Tips for how to stay fit and active while still saving money. Thrifty and economic ways to lose weight and stay healthy during a recession.
Staying fit and healthy should be a top priority for everyone, and luckily, exercising doesn’t have to make you lose money along with pounds. Here are some practical tips to fight the flab and keep your hard earned dollars.
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Exercise for Less Money: Goodbye Gym Membership and Hello Outdoors
With the rising cost of gym memberships, fiscally savvy exercisers might want to consider some other options. When the weather is pleasant, you might want to head outdoors for your daily sweat. Jogging, walking, biking, hiking, and swimming are all financially savvy ways to keep in shape and keep your money.
Join a walking club. Take up a new sport. Do some gardening. Go play tennis at your local park’s tennis courts (again free). Find an exercise buddy and together come up with new fun and innovative exercise activities to do in the great outdoors.
Work Out for Less Money: Do a Little Detective Work
If you insist on going to a gym or using gym equipment for your workout, don’t worry. You still have options. You just need to do a little detective work.
First, look into your local gyms’ free trial memberships. Many gyms will give new members free or discounted memberships, some as long as a month, to try their facilities.
Craigslist and other online classifieds are a great way to accumulate your own at home gym. Occasionally, there are individuals, for a variety of reasons, dying to get rid of perfectly good exercise machines. You can pick up great exercise machines and other equipment for relativly little cost to yourself. You never know. You might be lucky.
You might also consider looking around yard sales or eBay for steeply discounted exercise equipment. Talk to family or friends about unused and unwanted exercise equipment or DVDs they might have collecting dust somewhere. Someone might be willing do a DVD swap or give you some long unused dumbbells. Sometimes you can pick up great equipment or exercise DVDs if you just do a little detective work.
Affordable Way to Exercise: Utilize Library Resources
There are several ways to bring the exercise classes you love to go to, but not pay for, to your own home. One way is to visit your local library. There, you can browse through the latest exercise DVDs for new workouts. You can read all your favorite fitness magazines for new workout routines. You also can browse for new healthy and delicious recipes (see my recipe for Healthy, Whole-Grain Pizza Crust Recipe for starters) in the library’s extensive collection of cookbooks. Maybe you can check out that step-by-step instructional book on how to do yoga you’ve been meaning to read. The library has a plethora of free resources waiting to be used. So go use them.
If there is a material you are dying to have, but isn’t available at the library, just ask your librarian. Most libraries are equipped with friendly reference librarians ready to order for you any materials you might desire through interlibrary loan, at no extra charge to yourself.
If you are unsure about exercising by yourself in your own home, invite friends over for a weekly “class” and exercise together to one of your local library’s exercise DVDs.
Staying Fit and Active for Less Money: Innovation
Just be innovative and open-minded about the various possibilities for staying fit and active on a budget. Turn soup cans into dumbbells. Reallocate for 15 minutes a day your family home’s stairs for your new “completely green stair machine.” Head outside to play soccer with your daughter (even if you know you face likely defeat). The possibilities for fitness and fun are endless, if you are open-minded and creative.
Also, if you are looking for healthy ways to start the day, see the article Fast, Easy, and Healthy Breakfast for fresh ideas for healthy, easy, and delicious breakfasts. For ideas to satisfy your midafternoon cravings see Tasty and Healthy Snacks for Weight Loss.
