experience.
Hear It: If you like to listen to music or podcasts as you fall asleep but wake up in a tangled mess of headphone wires, the Furo Bluetooth Sleeping Mask helps you rest in comfort while listening to whatever sounds are needed to take you to dreamland. A soft micro-fibre sleeping mask with built-in Bluetooth speakers and a 6-hour battery life will give you a comfortable, tangle-free sleeping experience.
More self-care
De-Stress: Ideally, we’d all have a live-in massage therapist to help us work out the knots after a stressful day or a hard workout, but alas, most of us aren’t so lucky. The next best thing could be the Homedics Neck & Shoulder Massager with Heat. This invigorating vibration massager adds heat to soothe tense muscles, and the portable design flexes and shapes to your body, providing the perfect fit for the perfect massage. Makes you want to let out a big “ahhhhhhh” just reading that, doesn’t it?
Breathe In: It’s amazing how scent can affect your mood and well-being. Just ask any of your friends who have jumped on the therapeutic essential oils bandwagon recently: lavender can help you sleep, pine can alleviate stress, citrus can help you feel more energized, and peppermint may boost concentration, just to name a few. An aromatherapy diffuser will help fill your home with whatever scent and mood you crave.
Hopefully, with a little help, we can all stick to our goals for the year (and stay off the road that they say is paved with good intentions), and make 2018 into twenty-GREAT-teen!
