Fresh: 3

Three ways to make cardio fresher:

 

1.     Change the speed.

2.     Change the time.

3.     Change the intensity.

 

Up or down!  You pick!

Fresh: 4

Fresh mindsets come in many flavors.  Here are a couple to taste!

 

1.     The power of “yet.”  As in “I can’t do that YET.”  This opens up possibilities!

2.     What did I learn?  I just tried something new and it was hard and it didn’t go the way I wanted it to.  What do I take away from this?  Maybe I want to keep trying; maybe once was enough.

3.     Where’s the fun?  Not that many experiences are 100% awful.  I mean, even going into labor gets to the part where you have a baby at the end.  Burpees may not be fun to do, but they are fun to brag about later.

4.     Make your own.  Yep:  you are powerful and can use your big brain to transform yourself in any direction that occurs to you!

Love Month: More

Still want more ways to love yourself?  How about these?

 

1.     Talk nicely to yourself.  You are amazing!

2.     Give yourself a break.  Sometimes we all need one.

3.     Be grateful.  We all have some blessings lying around in our lives.

4.     Hug somebody.  It’s good for both of you!

5.     Do a favor.  We can all use a bit of good karma, plus an instant mood boost.

Love Month: Love your tummy

All of this love for our bodies requires appropriate food.  We can’t do our best cardio, strength, balance, and flexibility work on a diet of Cheetos and whiskey.  Here are some general ideas for how to eat for self-love:

Drink water.  It’s good for hydration, calorie free, and essential to so many body processes.  If it seems a little boring, throw a slice of lemon in there, or try fizzy water.

 

Eat those veggies.  They really are good for you.  They fill us up, give us essential nutrients, and don’t have too many calories.

 

Get enough protein.  Choose wisely here, though.  We want to eat low on the food chain for our own health and for the health of our ecosystems.

 

Change it up.  There is no perfect food.  We need to eat a variety of foods to meet all our needs.  Plus it’s fun and tasty.

Love Month: 6

Quick reasons to do Pilates:

 

1.     Increased mobility

2.     Increased flexibility

3.     Better balance

4.     Better posture

5.     Better efficiency

6.     Fun

Love Month: 6

Jumping is great for both cardio fitness and bone strength.  Here are six things to try:

 

1.     jacks (regular, plyojacks, plank jacks)

2.     burpees

3.     box jumps or depth jumps (jumping on or off a fitness box)

4.     jump squats

5.     jump lunges

6.     lateral hops (extra fun with a BOSU

Love Month: 3

How to show yourself some real love:

 

1.     Eat breakfast.

2.     Sleep enough.

3.     Move your body.

Goal Month: 5

Let’s review.  Here are the kinds of goals we learned about over the month.

 

1.     SMART goals

2.     dumb goals

3.     rubrics

4.     process goals

5.     outcome goals

 

Choose your favorite or mix and match!

Goal Month: Try 4

Rubrics we can try:

 

1.     Do x minutes of cardio x times per week.

2.     Complete x weight workouts per week.

3.     Eat x different vegetables this week.

4.     Drink x glasses of water today. 

Goal Month: Try 5

Some dumb goals to try:

 

1.     Add a minute to whatever workout you’re doing today.

2.     Leave two bites on your plate.

3.     Add one more rep to your weight workout.

4.     Meditate for one minute.

5.     Drink one more glass of water.

Goal Month: Alternatives

Losing weight is the traditional new year goal.  Here are some alternatives:

 

1.     Hit a new personal best.  This can be about heavy lifting, distance, speed, or maybe even finally beating that one person at pickleball.

2.     Reach a milestone.  Maybe there’s a particular exercise to master, or an event to complete, or maybe we want to touch our toes.

3.     Have an adventure.  This could be trying new recipes or new paths or new sports.

4.     Build community.  Bring a friend to work out or join a team or do a charity race.

Thursday List: 3

It seems a little unfair that the new year starts on a Thursday.  (“I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”)  Thursday just doesn’t say beginning to me.  Usually, it says something more like nap.  But here we are, in 2026, ready or not.

 

I am not much of a resolution person.  But tradition is powerful, so here is a list of potential resolutions for the coming year:

 

1.     Move your body.

2.     Eat food that is both good for you and tasty.

3.     Get some rest.

 

Go play. 

Thursday List: 12

What better day than this to have a list of recovery gifts we can give ourselves?

 

1.     Nap.  For best results, keep naps to about half an hour.

2.     Massage.

3.     Bath.  Bonus points for Epsom salts and whatever else makes it relaxing.

4.     Foam rolling.  Cheaper than massage and we can do it any time!

5.     Yoga/Pilates/stretching.  This is the kind of movement that is restorative.

6.     Meditation.  Reduces stress and improves focus and sleep.

7.     Water.  Yep.  We need lots.

8.     Snacks.  Ideally a protein snack, like maybe some nuts.

9.     Walk around the block.  Nothing too intense.  Just a little outside time with gentle movement.

10.  Hugs.  Human contact is good for us.

11.  Make something.  Creativity restores our brains.

12.  Your favorite thing.

Thursday List: 7

Here are some good starting exercises for weight training:

 

1.     squats

2.     deadlifts

3.     bench press

4.     flies

5.     rows

6.     kickbacks

7.     chest lifts (some folks know these as crunches, but the Pilates way is better!)

Thursday List: 4

Why do cardio?  I have Reasons:

 

1.     It improves mood.  Seriously.  My spin bike is actually called The Magic Mood-Fixing Machine.  Science says that you will feel better after.

2.     It makes your brain work better. 

3.     It burns calories.

4.     It reduces stress.  Remember this when your house is full of contentious relatives.  Going for a walk is way better than ending up in jail for assault.

Thursday List: 5

Things I am grateful for, for real.

 

1.     Awesome family and friends.

2.     Eggs.

3.     Murder mysteries.

4.     Cardio exercise, especially spin and swimming.

5.     Sweaters.

 

Obviously not an exhaustive list.  What’s on yours?

Thursday List: 3

Experiments to try:

 

1.     Eat a new food.  This can be as simple as trying a veggie you’ve never had or as complicated as taking a trip to the library to check out a cookbook for some kind of cuisine that is new to you.

2.     Have a movement snack.  You know that time in the afternoon when you think about having a cookie or another cup of coffee just to get through whatever the afternoon holds?  Try taking a five minute walk, or doing a minute of squats, or a few stretches instead.

3.     Turn off the extras.  This one can be hard.  Instead of jumping on the treadmill or bike or elliptical or whatever and plugging in to the music or TV, just go.  Even better, take the workout outside and do it without the distractions.  You might learn stuff about the content of your head or about how your body works or other things I haven’t thought of yet.

Thursday List: 5

Need to troubleshoot?  Here are some good questions to ask.  (Alternatively, I am a wellness coach and you can hire me to help figure stuff out!)

 

1.     How is my sleep?  If we’re not sleeping, we can’t really expect anything else to go super well.  Both our bodies and our brains need sleep for proper function.

2.     What am I eating and drinking?  Despite my high school experience, it is not sustainable to run on Coke and donuts.  If our most frequent vegetable is French fries and we drink coffee by the pot, we might have an obvious culprit.  Even if we do generally eat pretty well, we may find that we’re not getting enough protein or we’re hitting the afternoon cookies a little too hard.

3.     What am I doing about my stress?  Yep:  I am assuming we have stress.  But if we have nurturing relationships, good practices like meditation, and time to relax, stress can be mitigated.  (Bonus points for activities that will help to dismantle the systemic sources of much of our stress.  Smashing the white supremacist cis-hetero imperialist capitalist patriarchy is good exercise, too.)

4.     Am I giving my body a break?  In addition to sleep, our bodies need recovery time.  We need rest days between workouts.  We need restorative practices like massage.  Yoga helps.

5.     When did I last have some fun?  Sometimes we just need to do something frivolous to restore our energy.

Thursday List: 4

Here are more ways to build in intervals in our workouts:

 

1.     Add hills.  These can be real hills if we are walking/running/hiking/biking outside or pretend ones on the treadmill.

2.     Mix in a minute of cardio when weight training every so often.  This can be something as simple as jumping jacks or we can hop on the treadmill and run for a minute.

3.     Make it complicated.  We can amp up our usual lunges, say, by adding a bicep curl to overhead press.  Squats can acquire an extra leg lift to the side each time.

4.     Change the tempo.  Do most of the workout at an even tempo, but every few exercises make it faster before returning to normal.

Thursday List: 1?

If we find that we want to change our goal, what do we do?  Here’s a list:

 

1.     Change it.  It’s ours.  We can do whatever we want with it.