Ah, the holidays. When you convince yourself it’s perfectly okay to eat four Oreo truffles and six homemade chocolate chip cookies because you’re going to buy a gym membership in the new year, right? Well, go ahead and indulge in your grandma’s apple pie and don’t feel guilty about it, but just know that you don’t have to succumb to the cliche of joining a gym at the start of 2017. Here are a few apps that will save you money and help you get your pre-holiday body back:
1. C25K
I may be biased because I love this app. C25K stands for “couch potato to 5K.” The app is designed for people who are mostly sedentary but want to start exercising or doing cardio. It's an eight-week program and each week consists of three days of thirty minutes. So, that’s only an hour and a half per week of cardio (come on, you can do it.) The first week starts off easy with just 20 minutes of alternating between jogging for a minute and walking for a minute and a half. After that, you start running more and walking less, until eventually, you are able to run a full 5K (or 3.2 miles.) If you’re feeling really adventurous, try their advanced app, 10K Trainer.
2. 30 Day Fitness
This app is more for strength building. Their homepage asks you what area of the body you want to target: arms, core, legs, or strength. Once you choose one, different types of 30 day challenges come up that you work on for the month. For example, you can do the 30-day beach body challenge for arms and each day the different exercises increase in intensity, mainly focusing on arms, but also helping to build overall muscle strength. If you really want to push yourself, try doing a couple challenges at a time. You can also set a reminder on the app for when you want to work out.
3. Pinterest
No, Pinterest is not just for 16-year-old girls to save pictures of contours they want to try. If you just type into the search bar “2017 workouts,” hundreds of pins of at home workouts will pop up (for example, the photo above.) Some pins are geared toward cardio and give you elliptical or treadmill workouts and some pins even plan out an entire week of workouts for you.
4. YouTube
This app may be the last one you think of when considering exercise apps, but there are quite a few YouTubers who act as trainers to their subscribers. For example, the channel Yoga with Adriene has over a million subscribers. She posts videos for all yoga levels and for all types of yoga: for strength, weight loss, focus, or flexibility. Some of her videos are 10-15 minutes for those who don’t have too much time to dedicate to their yoga practice and some are an hour long. There are also channels like Fitness Blender and Bodybuilding.com for cardio and strength training and Blogilates for pilates.
Also, if you didn’t count your calories over the holidays and you want to start, along with your at home workout routine, download the app My Fitness Pal. You enter your current weight and your daily physical exertion and the app sets your daily caloric intake. Your phone holds all the tools you need to get your body back in shape, without shelling out hundreds of dollars to use gym equipment. Make your new year’s resolution to save your money by losing the holiday pounds on your own or with the help of an online fitness trainer.