Since Bret is a Phys Ed teacher, former personal trainer and unofficial Guinness World Record holder, my health is important to him. I’m sooooo thankful for a spouse that won’t let me be lazy when it comes to my health. I think a big part of getting and staying healthy is support. So, husbandpants, thank you. 🙂

Today I realized while I am relatively healthy and somewhat keep up with working out and eating well…..I have some silly tricks to actually do it.

– Put it on my to do list. I’m a BIG to do list person. If it’s in front of me, it’s pretty hard to not do it….lol, or I feel realllllly bad about not doing it.

– Variety of workouts. I have a few workout sets that Bret has showed me, I have found some great workouts online and I just hop on the treadmill.

– Start small and build up. A few months back, I hit a wall with my workouts….I wasn’t consistent and felt like I was burning out too quick. So I bumped my times down and started again. I think I was down to 5 reps during my workouts and only added 1 rep per week. I also added only a minute more each week to my treadmill walk.

– I listen to Ted Talks, YouTube business tips videos, reading books, etc while on the treadmill. The idea is to take your mind off the tedium of the treadmill and actually use the time for something worthwhile.

– I play iPad games on the treadmill. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve started the treadmill and the minutes have melted away because I was so busy crafting things on Hay Day or getting people their food on Cooking Fever. Just today, I felt a little cold coming on….I was all ready to say, eh, I don’t need to work out…but I got on the treadmill….and then thought, well, I don’t need to do a full 21 minutes…..and then, I started the games and boom, I’m almost at the time. While this one isn’t “worthwhile” in the learning sense….I do feel better about playing because I’m doing something worthwhile by being on the treadmill.

– Track it. I have a spreadsheet I put together that I’ve actually tracked my workouts (or lack thereof) since January of last year. (What can I say, I’m a HUGE numbers nerd!) Seeing it in front of me helps me to be motivated and see how far I’ve come. It was super gratifying to see the months where I worked out much more than not (with a graph, thank you very much!)

– MyFitnessPal was a great app for me for a while! Actually keeping track of what I ate and how many calories I ate was eye opening. It can add up really quick! Making small changes can make huge differences here. Using a different dressing or less dressing can have major calorie savings. (Read that as Jennilyn likes dressing and probably ate her daily allowance in just dressing….and couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t losing weight….even though she was eating salads!)

– Fitbit. This is a new one for me. It was one of those “splurge” things that we couldn’t afford until recently. I’ve had it for about a week and a half and it’s been great! I love being able to track my sleep, steps, active minutes, etc. I will say, here’s how this is silly….I set a goal and was about 1,000+ steps off before bedtime the other day….so I got out of bed and started walking circuits from our room to the bottom of the steps….then upstairs and walked in circles in the family room while talking to my mom. But hey, I got my steps in!

What about you? What are silly things you do to keep yourself healthy?