Friday's Food

The problem with healthy eating is that it can often be expensive, especially when you want to load up on fresh vegetables. Even after springing for a bountiful of produce, many of us then watch our hard earned cash go down the drain as the food spoils before you can eat it. FitBritt's solution is to grow your own vegetables and fresh herbs. Growing your own vegetable garden saves you a ton of money, ensures freshness and allows you to pick only what you need to avoid spoilage.

If you have a nice big backyard, find a spot that is exposed to plenty of sun and create a plot by digging up the soil and getting rid of any large rocks. Then add store-bought potting soil to the ground in order to promote growth. Worried about predators eating your vegetables? You can construct a fence around the garden to keep animals out but remember some animals, like rabbits are good at digging so make sure the fence extends at least a foot under the ground. Another option is to use chicken wire over individual plants.

Is your problem no space for a garden? You can still grow your own vegetables by using containers and placing them on a balcony or patio or windowsill. For those of you really cramped for space, look for community gardens. Many cities have plots of land available for citizens to use for the purpose of gardening. Check you city's webpage for further information.

Now the question is what to grow. Fresh herbs can cost as much as $2 for a bunch and most often its not possible to get through the entire bunch before it goes bad. Popular herbs to grow are basil, parsley, mint, thyme and cilantro. A good tip here is to find a plant either at a local nursery or even your grocery store and then transplant the plant into your soil. Besides growing herbs, some great fresh veggies include tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, radishes and peppers. Just make sure that what you plant will grow in your region and at the time of year when you plan to plant them.

For more information on growing a vegetable and herb garden check out these useful websites or ask an expert at your local gardening store or nursery:

WikiHow: How to Grow Your Own Vegetables

My Great Home This site has some good information on growing vegetables in a small space

How Stuff Works- Growing Your Own Vegetables

Fit Tip: Gardening is also a great activity to burn calories. So not only are you getting healthy food but you are also saving money and getting some mild exercise!

Sounds on Thursday

So given yesterday's posting FitBritt thinks its only fair to offer an extra special Sounds on Thursday and provide a playlist suitable for busting out some dance moves. As always, songs are available on iTunes or, as FitBritt recently found out, also available on Amazon for $0.99 compared to $1.29 for most songs on iTunes.

Bust-A-Move Playlist
1.) Canned Heat by Jamiroquai- A good warm-up song because of its fun upbeat tempo.

2.) Boom Boom Pow by the Black Eyed Peas- This was recently suggested by a Frugal Fitness follower and is a great song for some hip hop type moves.

3.) Feedback by Janet Jackson

4.) Anything by Lady Gaga espeically Telephone, Bad Romance and of course, Just Dance

5.) Womanizer by Britney Spears- This has a good beat although FitBritt would like to take this opportunity to make a clear distinction between head shaving Britney Spears and Frugally Fit FitBritt- not at all the same person.

6.) Krazy by PitBull feat. Lil' Jon- Just get crazy!

7.) Get Me Bodied Extended Mix by Beyonce- Check out the middle of the song and see if you can emulate the words of the song. I.e. "Drop down almost to the floor"; "Pose for the camera"; "Do an old-school dance"; "Shake your derriere"; "Do the scissor leg, touch your heel, touch your toe"; "Do the Naomi Campbell walk" You get the picture.

8.) Love Generation by Bob Sinclair- If this song doesn't make you happy and want to dance then what will?

9.) Put Your Hands Up For Detroit by Freddie Le Grand

10.) Don't Feel Like Dancing by the Scissor Sisters

11.) And if you are trying to channel Dancing With the Stars and you are interested in some Latin flavor try out a few of these: Conga by Gloria Estefan, Maghalenha by Sergio Mendes, Let's Get Loud by Jennifer Lopez

Wednesday's Workout

This Wednesday's Workout is a lot of fun and completely *free*. FitBritt suggests putting on a great playlist of music consisting of all of your favorite upbeat songs and dancing around the house. Its like that hip hop class at the gym you always wanted to take but didn't have the courage, only now no one is watching you so you have no excuse! So you think you can't dance? No problem! Just move to the music. The important thing is to keep going to burn some calories. Try to keep it up for at least a half hour.

Looking for more structure? There are plenty of exercise dvds offering to teach you dance steps. One of FitBritt's favorites is Julianne Hough's (from Dancing With the Stars) Cardio Ballroom. Another option is to check out YouTube for some dance videos and see if there are any moves you can pick up. Or just watch MTV or VHI for an afternoon (that is when they actually play music) and see if you can get some ideas from some of you favorite celebrity singers.

Tuesday's Trim Down

This Tuesday's Trim Down is another *free* workout. Most of us know iTunes as a source for downloading music for our iPods, but what you may not realize is that iTunes also offers Podcasts. Podcasts are digital files that can come in audio or video form and are available in episode format. There are Podcasts for a range of subjects including the news, market information, arts and crafts, language learning and much more. Most importantly for our purposes, there are a wide variety of Podcasts on Health and Fitness. You can find a Podcast for almost any type of sport or fitness interest. Some great examples are Elsie's Yoga Class and Dave Farmer's Power Yoga, both of which offer free full-length yoga classes through audio instruction. Or a personal favorite of FitBritt's is the Pilates on 5th video Podcast, which offers instruction on Pilates moves and has 10 min and 30 min Pilates classes. IndoorCylcingPodcast offers an audio indoor cycling class including music and instruction, which is a great substitute for an indoor cycling class. And for all you runners, there are a multitude of Podcasts providing coaching on everything from how to run a 5K to tackling a marathon or triathalon.

In addition to fitness instruction, there are Podcasts on nutrition, such as Vegetarian Food For Thought and Dishing Up Nutrition, which offer information and suggestions on eating healthy. You can also find Podcasts for workout music mixes or motivational speaking.

Once you have found a Podcast (or two) that you like, you can choose to watch or listen to the individual episode streaming online or you can subscribe to the Podcast and have the episodes automatically downloaded to your iTunes library daily. And of course, the best part is that all of this information and instruction is *free!*

Readers, any Podcasts you enjoy?

In addition to

Monday's Retail Madness

This Monday’s Retail Madness is an absolute gem for those interested in frugal fitness. And in fact it was suggested by one of Frugal Fitness’s own followers. The website Groupon offers discounts for popular services in cities throughout the U.S. What this means for Frugal Fitness followers is that you can get great discounts on things like personal training packages with local gyms, fitness or dance class packages, rounds of golf, rockclimbing or tennis lessons and many other active pursuits. Some deals offer as much as half off the original price or more!

The way it works is simple: a business chooses to participate with Groupon and offers one of its services for a discounted price, if enough people choose to sign up for the service then the deal is on and your credit card will be charged. Unfortunately, if there is not enough interest, the deal is off and you cannot take advantage of the savings but your credit card will not be charged.

Groupon offers one deal every day, so it is worth it to sign up and have the deal emailed to you directly to avoid having to constantly check back on the website. For more information about how Groupon works, check out the sites FAQs.

Fit Tip: Groupon has offers for non-fitness related services and products such as spa treatments, dinners out, tickets, etc. So this site is great to use for all kinds of different activities and merchandise. Just make sure all these discounts don’t tempt you away from your fitness goals and do take advantage of the great fitness offers available!

Weekend Activity

Given our recent posting on the Bicycle Commuter Act and biking to work, this weekend's activity is biking, of course. Most of us loved to ride our bikes when we were kids, but riding a bike as an adult can be really fun and is great exercise. If you live in a city, check out the bike paths available and map out a ride. Most cities, such as Boston, New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, have websites to show you local bike paths. If you live outside of the city, visit a state park and try trail biking or just bike around the neighborhood.

If you don't own a bike, you can rent one from a local bike shop. And of course, a frugal fitness bonus, renting a bike is very inexpensive, but make sure you either buy your own helmet or rent one as well.

Fit Tip: Before you take off view these bicycle safety tips from be-safe.org.

Friday's Food

Using the internet is a great resource for finding tips of staying healthy without spending a lot of money (ahem, not to toot Frugal Fitness’s own horn). Recently FitBritt came across this gem from Cooking Light. It’s called Feed 4 for $10. It is an excellent resource for putting together inexpensive meals. It even breaks down the cost per meal. Although the recipes assume that you already have some things in your pantry like spices, so this must be taken into account when considering the meals.

Fit Tip- If you are cooking for two instead of four, just halve all of the amounts in the recipe to make two portions. If you are cooking for one, make two portions and save the leftovers for lunch or dinner the next night.